Clarity

"I can see clearly now, I can see all of the obstacles in my way, Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind, It's gonna be a bright, sunshiny day."     ~ "I Can See Clearly Now" - Jimmy Cliff

It can come out of nowhere. We are progressing down our journey pathway, exploring, learning, loving, living and sharing. We turn a corner, reach a rise in the trail, or come out of a temporary fog and there it is - Clarity.

This happens not often enough along our journeys but when it occurs, if we are open to the clarity, open to messages and suggestions and validations from the Great Creator we see it. There it is, clear as a bright blue sky on a sunshiny day.

Clarity comes to us when we least expect any epiphanies or validations. We know we will randomly experience this gift from the Universe but never expect it. We can never count on it. We never know when we will need clarity. Clarity arrives to those who don't really know they need it, a gift from the Universe to the clueless who are blissfully moving along the track to recovery but have that sneaking suspicion something isn't quite right. The gift is granted to those who walk the pathway step by step. Our futures are found only in the immediate, in what is our NOW that leads to wonderful new NOWs.

We are experiencing everything we can in the moment. Only in this way can we catch glimpses of and embrace those occasional messages that say, "It'll be OK."

I was recently provided glimpse into the Universe' secret plans for me and my family. It was the day after a visit to our youngest son's chosen university. During the visit to Admitted Students Days he had given little indication of any buy-in to the concept of embracing the opportunity of college. I was living in and mired in his lack of enthusiasm. I was frightened for him. For some reason I was frightened for me.

Who was going to college?

I mentioned to my wife that I FELT he was taking no ownership of his destiny. I failed to realize I was wallowing in someone else's shit, drama, and in all probability, fear.

It was the next morning the Universe allowed me a chance to see things more clearly.

I was sitting in our living room where I often prepare for my days and looked up to see our boy emerging from his bedroom. He was wearing the sweatshirt the university had given to all the admitted students present days before. He was wearing this to school. This was a tacit buy-in from him to the concept of embracing the opportunity. This was his embrace of the adventure ahead.

The Universe was reminding me this is his journey. The not-so-subtle clarity (this time) emerged in the acceptance, my acceptance that whatever the outcome of this chapter in our son's life he would be OK. He is embarking on a wondrous journey. By wearing the sweatshirt he was taking not a small or baby step along his path. This was big, this reluctant smart-kid acknowledging to his friends he would be moving on to a research engineering university in the fall to begin a new chapter in his life.

I was grateful to be able to see the gift of clarity presented to me that morning. The clarity was freeing and cleansing.

Clarity is escorted by faith, trust and confidence so we may perceive and decipher the signposts along our pathways. We are on the the right track, our journey taking us to new destinations every day.

The wearing of the sweatshirt signaled a beginning to my son's journey, one of many he will be experiencing his first year as a college student and was a gentle reminder for me to focus on what is mine, what is important to me on my travels.

If we are seeking it and open to it, when clarity comes, we'll know it. Clarity evokes chuckles, outright laughter or even tears. Clarity will come and go yet remains as a reminder of progress made and adventures ahead. Clarity is our encouragement to SEEK, and hopefully, to SEE similar markers to guide us along our pathways.

It will become perfectly clear, even if just for a moment, when we are ready.

... keep coming back

"Everyone sees the unseen in proportion to the clarity of his heart, and that depends on how much he has polished it. Whoever has polished it more sees more - more unseen forms become manifest to him. ~ Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi

"Clear? Huh. Why, a four-year-old child could understand this report. Run out and find me a four-year-old child, I can't make head or tail of it." ~ Groucho Marx as Rufus T. Firefly, Duck Soup (1933)

I Don't Know Anything - Or - Imperfection as the Gateway to Recovery

"The only true wisdom is knowing you know nothing." ~ Socrates

When speaking to fellow parent travellers I will often inject the phrase I don't know anything into the conversation. This is not a exercise in self deprecation. I have a watchful eye on such dismissive articulations. Self deprecation diminishes us.

