‘The God Thing’
By Lee S.
“No, it won’t kill you.”
I was sitting in the office of a surgeon I’d only met 30
minutes ago, listening to him recommend – what else – SURGERY. “It won’t kill
you,” he continued, “unless it twists around and cuts off the blood flow. Then
it’ll kill ya.”
I had a double
hernia. My regular physician referred me to this particular surgeon because
this was his specialty. “He’s the best in the city,” my doc assured me.
“It’s not a major procedure anymore,” the surgeon went
on. “Now, it’s day surgery, just a small
cut below your navel, a scope and a micro-tool, that’s it. Three day recovery,
max.”
So, one week later, lying on a gurney in the hallway outside
of Operating Theater A, I was inhaling the ever-present eau de antiseptic and
staring blankly at the green painted walls. I found myself reflecting on how I
got there. It was like the newsreel of my life rolling in my brain.
***
Most people travel life’s highway with tools to deal with
its hazards and roadblocks. I’m guessing they picked up most of those tools
while they were growing up. In my dysfunctional family, the toolbox was empty.
I roared into my life’s journey without a clue; I had no idea how to deal with
difficult situations. I was even more clueless about relationships. So, by the
age of 17, I self-medicated with booze and, being a Baby Boomer, drugs. The
only tool I had was the game of “Grandma.”
“Grandma” was Rose, my Mom’s mom. I loved her dearly but,
like all the women on that side of the family, she was crazy as a loon. Tough
as nails on the outside, Rose (and my mom) carried a ball of fear and anxiety
in the pit of her stomach.
To “protect” Rose, the family employed – no, took great joy
and entertainment creating – complicated conspiracies to keep any bad news from
her. Back in the early 60’s, my brother fought in Vietnam, but when Rosie visited the
conversation took on a surreal non-specificity.
“How’s Steve doing?” she would ask. “I haven’t heard from
him in awhile; he hasn’t written.”
“Oh, he’s fine, Grandma. You know how bad he is at staying
in touch.”
“Is he still safely tucked away at Okinawa?”
she would always press. “Well, they keep moving him around, but we’re sure he’s
okay.” It wasn’t exactly a lie but it wasn’t the whole truth either. This was
the game of “Grandma” and we played it with everyone. The message was, “don’t
confront life; hide from it.”
With that message in my toolbox, I “enjoyed” countless
unhealthy, unsuccessful relationships with countless unhealthy women. I lost jobs
and devolved into a consultant-without-clients. By the age of 51, I was a
desperate, unemployable mid-to-late stage alcoholic visiting a psychiatrist
once a week. I was too old for potential and too young for over-the-hill.
Finally, in June 1998, I staggered – drunk – into the rooms of Alcoholics
Anonymous (AA).
Underlying the 12-Step recovery in AA is the belief that a
Higher Power, a “God of one’s own understanding,” can do for the drunk what he
or she could not do alone: stop drinking and lead a wonderful productive life.
When I finally stumbled through the doors of my first AA
meeting, I had 220 (beer-fueled) pounds stuffed into a 175-pound frame. I was a
husband/father whose primary function was to get high and stay high.
Spiritually, I was empty.
Before I could start on my road to recovery, I had to deal
with “The God Thing.” For most of my life God was not an issue. I never thought
about God and patently rejected the concept of organized religion. I merely
careened drunkenly through life, leaving wide swaths of destruction without
ever considering the possibility of God.
Over the final five years of my active alcoholism, I drank
daily, starting as soon as I awoke and ending whenever I passed out at
night. I was in deep depression,
suffering alcoholic blackouts and periodically bleeding in my intestinal tract
(where the alcohol wore away the lining). At the dinner table, if I got into a
squabble with one or both of our kids my wife would disdainfully say, “Now
‘children,’ cut that out.” The implication was clear.
Then one day, I hit another emotional bottom. The difference
this time was I didn’t bounce back. So, on June 10, 1998, after guzzling down
my last six-pack of beer, I staggered into my first AA meeting.
Before the program could work for me, I knew I’d have to
come to grips with my ambivalence toward God. Even though I am a non-practicing
Jew, the only person I felt comfortable with for such a discussion was a local
rabbi. What I learned in a short 30-minute conversation with the rabbi opened
the door to my recovery.
