I'm Looking Through You: What Do You Know?

You don't look different but you have changed.

It's easy to stay self-defeated in this misbegotten world. Negative messages are everywhere, and every billboard and commercial is strategically designed by experts to give us the maximum amount of anxiety about ourselves, our appearance, our age, our clothes, the suppleness of our skin and the whiteness of our teeth. If you're not careful you'll swallow it whole. You'll start to believe the lying lies and the liars who tell them: you'll stop believing you are the whole, perfect living amazing miracle that you are.

Let no one and no sixty-second commercial adorned with emaciated models convince you otherwise. It's a powerful moment when we begin to develop the courage and unshakable conviction that we are just right just as we are, and that you and I possess a tremendous and undauntable power, the power to change things by changing the way we look at them. Equally powerful is the transformation that begins when we acknowledge the patterns in our lives and claim the power to change them.

I don't want to blow her anonymity but I want to celebrate someone's courage: five days ago she made the decision not to drink anymore and went to her first AA meeting, and for five days she has been clean and sober. Already she has started to detox. Already her spirit is stronger, even this strong: she told me last night there were two times this week she wanted to drink, when the tension and stress started to mount and the temptation grew to just be numb, but she chose her strength instead. She's been to two meetings now and we might go to one tonight. An amazing thing begins when you decide your life is more important than a quick fix or an easy way out. I love her more every moment.

She sat down with her daughter and told her. I don't want to be this lost, numb person anymore. I don't want to wreck my marriage and I don't want to be unavailable and detached, lost in my fog. I don't want the uncontrollable rages and the cravings that fuel them. I want clarity. I want hope. I want the abundant life my God promised me instead of the half-life I find in an empty bottle.

I'm not naive. I know this is only a beginning and not a victory. But the thousand-mile journey to true intimacy and joy begins with the willingness to face the buried hurts and secret longings and fears that have kept us in prison. Life doesn't get better until we accept the challenge to crawl out of our convenient escapes and claustrophobic habits. This is way the clarity begins, not with a bang but a tearful admission: I can't do this on my own. I get by with a little help from my friends.