Recovery is a puzzle

“To me, recovery is like trying to put together this puzzle. There are all these different puzzle pieces. They are not the same for everyone, but for me, those puzzle pieces have been therapy, medication, fellowship and 12-Step. All of these puzzle pieces come together to allow me to stay sober, and they are all really important. However, they are different for everybody. I wish there was one solution that worked for all people, but unfortunately, that is not the case.” Excerpt from Beautiful Boy: An Interview with Nic Sheff, John Lavitt 10/12/2018, thefix.com.

You were created by a loving God with great intentionality. You are not alone in figuring out your puzzle.

Oh yes, you shaped me first inside, then out;

you formed me in my mother’s womb.

I thank you, High God—you’re breathtaking!

Body and soul, I am marvelously made!

I worship in adoration—what a creation!

You know me inside and out,

you know every bone in my body;

You know exactly how I was made, bit by bit,

how I was sculpted from nothing into something.

Like an open book, you watched me grow from conception to birth;

all the stages of my life were spread out before you,

The days of my life all prepared

before I’d even lived one day.

~ Psalm 139:15-16, The Message

Seeking wholeness in all the wrong places

Dr. Carl Jung, a noted psychiatrist, once said that addiction is an unconscious quest for God. Restated, Jung believed that we are seeking wholeness for ourselves through artificial sources. Obviously, there are tons of ways to journey through life. Some have more side-effects than others. But Jung believed we cannot escape this primal quest for wholeness - nor should we!

Nic Sheff began his quest through an absolute commitment to drug use. His favorite was methamphetamines, but he was not too picky. Nic’s story is laid out for the world to see in the books, Beautiful Boy, written by his father David and Nic’s book Tweak: Growing Up on Methamphetamines.

“Smoking pot for the first time felt like the first real answer that I had ever found. I kept turning to drugs to cope with everything from success to failure to shyness and everything in between. Thus, when I wasn’t using, I really developed no skills to handle what life threw at me. I kept going back to the drugs because they were the only coping mechanism that I’ve ever learned.”

If smoking pot was the answer, what was his primary question?

Long before he [God] laid down earth’s foundations, he had us in mind, had settled on us as the focus of his love, to be made whole and holy by his love. Long, long ago he decided to adopt us into his family through Jesus Christ. (What pleasure he took in planning this!) He wanted us to enter into the celebration of his lavish gift-giving by the hand of his beloved Son.

~ Ephesians 1:3-6, The Message

The quest is a sacred pilgrimage. But in Nic’s case, and mine, my brother’s and maybe yours - we stumble upon an answer to the wrong question that does not hold up for the long haul. In recovery, we can choose to embark on a healing journey with intentionality. This will lead us into a whole new way of being. Recovery does not return us to who we were before we started using, it breaks us out of the prison of our mind, clouded by dysfunctional thinking, feeling and behaving. Maybe you think this does not apply to you. Are you sure? Is there any person, place or thing that you absolutely believe you cannot live without? You might just have a dependency!

We want to do dangerous things...without dangerous consequences

There’s an old substance prevention commercial with a line that goes like this: “‘When I grow up, I want to be an addict!’ Said no child ever.” Well, of course that is true. Sort of.

But many of us do end up becoming addicted to things that we absolutely did want to use. My brother said the first time he drank he thought it was magical. When I learned how to not eat for days at a time, which did take quite a bit of practice, the chemicals this kind of starvation released in my brain made me feel powerful and in control. My friend Doug says that drinking and using made him feel funnier, more likeable. Has anyone ever gotten addicted to broccoli? I don’t think so!

What we never, ever want is consequences. We do not want the things that once soothed, empowered, normalized us to turn on us and take away our power to choose, our capacity to have a normal life and the right to vote. No one actually signs up for this stuff.

We do end up off course. Recovery allows us to re-remember. It gives us time to get out from under the obsession and compulsion to keep using things that once made us feel great but no longer do - choices we once thought made our life better until all of a sudden they were no longer a choice. Most of us struggle to accept the reality that the early promises our bad habit of choice no longer delivers.

So, my very dear friends, don’t get thrown off course. Every desirable and beneficial gift comes out of heaven. The gifts are rivers of light cascading down from the Father of Light. There is nothing deceitful in God, nothing two-faced, nothing fickle. He brought us to life using the true Word, showing us off as the crown of all his creatures.

~ James 1:16-18 The Message

The best advice anyone ever gave me when breaking old habits and forming new ways of living was simple: Hold on. One day at a time. Corny? Only until you understand what you are up against in the fight to regain your footing and find your way back to your real self.

God is willing to start over

1-2 God told Jeremiah, “Up on your feet! Go to the potter’s house. When you get there, I’ll tell you what I have to say.”

3-4 So I went to the potter’s house, and sure enough, the potter was there, working away at his wheel. Whenever the pot the potter was working on turned out badly, as sometimes happens when you are working with clay, the potter would simply start over and use the same clay to make another pot.

5-10 Then God’s Message came to me: “Can’t I do just as this potter does, people of Israel?” God’s Decree! “Watch this potter. In the same way that this potter works his clay, I work on you, people of Israel. At any moment I may decide to pull up a people or a country by the roots and get rid of them. But if they repent of their wicked lives, I will think twice and start over with them. At another time I might decide to plant a people or country, but if they don’t cooperate and won’t listen to me, I will think again and give up on the plans I had for them.

11 “So, tell the people of Judah and citizens of Jerusalem my Message: ‘Danger! I’m shaping doom against you, laying plans against you. Turn back from your doomed way of life. Straighten out your lives.’

12 “But they’ll just say, ‘Why should we? What’s the point? We’ll live just the way we’ve always lived, doom or no doom.’”

~Jeremiah 18:1-12, The Message

In what ways does this story move you? Are you in danger? Are you grateful to the potter? What’s up with you in this process of creation?

God forms us

Editor’s note (from Scott): My apologies on the absence of the devotionals over the fast few days. I forgot my computer when I went on vacation. If you need to a refresher, click here to access all posts.

Recently I completed a massive project. I had made a decision that if I completed said project, I would treat myself. I carefully thought this decision out. My treat wasn’t going to be a new pair of shoes or a gelato. This treat needed to compensate for the time I spent with my nose to the grindstone in order to churn this baby out. In other words, my treat needed to serve as a realignment of sorts, an adjustment to a brief season of over-working.

I chose to take a pottery class. It TOTALLY fits the bill of self-care. It is something completely new with no promise of competency. It will require humility and concentration. It breaks my routine. It fits a dream to learn how to use a potter’s wheel that I have had since childhood.

I am taking the class. It is hard and wonderful and thus far, I have not crafted one use-able item on that darn wheel. But I see the need for the clay to cooperate with the process. It has to have certain properties - it needs to be moist, centered and balanced on the wheel. The hands of the potter can only do so much. The clay must be malleable. It is the wonderful synergy of the clay and the potter’s hand that makes the lump morph into something use-able and lovely.

As my teacher says all the time, “We only learn by doing and as we do this work, we are constantly pushing the edge - how much can the clay take of our pushing and prodding? It is at the limit of tolerance that we find the beauty of the object.”

Are you tolerating the pressure of the potter’s hand? Could you cooperate a bit more in the transformation process?