“Lee, the Jewish people have struggled with the question of
God’s existence for more than 5,700 years,” he said. “Why don’t you stop
struggling and stop seeking a definition of whom or what God may be. Just open
a door in your heart and mind to the idea that there IS a God. Before you know
it, God will walk through that door.”
That simple advice set me free. Somewhere early in my
sobriety, I came to a complete acceptance of my Higher Power. As this new faith
grew, I began to slowly figure out which things in life I control (a very short
list) and which things I must trust to God (a much longer list). This faith is
the very foundation of my sobriety.
Shortly after I
entered recovery, I found employment in an industry where I’d been persona non grata for almost 20 years.
Two years after that, with my self esteem, professional reputation and
credibility firmly restored, I went to work for a large public agency where I
earned the respect of my peers and the satisfaction of accomplishing important
things for the community in which I live. Throughout my first seven years of
sobriety, however, life on the home front remained shaky.
In spite of my recovery – or maybe because of it - my
marriage continued to deteriorate. Alcoholism is a family disease. It’s not
that everyone starts drinking; the disease strikes family members emotionally.
The damage is often serious and far-reaching.
My wife certainly appreciated my sobriety. From her
perspective, though, I was on my own. “It’s your problem, not mine,” she
informed me. So, I recovered alone.
As time went on, our paths grew further and further apart.
Even as I took joy from almost every other part of my life, I felt trapped in a
dead marriage. I began to fantasize on a daily basis about divorce but couldn’t
pull the trigger. I was paralyzed by fears I couldn’t even describe.
***
Now, here I was, waiting for surgery just ten days before my
25th wedding anniversary and wondering whether I should make one last try to
make the marriage work or finally just walk away. Before I came to any
conclusion, the anesthesiologist was putting me out.
I awoke several hours later in the recovery room. Even as I
was adjusting to my surroundings, the nurses stood me up to see if I was ready
to go home but, my legs turned to jelly, things started to go black.
I knew something was very wrong. Yet before I could panic, I very clearly
heard a voice in my head say, “You are not dying.” I immediately trusted that voice; I knew it
wasn’t my voice. It was something much
deeper and more powerful than my own thoughts.
I felt safe and I knew I wasn’t dying. Then I fainted and crashed to the
floor.
The doctor had nicked something during surgery, didn’t
notice it and sewed me back up. When I fainted in the recovery room, my blood
pressure crashed to zero. They stabilized and monitored me, until I crashed
again. Off I went to Intensive Care, where I crashed a third time. A CAT scan
revealed a belly full of blood. Three-quarters of my blood was replaced by transfusion
and they rolled me back into the operating room for emergency surgery.
It turned out that I was the only one who knew I wasn’t
dying. When they rolled me back into the O.R. for emergency surgery, the
doctors told my family that if I came out alive, I would probably be
coming out on life support.
I awoke the next day in the Intensive Care Unit with a
nine-inch vertical incision down my lower abdomen and a morphine pump in my
hand. I went home after four days of post-op intensive care constantly thinking
about my brief contact with God and knew everything was different.
Before the surgery, I felt good about my relationship with
the God of my understanding. Now, my faith was deeper and far stronger. I felt
a new purpose and clarity. My divorce fears were gone. Ten days after coming
home, I walked up to my wife and calmly said, “I don’t know any other way to
say this. I’m done; I can’t do this anymore.”
“What do you mean you’re done?” she asked almost innocently.
“What is there about ‘I’m done’ you don’t understand?” I
answered. “I’m moving out. We will never get back on the same path of life
together.”
Instead of chaos, I
felt a peace and strength in my heart I’d never experienced. People I’d known
for years looked at me, did a double-take and often said, “you look different;
you look so (pause) so…. at-peace.”
Perhaps the most important result of my experience, though,
is the telling of it and the fact that a man who never considered the concept
of God until he was 50 years old now feels compelled to share his deep and
abiding faith in God. I greet each day with unimaginable optimism and constant
gratitude for everyone and everything in life. I never used to believe in
miracles. Today, not only do I believe in miracles, I believe my life is
a miracle. Direct contact with God will do that for you.