When you die what will matter? How will the value of your days be measured? What will matter is not what you bought but what you have built. Not what you got but what you have given. What will matter is not what you learned but what but what you taught others. What will matter is your every act of integrity and compassion, your courage to sacrifice, to enrich and empower others by your example. What will matter most is not your confidence but your character. What will matter is not how many people you knew, but how many will feel the insatiable loss of your departure. What will matter is not your memories but those that live on in the ones who loved you. What will matter is how long you will be remembered, by whom, and for what.
A life lived significantly is not by circumstance but by the everlasting gift of choices you made while you were still here.
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What would you take?
My sister and brother in law rushed to evacuate their home in the 1,000 acre Tenaja Fire path last night not knowing what remains they may find when it’s over. While I know they’ll be safe, limited time surely forced a quick assessment of that they deemed they couldn’t afford to lose to the flames, would constitute the entirety of contents of their two cars, and would undoubtedly be their choice remains with which to begin a new life elsewhere. Between news updates, I laid awake in bed arguing scenarios with myself about what I might pack in the same predicament and why. My dog, some clothes, meds and a few toiletries made the short list of course, but what with which to fill the remaining few square feet of space before I drove away in a Kia and a panic? Ultimately what I got was an unsettling question of my values, priorities and reasoning abilities in a crisis, a shameful preoccupation with my accumulated possessions, and a very long, sleepless night.
I should be better at a task like this.
While deliberating, the fire arrived long before I filled the rest of my car, and I drove off with extra space and only the essentials. I realized that all the cherished objects I’d originally considered necessary for preserving memories were already etched in my mind and preserved in my heart. Stuff is stuff and as we know, millions of disaster victims don’t go unscathed, but have restarted just fine more humbly and with much less.
Choices may be painful, but given too much thought, maybe too often unnecessarily so.
My story and I’m stickin’ to it.
[If there’s one thing addicts do well, it’s telling stories. But after 8 years clean, they’re usually not lies anymore. Tonight at my meeting, I’ll share the most important part of how I did it once again as I share each year on this day.]
Someone asked me recently how I did it. How I got off drugs, meth of all things. Undoubtedly tonight at my meeting I’ll be asked once again as is the tradition for anyone getting another annual chip. My eighth.
I’ve given a lot of thought to the question. Less to the mechanics of my leap into sobriety, but more about which of my words might just trigger another addict in attendance to turn on that light upstairs, illuminating them to the possibility that they, too, despite their past, deserve a future.
You see, it’s not so much the quitting of drugs that’s important. Equally necessary is the installation of hope and belief that you are worth far more in this world than the lonely company of any drug or its cohorts. It’s about having been utterly blinded by the stupor of a drug and its false promise of contentment that blocks out hope or vision there’s really anything more to life. To that end, we are all addicts. We all have something we’ve allowed to remain which blocks our hope and blurs our vision. Something to which we remain bound.
“Clean and sober.” It’s almost cliché these days.
The distinction between the two, however, is perhaps the most important thing I learned in my years of recovery so far. I got clean once, but I get more sober with each passing day.
The truly recovered are not recovered at all. They are recovering. And the truly recovering can instinctively tell the difference. A recovering person hasn’t simply stopped using, they have started living. It’s evident that a clarity of mind, purpose and a place for God was birthed at some moment, and rarely is that moment a single epiphany, but the commencement of lifelong epiphanies which, strung together, create the continuity of recovering.
It’s the high I get from my ongoing little epiphanies of life these days. They continue to escort me down a much more beautiful path. And when you find yourself in a much prettier place, hope is much easier to find. In fact, it seems to find you.
And isn’t that really the definition of God?
So for the addicts in all of us, I say to you, we are here in this world for one reason only: Be that hope for someone today. Be clean. Be sober. And most of all, live like you deserve to.
That’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it.
Remembering September again.
Though I try my best to remember
the months and years I can never forget,
every time it’s the month of September,
I most often remember regret.
Regret for the times I was never…
Regret for the times I was lost…
Regret for my lack of endeavor…
Regret for all that it cost.
But regrets now take no lead,
because from them I’ve been freed.
Regrets may bring strife,
but remembering brings life;
An incredible distinction, indeed.
September the fourth it was over,
Now it’s September the fourth of nineteen,
eight wonderful years I’ve been sober,
eight sobering years I’ve been clean.
But I’ll always remember September
and thank God I survived to regret
the lost years I’m alive to remember
And the best still ahead of me yet.
