need

I need willpower. I’m hungry and thirsty and looking for a place to sleep. I know what I need. I can rise up in the morning and tell myself, today I will do the right things, and then I believe I will reap the rewards of self-discipline and self-control. My intentions are so good that I believe I’ll do it all (and more) and then maybe I’ll feel more peaceful.

As if everything works like checks and balances and tit for tat and punishment and reward.

Do ‘A’ – Get ‘B’

I need to believe in grace because I can’t believe A gets B because so often I get a really good B without finishing my A, without following through or doing my good-intended right thing. Grace isn’t fair in the best possible way. Grace does not fit in a box, but it remains in all things even though it blows my mind like galaxies do.

I need creativity. I’m hungry and thirsty and looking for a place to sleep. And so I tell myself I will write from my heart-gut and I will read the words of artists and scour the etsy for beauty. I turn up the sound on music that settles my heart and then I believe I’ll feel peaceful.

Most of the time, I’m interrupted, unable to do what I set out to do, unable to focus. And somehow, the beauty is always rising up all around, inside and outside the deafening noise and blinding light of home life with small boys. It’s in them and on them and in me and beyond us, like galaxies.

When people say “Higher Power” that’s what I think. I think of something beyond and in and on and above and below and never needing food or water or rest but always needing to redeem broken things and to love.

I need God. I’m hungry and thirsty and looking for a place to sleep. I try to hear his voice and see truth. But most of the time, my mind and heart don’t match. My mind runs and settles down my heart, covering it with the lies of man-made Christian systems that steal the grace and joy that a God-Man brings, twisting it up to fit a box.

I need acceptance. The knowledge that I’m still good when my willpower fails me again. The acceptance of myself, just as I am, right now. The acceptance of life on its own terms, that whatever life is doing, it is not out to get me, because of the under and in and on and beyond.

I need to be accepting in the same way I must accept and forgive myself.
I need to forgive the systems and the people who tell the lies because they cannot help what they do in their fear and confusion that leads them to unacceptance. They need too, and then they grasp.
~~~~~
For so long, I got up day after day, trying to ignore the reality that by late afternoon I would inevitably throw in the towel and reach for wine, hoping it would fill the need, every need. I was hungry and thirsty and needed a place to sleep. And always, always, there was still that spark in me, holding on and hoping for me, being the grace that’s under and in and around and beyond.

When I stopped drinking, I did not stop being hungry and thirsty or needing a place to sleep. But when I stopped, I uncovered the always-gasping-in-me spark, to see that beauty was still there, in a mercy flicker that never snuffed because the in and on and beyond never stops.

I can’t stop being hungry or thirsty or needing a place to sleep. I need.

I need to stop fighting that I need.

Help, I will say, and then the flicker will reach up, find air, and spread so I can pass it on.

I will be grateful to need because we all do and fire is contagious and I want to give it to you and to her and to him and to them. To help in any small way that I can.

And then I’ll feel peaceful.

P.S. I wrote something in response to a “talk” I heard last night that got me a bit riled up. SO. What I wrote is a response to that and it’s titled, “The truth is, most Christians think alcoholism is a choice.” Check it out if you’d like. Thank you.