When I say I don't know anything I am simply acknowledging where I am on a journey on which I have come so far with so much further to travel. It is exhilarating to imagine the experiences ahead. It is a liberating mindset.

Knowing we know nothing is vital to becoming imperfect human beings. This is of course a contradiction, one of the many counterintuitive mindfucks we encounter as we proceed along our recovery journeys. Imperfect human beings don't fix, control or rage against the machine of addiction. Acknowledgement of our imperfections and the freedom to bring about mistakes encourages growth. We don't make mistakes, we create, precipitate and inspire mistakes by our actions, our striving, not our passivity or inaction.

Before we began our journeys when we created a mistake we believed the error exposed a character flaw, so we hid. We isolated and attempted to hide, ignore or gloss over our creation, our error.

When I hid and ignored I became an inward leaning, arrogant bastard. I was frightened and stuck. There was no growth and no potential for improvement.

And so it was with my responses to the son who brought me to recovery. For years I saw his addictions as my character flaw, my error. I internalized The Addiction. I could fix him, control the uncontrollable. I devised incentives for his recovery The Addiction would simply laugh off. I knew everything and as a result became a static being. I lost myself in the process of total certainty and had The Addiction right where it wanted me.

Of course this did not work. Eventually I was broken and on my knees realized I couldn't do what I was doing anymore. I couldn't fix the unfixable, redirect someone who was committed to the addicted lifestyle. I had no answers. I was beaten by The Addiction and admitted this to myself. I had to admit I knew nothing and on that day I began my recovery journey.

In this regard it is hard for fathers. We're supposed to know everything. Society says so, right?

It's hard for mothers as well of course. These are your babies who have spiraled.

It's just hard for all of us to admit we need help.

It's hard to be humble.

We all reach our breaking point, that same elusive bottom we anticipate with trepidation for our children. The bottom is a gut wrenching experience. Many breaking points may be required, many bottoms, before we know we are clueless. There may be multiple interventions from the Universe before we are fully aware of our ignorance.

When the humility finally arrives, it is a gift. Humility is liberating. Humility takes us on a journey with no destination other than where we will find ourselves each day.

Humility frees us to to have only one wish for our children. Our wish is that they too will experience the gift of humility so they may embark on a journey of self discovery unencumbered by addiction and its attendant lies and barriers. This keeps us on separate yet somehow joined pathways. We can feel the sadness of our children who have yet to embrace their own cluelessness, who are resistant to taking those first frightful steps along the pathway already laid out for them by the Universe.

We simply no longer need to be our children's Universe.

With each step along our journey we learn, we discover. We may lose our way for a time, learn from these diversions and find our pathway once again. Each new awareness leads us to the next phase of our journey. We can look ahead knowing we have no idea what the Great Creator has prepared for us. This humility begets trust. Trust engenders growth.

There's no wonder this journey is both so damn hard and so damn beautiful and exhilarating.

When we admit we know nothing we acknowledge the most important truth of our journey. The linchpin to our recovery is the here and now, the present. With this realization our imperfections can be recognized, not ignored or put aside as in the past. Our focus is where our journey is taking us. Our trust in the Universe assures us this journey will lead us along pathways to unimaginable fulfillment. We no longer dread a future that has yet to occur. We trust and feel there is a light ahead, a warm place, a real future for ourselves and our children.

We can offload our children's burdens The Addiction would have us carry and hand them to a Force more powerful than any of us. Our children, seeing us freed, changed and changing, may want some of this humility for themselves - or not.

Remember, it's their journey.

Accept, accept the not knowing, the inherent humility of the recovery journey and accept the occasional reminder from the Universe that slaps us out of our arrogance. Accept the NOW and what awaits us just over the horizon.

Release your burdens, breathe, and live life. It can be beautiful.

Who knew?

