The Next Step

I’m learning a lot about faith.

It isn’t to have God reveal all things to me and then move confidently into the future.

Instead it is to trust He has a plan for me without the fidelity of facts about my future - other than that He loves me - and I am to move forward and take the next step despite a large host of uncertainties.

Last year - as God would have it - someone I met seemingly randomly was going through a terrible time with his family’s health and pending uncertainties. While the circumstances of his life and what I’ve gone through are not the same, we share many common denominators of fear, pain, uncertainty, and loneliness in our grieving.

I’ve known him about a year now and while health situations at his home have gotten worse, there also has been a massive miracle. A baby has been born against all odds and lives while the uncertainty of the mother hangs precariously by a thread, so thin it can hardly be seen.

Not knowing the most recent developments, I had called him this week to unload and to surrender my own burdens, but found him in dire distress. I, myself, had dark nights a few years ago when I thought my wife would die overnight and leave me a widower. Those nights turned into weeks and months. His Hell is deeper and darker.

I asked what he was doing to survive.

He shared some personal things not appropriate for me to repeat, but the recent inspiration he received is universal to all suffering.

“Take the next step.”

God will reveal the next thing for me to do right now but often not the one after until I have completed or at least started the first one.

This time of year, I suffer from seasonal anxiety which - if left unchecked - has historically turned into depressive episodes. In the past I would wallow and go deep and not resurface for several months. It started earlier than normal as I had a major career change last September which introduced a lot more financial uncertainty than in previous years.

What has changed in recovery is that when the darkness begins to gather, I reach up to God and I change my state through exercise, meditation, and reaching out. Moving to Arizona where most days are sunny and warm and where I have proximity to family has also helped immensely.

I desire certainty, but God keeps reminding me that only His love is certain. Everything else just isn’t the point.

Just as Peter the Apostle fretted and feared about how to pay taxes and Jesus told him to go drop his line in the water and the first fish he caught would be enough to pay the debt, Christ reminds me to render that which is of the world to the world and to be loved. To be beloved.

No matter how dark your current trials are, I pray you remember these things.

God loves you.

You are beloved.

Yes, this pain and suffering sucks. It seems unfair and dark and twisted.

But please have faith and take the next step.

In my experience of pain and anguish, God has never left me alone when I seek Him. And He has always sent angels on both sides of the veil to comfort me and help me to identify the next step.

My prayer for you is that you find that same comfort in your current misery.

And that you take the next step.

By Pete, Writing Team

The Arithmetic of Recovery

There is an arithmetic to recovery that just doesn’t make sense. I’ve seen it many times in my eight years of attending 12-step groups, the Warrior Heart bootcamp, and any other meeting where people are sincerely trying to be better.

In each of these settings, people will come with their problems, share them as they feel moved to, and then leave with greater peace. And this doesn’t just happen when one or two people are weighed down and everyone else helps them, either. More often I’ve seen meetings where everyone arrived feeling down in the gutter, yet still everyone left feeling lifted. When I’ve seen that happen I’ve marveled at it, wondering which of us did the lifting if all of us were coming from below?

I guess it would make more sense to me if each person had the solution for someone else’s problem…but usually that isn’t the case either. Usually the sort of problems being shared aren’t the sort that one can just reach over and fix for someone else. Things like unyielding waves of shame, or deep marital problems, or a lifelong yearning for God; these are the sort of problems where all you can do is love, support, and commiserate.

So if nothing is getting “fixed,” how do we all end up feeling better? Where did the joy come from if none of us entered the meeting with it? It feels like we’re all getting something for nothing.

As I’ve thought about it, I’ve developed two theories as to what’s going on here. Personally, I think both are true.

Correct Posture

My first theory is that people are just made to share their burdens with one another, so we naturally feel better when we start doing it. This gives us the benefit of beginning something good, as well as the cessation of something bad.

When I first opened up my heart to tell a group all my secret shames and fears, I found that I actually didn’t even care how they reacted, I was just relieved to finally stop holding all of these things in. I realized that I was never meant to live in such secrecy. Doing so had twisted knots inside of me and just being honest released that tension all by itself. The love and compassion that came from my group was an extra bonus!

When I kept my problems to myself it was like trying to move forward while holding a great weight in an unnatural, hunched over position. When I shared my problems, even without receiving solutions, I felt like I was shifting into the upright, natural pose I was always meant to move in. It just felt right.

One in the Midst

Jesus taught his followers that “where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them,” (Matthew 18:20). He told them this when he was still present with them in the flesh, but it seems clear that he was pointing forward to the time after his crucifixion, instructing them on how they could summon him in spirit after he had gone.

Earlier I mentioned that I have seen group meetings where everyone arrived feeling low, yet everyone left with peace and lightness. Where did the burdens go and where did the peace come from? I believe the answer to both is the unseen Savior in the midst. I believe that Christ’s spirit is present in any group that gathers in his name, and where the attendees are there with sincerity of heart to become better men.

If five men come together, and each one feels negative, then normally that would create a compounding negativity:

-1 - 1 - 1 - 1 - 1 = -5

But if they gather in the name of Jesus, with sincerity of heart, then he is literally the X factor that can turn that equation positive:

-1 - 1 - 1 - 1 - 1 + X = +10

We can go to those meetings and throw all of our emotional debts into the pot, then draw from the reservoir of riches that Jesus imparts to each of us. That is the miracle and the arithmetic of group recovery!

By Abe, Writing Team

What it means to live Unafraid and Unashamed

Yesterday I was feeling restless. I had anxiety about a number of things including my career, family, and societal contribution.

I reached out to my daily accountability partner via text to put words to my emotions. Then I decided to attend an online 12 Step Meeting. A few minutes into the meeting the inspiration came very strong to immediately hang up and call a former sponsor.

I had no idea he was going through very significant stressful struggles in his family life. We talked and mourned what he was going through.

Recovery isn’t a continual path of ease in the sense that all things are easily surmounted by faith, like a cheat code in a video game. Instead, I’ve found God needs me to live Unashamed and Unafraid of my past so that I can be open and vulnerable and present. Emotionally connected. Confident that recovery “works when I work it”. Because instead of wallowing in my self pity yesterday, I was able to sit in another’s pain.

Living a life Unashamed and Unafraid started for me with sharing my story on this podcast. It continued with me sharing my episode with my local Church group, family, and friends. Dismantling the pose of supposed perfection I had worn as a mask, I now lead with vulnerability and honesty.

For each of us the journey of how we live Unashamed and Unafraid will be different, but what unites us is the cause, the driving desire to live a life free of a secretive dark past. A focus on forward progress over pretended perfection.

What no one warned me about is that in recovery I would learn how to not only confront my own traumas, but to be able to lift others burdens as I mourn with them.

… Okay, I guess Christ did warn us of that but I somehow missed how much depth and beauty, sorrow and sadness, hope and humility the grieving process for myself and others would bring.

To be Christian is to be like Christ. To shoulder up alongside Him for my own healing and to have Him use me to help others just as others have delivered me from dark times indeed.

Statistically, many of us have abandoned any New Year’s resolutions if we even made any. But I invite us all to continue the charge to be Unashamed and Unafraid of our past. To be Unashamed and Unafraid of living our lives out loud, proclaiming our healing in the wings of Christ who has restored our souls. And to reach up and then reach out and help those around us.

By Pete, Writing Team