Elisabeth’s Story
I remember my first experience with alcohol… the way it made me feel, warm, secure…like i was okay. Chasing this feeling would lead to a pretty lengthy relationship, and it wasn’t always bad. Were there consequences along the way? Yeah, but I always found ways to justify them, having a “problem” was always a thought I set aside very quickly. Did I believe it was somewhat of an unhealthy relationship? Yes, but I thought I had a handle on it. My drinking ebbed and flowed over the years, and at times I had the wheels glued on decently, but let’s just say I used crappy glue…
This was never something I wanted to hand over to God because I didn’t want him to take it… I wanted to keep drinking… I wanted God to help me drink like a normal person… with impunity, the problem was I really loved the effects produced by alcohol!
As years went on and life got, well, pretty life-y, my drinking began to increase drastically. Again, however, I justified and did not see my life as unmanageable… I had a job, a home, the things, ya know? I presented to the world what you wanted to see, meanwhile I couldn’t wait for the next opportunity to drift off into oblivion.
I thought I was so slick and I really believed the only person I was hurting was myself. News Flash: everyone knew!!! What was left of my life and the things I used to confirm that I was “okay” began to crumble… I lost a job I loved, custody was being reduced, lost another job, friends got tired of my BS, my family was terrified for me and didn’t know what to do.
It was dark, it was lonely… I was scared… I was at what they call the “jumping off place” where life with alcohol and without it both seemed impossible.
I was on the verge of losing all custody of my son and I knew I had to do something. I made arrangements to check into an in-patient rehab, but life without alcohol seemed unattainable. How? How was I supposed to do this?
This is my favorite part… on the night of February 8, 2013 I put my son to bed and I was so excited to open my bottle of wine. I’m feverishly twisting off the cork and God showed up in my kitchen. I stopped what I was doing, and I knew this was it… I began to slowly remove the cork from the bottle and then I cupped my wine bottle opened in my hands and I told it goodbye and thank it for getting me through a pretty gnarly time of my life, but our relationship has changed and it was time for us to part ways… I cried. I threw it away, then I felt the gentle nudge to take it all the way to the alley garbage can so I did. The next day, something was different… The obsession and compulsion for alcohol was removed and that is a miracle that ONLY God can perform. By his grace I haven’t had a drink since that night!
Two days later I checked in to rehab. While I was there, I loaded up my sober toolkit and learned a lot about my addiction and what I needed to do to maintain my recovery. What also began to happen was I started to have a completely different relationship with God. For years I thought my relationship with God had to look like other people’s and I had this small minded idea of what it truly meant to be in relationship with God. I guess because I knew that my behavior for many years prior had been disappointing to him, and I hate disappointing people, much less God… I put up a wall, and denied myself the sunlight of his spirit in my life.
I’ve done the difficult work in 12-step recovery and pulled back all those layers to get to the root of what makes me tick. I was able to see how the wreckage of my past affected the people in my life and I’ve been able to make that right, and I learned how much power fear had over me. Through all of this I began leaning in more and more to God. For me, even with all of this self-knowledge, the ONLY thing between me and a drink is my relationship with God… that’s why it is so important to me.
“For me, even with all of this self-knowledge, the ONLY thing between me and a drink is my relationship with God… that’s why it is so important to me. ”
My sober journey has not been a straight line to “the promises”. God made sure I’ve had many lessons, and the more lessons, the more my dependence on him deepened. There has been heartache, financial strife, and loss, but none of it was worth taking a drink over.
In fact, one of the most beautiful things to happen to me in sobriety was being fired from a job… you might not believe it, but in the HR manager’s office God showed up again, and you know what… I felt warm, secure, and I knew I was okay… I know it was His presence washing over me, and I knew He was with me. Not only that, but having some of the life experiences I had acquired up to that point I knew everything was going to work out, and it did… I ended up with a better paying job several months later which led to my current position that I absolutely love… I love my job and the people I work with… I think you are pretty lucky if you can honestly say that.
Other pieces of my life started falling in to place as well. I’ve had full custody of my son for several years now, and God took care of the world’s most adorable “meet cute” when I met my now husband on a hike in Rocky Mountain National Park…it would have to be God because there we were in Colorado…me living in Virginia, him living in Texas…all it took was a little college football trash talking and the rest is history!
I don’t ever want to go back to that old way of living. I loved the scripture Topher used in his sermon recently, 1 Peter 5:8: “Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.” Boy, if that isn’t true… I know my addiction isn’t weakening, it gets stronger, and if I’m not actively maintaining my relationship with God, it is waiting for me to fall… I allow myself to play that tape, of what my life would look like if I were still in my cups… and it ain’t pretty. The Big Book says, “What we really have is a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual condition. Every day is a day when we must carry the vision of God's will into all of our activities.”
His will, not mine!
Today I love handing things over because I know without a shadow of a doubt that God is going to take care of it, and I have so much gratitude for this life that is truly beyond my wildest dreams.