"Uncertainty is a sign of humility and humility is just the willingness or ability to learn." ~ Charlie Sheen 

... keep coming back

No Turning Back Now

"Also, stick around. Don't lose your heart. Keep going. Keep at it. ~ Mark Ruffalo

There will be junctions along our journey pathways where we are inspired to attempt unexpected leaps and accept challenges and adventures so unfamiliar to our life experience, the simple act of considering the leap, the headlong run, to close our eyes and enjoy the new ride lets us know we are growing in our recovery.

We will often experiment, covertly. We don't want to rock the boat. What will our family and friends think if they learn of our considered changes? They might realize we are contemplating a life as our Great Creator meant for us where we live true to our truest selves.

We've changed.

My love of writing was revived when I truly embraced recovery. A breakout through some major hedgerows blocking my pathway occurred when I committed to sharing my experience, strength and hope as a parent of a child who had fallen into addiction (The Journey of Parents in Recovery, posted January 6, 2014). This was a fellow traveller putting himself out there as many of us do as we grow along our journeys and shed, by degrees, our old behaviors and expectations.

When I gently, almost timidly hit PUBLISH there was no turning back. And I felt deep within an acknowledgement from somewhere:

"This is where you should be on you your journey."

Now, I have a secret to tell. I've been considering a new adventure for some time. Here goes ... I have begun to train for a half marathon to be run in October. It is early July and training begins later this month. There is much work to be done even before the official training begins. I have goals: transform my body to a healthier running configuration (read: body mass index), gently progress to a five-mile walk/run before I present myself to the trainers, carve out time for the aforementioned gentle progression, and sign up for professional training and consultation from our local running shoe and accessory emporium, Fleet Feet.

I have also committed to training smarter, not harder. I will not injure myself thus sabotaging my chances of being present at the start line in October as I have the past three years. I will listen to and trust that little voice that says, "Slow down, stop, OUCH!"

I had no idea the Universe had a surprise awaiting, a revelation. This race and the preceding training would be a part of my journey, a way to stretch boundaries, grow, to inspire those I love and perhaps even myself.

I didn't get it, of course, at first. This would require another Universal Gibbs slap to the back of my head, a not-so-gentle yet compassionate reminder of how much I've yet to travel though I've come so far. 

Once I signed up for the race, Fleet Feet, which will be my guide, coach and cheerleader throughout this adventure began sending me emails to keep me informed of events such as 10Ks, training sessions for other approaching runs, classes for stretching (there's a right way and a wrong way apparently), nutrition, even instructionals for using the barbaric Foam Roller to un-kink one's illiotibial (IT) band.

The bane of many runners, the IT band or tract is a thick strip of connective tissue linking the hip to the knee and is often the origin of the runner's limp you might see displayed after an organized run where participants have pushed themselves seeking their personal bests. The Foam Roller is a cylindrical piece of hard Styrofoam, some adorned with nubs like the cleats on a motocross bike tire. The runner is told to balance on the middle of the cylinder as he or she moves along the affected areas, hip to knee then knee to hip to apparently unravel the IT band gnarled from the preceding race or training session. 

The process is as excruciatingly painful as you might imagine. I have suggested the Foam Roller might sell better if it was offered with an optional dominatrix for a nominal fee. My proposal has fallen on deaf ears at Fleet Feet - so far.

But I digress.

My gentle reminder from the Universe was delivered in the form of the Fleet Feet newsletter I began to receive with the emails. One morning I clicked on the newsletter link and an article caught my attention. The article, published by Fleet Feet Sports and written by Amy Marxkors, author, runner and contributing writer to the Fleet Feet e-zine was titled, "Keep Moving."

"Hmmmm," I thought. "This sounds familiar."

As I began reading Amy's article I smiled at the notion of the universal nature of weariness, whether as a parent of an addict or a marathoner lacing up for another grueling 15-mile training run. She writes, "The ultimate challenge of endurance is not to win, it's simply to keep going."

