Corking the Bottle

Running long distances was my passion. I ran races anywhere from 6.2 miles to 50 miles. Compared to other runners I was okay, but certainly not a standout. What mattered was competing against myself by reducing my time. The bottom line was keeping fit and healthy and, unlike my father, living to be older than 49. I was maybe in my prime when my knee started bothering me. I ran through it. Don't let a little bit of pain slow me down, I thought. Rub some dirt on it and sign up for another race. Ignore the problem and it will go away. It didn't work out that way. I eventually had to see a doctor. After arthroscopic surgery and a long recovery, I went back to running. My knee still hurt and kept getting worse. I ignored the problem. It still didn't go away. "Problems do not go away. They must be worked through or else they remain, forever a barrier to the growth and development of the spirit," wrote M. Scott Peck in The Road Less Traveled ( http://www.mscot...

If you're as old as I am, you might remember a time back in the hippie days when the country was fighting a winless war and our leaders were being assassinated and peace rallies turned into riots. We heard the cry many times from many places: God is dead! It seemed as though the world was out of control. The captain of the ship had stepped away from the wheel and we were sinking. There were no lifeboats, just sandbags. I was a kid then. I thought that's the way our existence would be forever. I knew no other social environment. Maybe, I wondered, God really is dead. I know better now. Sometimes God does step away from the wheel. That's the way my dad taught me to ride a bike: by holding me up and then, without a word, letting me pedal on my own while staying a safe distance behind to catch me. The following is from a book, Coming Clean , by Seth Haines ( https://modernmrsdarcy.com/books/coming-clean-a-story-of-faith/ ). The passage is a little long for this blog ...

Yesterday's post was made with my tongue in cheek. Sort of. Yes, I take my sports teams seriously. But of course other problems rate higher on my pain scale. Speaking of pain, my source yesterday was right about it. Carey Scott in  Unafraid  ( https://careyscott.org ) wrote, "The truth is the Lord isn't as concerned with your comfort as much as He is concerned about your character." That says to me that whenever little problems or life-changing disasters strike, it's not because God has abandoned us or wants to punish us. The opposite is true. "He allows hard things, knowing He can use them in powerful ways to accomplish His plans in you." I suffered through alcohol addiction so that God could teach me about myself, about others, and about His love for me and you. He was sorry I went through bad times, but he uses those bad times "to accomplish His plans" in me. What strength I draw from my weaknesses!

I am digesting a pretty-good book, Unafraid , by Carey Scott ( https://careyscott.org ). Today I want to relate something she wrote about pain: "The goal isn't avoiding pain -- that's not realistic or beneficial -- but instead allowing it to make us complete." I find that to be reassuring to me, a recovering alcoholic. It's especially comforting today after I just watched another Steelers loss.

I am in the process of reading Coming Clean by Seth Haines ( https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25910321-coming-clean ). He writes about his battle with alcoholism, fed in part by his pain over his toddler son who is unable to ingest food. Doctors can't seem to help the little boy and so he probably is dying. The author also describes unresolved pains from his own childhood, and does so through analogies and metaphors that help me see what has led him to alcohol abuse and the detox process. In my drinking days, I too anguished over truth and lies and my history that left me with only positive memories. "What is the truth about truth? If it is absolute, if it is not subject to interpretation, why can I not perceive it? Where does it hide? Behind the eyes and between the ears? Is is secreting away in the nooks and crannies of my brain; does it burrow down somewhere between the folds where it waits to be germinated? Is it a seed? Does the soil sometimes turn on it, refuse t...

I am going in for hand surgery today. I have what's called a trigger finger and carpal tunnel. I also have arthritis in my thumbs, but no surgery can help that. I will be anesthetized.  My hand will be heavily bandaged afterward, so I don't know if I will be able to blog for a while. They tell me I won't experience any pain after the surgery, so I  won't need any pain killers. No pain killers is good news for recovering alcoholics. Some drugs interact, and our brains may be easily addicted to to certain medications. I used to have a list of such drugs from my first out-patient treatment at JADAC here in Louisville, but I can't find it. So instead, here is some advice from Be Med Wise ( http://www.bemedwise.org/medication-safety/medication-interactions ): "Alcohol can cause moderate to serious, and in some cases even fatal, interactions with more than 150 medications, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism ( https://www.niaaa.ni...

Life hurts, Sorry to break that to you, but it's the truth. Sometimes a Band-aide will do. Other times we need a complete shift in our view of reality. Solving problems is how God teaches us to grow spiritually. M. Scott Peck in The Road Less Traveled ( https://www.thriftbooks.com/a/m-scott-peck/199678/ )   has it right, I think. Consider this, as you think back to what made you start and continue drinking: “Many aspects of the reality of the world and of our relationship to the world are painful to us. We can understand them only through effort and suffering. All of us, to a greater or lesser extent, attempt to avoid this effort and suffering. We ignore painful aspects of reality by thrusting certain unpleasant facts out of our awareness. In other words, we attempt to defend our consciousness, our awareness, against reality. We do this by a variety of means which psychiatrists call defense mechanisms.” One defense mechanism is drinking or drugging. That’s how...

I have chronic leg pain. Old age? The 29 marathons and one 50-miler I ran in my days as a running addict? I'm sore these days if I stand or walk for a while. That's Pain with a capital P. Today I want to write about a different kind of pain. A regular at my noon A.A. meeting yesterday vaguely described some psychological pain she is going through, and it's becoming harder and harder to avoid relief in a bottle. I spoke up that the A.A. promises we read at every meeting are real, but they don't promise that a sober life is a painless life: 1. If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are half way through. 2. We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness. 3. We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it. 4. We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace. 5. No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others. 6. That feeling of uselessne...