Saving the fatboy.
Two years ago this morning all my jokes stopped. Hospitalized with septic pancreatitis, I began the three most painful weeks of my life where nothing was funny anymore. The doctors didn’t know if I would live or die. I was pumping more fat through my veins than blood and lived on a morphine/saline diet for two weeks without food or water. I lost 40 pounds and the carefree lifestyle of abusing my body with a fatboy diet rich in carbs and poor in life span. With today’s anniversary looming, I woke up anxious that I might not. But I did, and apparently so did you. You get one body and one lifetime to take care of it. Today, I no longer eat all I want, I’m still smoke free and thank God I’m still about 40 pounds down. And though I have terrible genes onboard fighting against my efforts I’m still working at it because you don’t always wake up from a wake up call, healthy life habits are no joking matter, and you can’t blame your parents for everything.
Last breaths.
“Just because it ended poorly doesn’t mean it wasn’t worth it.”
For some, it applies to a failed marriage, the product of which produced some really great children. Others might write off a job loss too soon before considering the skills they learned for the next. Still others consider a prison sentence as if it were the end, when in fact for many it’s the very catalyst for a new decision to live better. But nowhere else does this sentence apply better than at the end of life when every last breath exclaims it was totally worth it all.
GETMO.
GETMO.
“Good enough to move on.”
You’d never guess by the looks of my desk that I’m a perfectionist, but in an extra-ordinary sense. Yes, I like to ensure all i’s are dotted and t’s are crossed, but in a much more problematic way, I’d come to believe that before embarking on a journey or a project, all steps must be thoroughly anticipated, labeled and planned out or it’s prone to failure, may cause me anxiety and in rare cases, panic, even before taking the first step.
Enter: Psalm 119:105-Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.
It’s become a problem. One that has put me in conflict with superiors and project committees and one that sometimes immobilizes me in my personal life to the extent I don’t start projects largely because I either can’t or won’t envision the end.
However, I’m now reminded that when I’m on the path, the Lord has given me a lamp–not a flashlight–to illuminate only my feet and the path a few steps ahead. The very nature of a lamp is that it only illuminates the next step or two, not the distance ahead, and for good reason more than just that they didn’t have flashlights back then.
I now daily embrace the truth that the path I am on is not mine but if I’m doing it right, it belongs to One much greater who knows if I see what lies too far ahead of myself (flashlight) I might see the many obstacles and be reluctant to proceed. A lamp for the few steps ahead is sufficient to keep me moving on. Ergo, my new slogan is
GETMO.
Good enough to move on.
memories.
Safer spaces and fonder places proved we made it through.
Recollections of changed directions made adults of me and you.
Waters under our bridges made needed abridges for the people we were destined to be.
Memories serve us so much, of life and its touch, leaving only our legacy.
life is a soap opera.
The older I get, the more my life appears to have been a progression of soap operas:
As The World Turns.
One Life to Live.
All My Children.
The Young & The Restless.
The Doctors.
General Hospital.
Search for Tomorrow.
Guiding Light.
Dark Shadows.
Another World.
the least of these.
I hadn’t considered myself among “the least of these” but starting over at 51 as an ex-felon working a $9/hour church janitor job apparently exceeded the qualifications. But the surprise of a fifty dollar bill tucked in my back pocket by a passing stranger at Christmastime was eclipsed only by the words accompanying the gesture. “You’re making more of a difference than you know, young man.”
I’m not sure if I was more shocked by being addressed as a young man or by the unexpected generosity acknowledging a complete stranger working a lowly invisible job during the busiest time of the church calendar. I’d just returned from plunging a kids’ toilet full of poop and was enroute across the courtyard to a hazardous cleanup in the preschool hall made by two siblings who’d had blueberries and alpha bits for breakfast.
I’d like to report our encounter was an interaction but his swift disappearance into the festive crowd of Christmas servicers was as angelic as was his act of kindness. By the time I put my mop and pail to the ground and wiped my hand on my shirt to shake his hand, he was gone. I reached into my back pocket to find the gift he’d bestowed and while $50 was a helpful blessing this time of year, his words had been of much greater value.
Invisible people are all around us. Janitors, cashiers, clerks and other such name tags we rarely if ever read or better yet, take notice. Doing so need not cost $50 or 50 cents, but only to know the words to their song that dreams someone might care enough to notice and at the very least, tell them that in this world, they’re making more of a difference than they know.