As parents of children who have succumbed to the disease of addiction there is no win here. Our victory, like the runners', is the daily wonder we experience as we progress along our journey pathways. We are a community of parents struggling through an endurance sport where we commit ourselves to loving our children while hating The Addiction. This is not a sprint but a lifetime commitment to finding a new world for ourselves. There are finish lines to be sure, but as soon as we cross we look ahead toward our next horizon, our next exploit. We rest, we recover, then boldly go!

As I continued to read "Keep Going" I was encouraged to know that our experiences as parents of addicts is a shared human experience. As the writer expresses early on, "The truth is, sometimes, I don't want to be strong."

Sometimes, what we have endured is all we can take. We become weary, but we know to keep going. We have a community of parents, kindred, allied spirits we meet at Al Anon, other 12 Step and countless outreach meetings. There is also the unshared experiences of parents sitting not twenty feet from each other in coffee houses and theaters as a Higher Power intervenes and inspires one or both of them to give a nod of encouragement for reasons unknown.

It's like the start of race with perfect strangers lined up awaiting the piercing explosion of the starting gun. There is that shared experience that buoys the runners to a starting pace which if sustained would exhaust each of them halfway through the race. But this feeling, a pre-race visceral acceleration of heart, soul and body is consequential of the human experience - and a lot of pain felt along the way.

When we believe we are alone in our sadness, in our PAIN, know we are not. We are a part of humanity. It is our nature to endure life's struggles and overcome adversity, to move on and keep going to the next plateau, higher ground or mile marker. When we encounter someone with a smile, a nod and a "Nice to see you" greeting we are acknowledging this nature. This person may be a fellow parent, or a marathoner who didn't quite make it to that 15-mile mark that morning.

We may be on disparate journeys but we share something with the runner, or the 10K, half marathon or marathon trainee. We must keep going, keep moving. "Our struggle elevates the phrase" as Amy so eloquently writes, according to where we are on our travels. And together, as parents of addicted children, as runners, as human beings, we're better. We can take comfort in knowing we are never alone along our chosen pathways.

So the next time you see a runner, or a field of runners (I Googled this), smile, nod  and maybe even say. "It's good to see you."

Who knows, you may unknowingly catapult someone along their journey, or even to and through their next training run.

And it can be a means to keeping us moving along ours.

"If you're going through hell, keep moving." ~ Winston Churchill

... keep coming back 

This post was inspired by an article I stumbled upon while embarking on yet another recovery journey. This article was written by Amy L. Marxkors and was originally published by FLEET FEET Sports. You can find the original post here. 

Father's Day 2015 Plus 3 - An Assessment

"Most single guys I know think fatherhood is terrifying." ~ Jim Gaffigan

Jim Gaffigan is one of my favorite comedians. A father of five children Gaffigan was given a spot on this year's Father's Day edition of CBS Sunday Morning with Charles Osgood:

"Besides the societal pressure to balance out Mother's Day, what have dads done to deserve a Father's Day? ... Frankly plenty. Besides ordering pizzas and serving as the vice president of the family, dads have to battle their own selfishness every day. Dads strive to raise better, smarter, less dad-like humans. Remember, without the comparisons to dads, moms would look horrible. Damn straight dads deserve a holiday!"

There's so much more there than Gaffigan's self deprecation. Watching this on Father's Day reminded me of the father's journey I have been on the past five years. Father's Day is a microcosm of what dads in recovery endure just as Mother's Day is for mothers. It can be as joyous or heartbreaking as the holidays, birthdays, or other family celebrations where we have an opportunity to compare the what is, to the what might have been.

For me, Father's Day is an opportunity to assess where I've been, where I am going and how far I have yet to go. In one day we are handed a snapshot of our life as recovering fathers, no matter what our situation. Father's Day condenses all what it is to be a dad in recovery into the waking hours (and more if you are one of those immediate dreamers) of one 24-hour period each year.

Some of us spent Father's Day with our children who brought us to this journey. Some of us have children living locally and may or may not have heard from them on this day set aside for us. And some of us miss the son or daughter who is miles away by choice, whether that choice was his or hers, or ours. In all these scenarios Father's Day is a test of our resolve, our resolve to stay in the NOW, to live life not based on the past but grounded in what lies ahead. The journey is the thing.

The experience of Father's Day encapsulates the one truth we must hold onto as we progress along our pathways. Our journey is ours. Our children's journeys are theirs to traverse. This truth hits us square in the face on occasions as this where we are singled out for contributions we have made and continue to make to the precious lives we have helped to bring into this world.

As Gaffigan suggests, "...dads have to battle their own selfishness every day." In our case our selfishness has lead us into the thorny landscape of enabling, fixing and controlling, those insulting parenting behaviors we try, one day at a time, to avoid and purge from our lives.

Did we wait to hear from our son or daughter? Were we expecting a card, a call, a visit? Did we make that call, reach out? On Father's Day we can keep our hopes high and expectations low, love our children and hate The Addiction that brought them to their journeys. We can sit down on the metaphorical hillside and see how far we've come. We can acknowledge that we have gone from ragers to fathers who THINK before we speak. We have replaced anger as our go-to emotion with love for our children and a dedication to living our lives to the fullest.

We are dads, deserving of a holiday.

Damn straight!

... keep coming back

"All I want is to be a good dad but I'm pretty bad at it." ~ Jim Gaffigan

Fear of Connecting

"We need to bridge our sense of loneliness and disconnection with a sense of community and continuity even if we must manufacture it from our time on the Web and our use of calling cards to connect long distance. We must 'log on' somewhere, and even if it is only in cyberspace, that is still far better than nowhere at all." ~ Julia Cameron, God is No Laughing Matter

This is a hard one. This is universal among parents of children who have fallen into addiction, or certainly seems it must be so based on personal experience. Fear is at the core of catatonia. Fear obstructs the journey, impedes striving or asking for or wanting more from life.

Fear of connecting takes this a step further and is a central roadblock to beginning and continuing our journeys. This fear can strike us when life seems to be coming together, a fear rooted perhaps out of complacency, or even the exhaustion of the journey itself. We pause. We cocoon.

The isolation may not have begun when Addiction first manifested itself in our children though isolation may have been a comfortable fall back for many of us at the onset of their spiral. For some of us fear of connecting began in early childhood. For others it is can be traced to the subtle onset of the addiction in our babies.

Whatever the origin, we curl up in a metaphorical fetal position, we seclude then disappear.

It certainly doesn't help that we all felt at some point a scarlet letter A had been tattooed on our foreheads, that guilt-by-association we felt even from the most well meaning of our communities. We felt ostracized, left out and abandoned whether or not this perception was real.

It seemed real enough at the time.

But we got passed that. We continue to move past that each day we decide to live our lives fully and passionately.

Certainly, the individual pathways we seek, find and journey upon are ours to traverse. Recovery, however, is a personal endeavor we cannot undertake unaccompanied. This is one of the contradictions of recovery that can so easily entangle us. Ours is a personal journey requiring connections on so many levels. We work so hard on ourselves we sometimes forget we cannot make it on our own.

Often inspiration may be found along the way from fellow travellers who will not show us the way but will remind us by their simple presence that we are not alone in our endeavor to be true to our truest selves. More often, validations we are on the right path may come from those who are not in any recovery journey. These may be friends, relatives and even acquaintances we have lost, pushed aside, or ignored. We determined these souls don't need our drama and burdens cluttering their lives. We have learned from experience to avoid connection with those who are not on similar journeys. (We even shun those who are travelling similar paths by the way, don't we!?)

How could these people love us, continue to love us, or rekindle their love for us?

This is when the Universe steps in. We receive a phone call, a Facebook friend request, an email or even one of those terrifying alerts that someone is looking for us. These are the gentle nudges from our Great Creator reminding us that we may be ready, even if we are reluctant, we are ready to accept the little bit of love, closeness and camaraderie we've denied ourselves.

We'll see an out-of-town area code on our cell phone - this happened to me. Our fear is replaced with perplexity that can be replaced with anticipation if we allow it.

"Who could this be?" we wonder.

Understand that we can replace the fear of connection with a sense we may be at the brink of a new adventure. This is the Universe at work, our Higher Power enjoining us to participate more entirely in life.

Take a deep breath. Close your eyes and take that call. Watch what happens. Let it take you. Relinquish your learned trepidations and let go as your new adventure begins!

... keep coming back

"Sometimes reaching out and taking somebody's hand is the beginning of a journey." ~ Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration

"A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality." ~ John Lennon 

Survival

"Thriving, that's fighting. ... Surviving is barely getting by." ~ Jillian Michaels

In my opinion survival is an often misused word.  The attribute survivor can summon images of beleaguered souls emerging from darkness - the darkness of the Holocaust, the ravages of war, the seeming death sentence of cancer. These people to me are not merely survivors. They are heroes, conquerors, messengers to us all that the human spirit may be bent but there are examples out there proving it may not always be broken.

The human spirit, our spirit, is magnificently resilient.

We have been through a lot. We have seen our babies struck down by a disease no one wants to talk about. We've been, or we are, at war, first with the Addiction, then, with our tendency to want to fix, control and enable. Some of us have been fortunate to begin our slow emergence from the battlefield, our re-entry into life. Others are still in the trenches, battling.

All of us are more-than-survivors.

We are heroes. We are inspirational. We are conquerors.

But there's a rub that makes contumely of our lives, as there often is when we learn to strive, to Seek and See, to progress beyond our tormentor's scope of influence.

The rub is this. As parents of addicts we are not the triumphant returning Gulf War veterans of conflict. We are more akin to the Vietnam-era vets returning to snubs and disdain. Addiction is not sexy. Addiction has not and may never be vanquished. Addiction is an unpopular and possibly unwinnable war.

So how do we survive, thrive and avoid the pitfalls that our children's life choices would have us dragged into?

Don't get me wrong. Survival is important. Survival is the byproduct of our human instinct to keep breathing after we've been knocked down or out. Survival is the act of refusing to acquiesce. Survival tells the oppressor that we will not ... go ... quietly.

The Addiction would prefer us to remain survivors, to stay down, remaining remission-like, in abeyance, not quite out of the woods. As I have mentioned, at some point in our journey we want more. Perhaps this is what emboldens us to move beyond survival to take the first step out of the prone position to which we have become accustomed. We want more and then some.

How do we move from survivor to thriver, to the conqueror and adventurer the Universe is calling us all to be? How can we accomplish this and still love our children? This is the hook The Addiction has placed deep inside us constantly drawing us in like a marlin in a deep and tumultuous sea, back to a life of enabling, fixing, and pursuing control of the uncontrollable.

We are in a fight for survival. We can spare no energy to restore sanity to our children's lives.

With our Great Creator as our guide we can only restore ourselves to sanity. We can only love our children, gently remove the hook and allow The Addiction and the power it holds to slowly drift away. We can pray for our children and if prayer is not an option, allow The Universe or other Higher Power to take over the duties of watching over our babies. It is no longer our war.

We would never refer to our returning veterans as war survivors. They are heroes, an inspiration and in many cases quiet examples of our grandest aspirations.

All these more-than-survivors, the conquerors, come out of their respective darkness damaged but often better for it. Many have found others for support, communities in which they may immerse themselves to search for faith in something they may not immediately understand, a pathway into, after exiting through the doorway out of whatever hell they may have experienced. These more-than-survivors are inspirations to us all.

We can find a community of souls who have experienced our pain to share our experience, strength and hope. These communities exist. Within these communities there is no malice, shame or even any attempt to help us find our solutions. These communities are there to guide us to our own best selves. When we find one, we'll know it. It may require a few attempts for us to soften our hearts and souls to accept the love and kindness we'll feel while there.

We are in the throes of post-traumatic stress.

Give it time. Thrivers Seek. Thrivers remember what was and what is important. Thrivers take risks with no other motivation than the thrill of discovering, perhaps for the first time in their lives who they really are. Thrivers affect change within themselves and those around them. We are seekers of life, seekers of the truth.

Remember The Addicton hates the TRUTH. The Addiction hates REAL.

We can hold our children close by becoming our truest selves. Our children may witness this, see it, or perhaps not. They will do what they will do. The disease will see to this. This will be whether we thrive, or not.

SO WHY NOT THRIVE?

Who know? Someone may be watching.

... keep coming back

"My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor and some style." ~ Maya Angelou 

Prayer - The #PWord

"Your prayer for someone may or may not change them, but it always changes you." ~ Craig Groeschel

"If the only prayer you said your whole life was 'Thank you,' that would suffice." ~ Meister Eckhart

OK, let's discuss the "P" word.

Before we talk about prayer we must first acknowledge the journey upon which we have embarked is spiritual in its very nature. Our growth, our progression along our pathways and the myriad of miracles encountered along the way can no more be logically explained than our children's plunge into addiction.

It is simply inexplicable, this marvel called recovery. After acknowledging we were in the shit with no prayer of escape we reached out for a Power greater than ourselves to take IT all away. We found a Presence to dump on and after we dumped, that Presence said to us, "Is that all you got? Bring it on. I can take it."

The journeys of parents in recovery are undertaken by travellers in possession of various spiritual baselines. We are connected to fellow parents who are Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, Atheist, Agnostic, from Deist and Theist backgrounds. We arrive at our journey, many of us feeling failed by religion and various dogmas and creeds which seem to somehow drift from the real teachings of messengers who centuries ago carried simple proclamations of love, truth, inclusion, acceptance and prayer.

For this discernment I blame the Jesuits, who taught me to look at what was written in the Book(s) in the context of the times, not how the message had been metamorphosed through centuries of misinterpretations, corruption and theological politicization.

We have a tendency to feel alone as humans.  As parents of children who abuse drugs, alcohol or any obsessive behavior we reach a tipping point of aloneness that drives us more deeply into the abyss than most humans ever experience. Beaten, we have nothing to grab onto. Laden with unimaginable burdens we cannot rise from the six-point hand-knee-toe stance. We are in a pit at 10 times gravity, the gravest of situations.

We are able to raise one hand. We say a prayer unlike any prayer we have ever articulated. The prayer is not an appeal. It is a statement of fact:

"I am beaten."

We fall, prone against the bottom, whatever the bottom is. Face down we let go. We have no choice.

"Take this from me, please," we plead.

We have learned in that instant to pray for the Universe to enter our lives, to intercede, to work its magic for us in the context of Truth and Love, not entitlement or privilege. We begin to pray for ourselves, to See the possibilities that lie ahead amid the tempest. We pray to allow the Great Creator to guide us, to utilize talents buried inside for too long while we concentrated on our children's recovery. We give it up to that higher power, God, the Universe, what ever you wish to call Her, Him or It, (or her, him or it), a Power that's got it together more than we do or ever will.

We stop praying for the things or situation we want and begin to pray for the possibility, the potential, to see what's out there for us.

Things begin to happen for no apparent reason. Events occur, progress is made. We know we have an ally, a mentor, guide, a Sherpa who can bear our heavy load up our personal Everest.

It's our journey. What a view.

And it is then with the revelation of our own possibilities. we can pray for the same for our children.

... keep coming back

"Prayer is not asking. It is a longing of the soul. It is a daily admission of one's weakness. It is better in prayer to have a heart without words than words without a heart." ~ Mahatma Gandhi