too weak, two week

I’m trying something new in the endless battle of the bulge. I’m doing the RPM class at the gym (a.k.a. “Spin,” or “really painful bike riding, set to music“  in most other gyms). I’d say it’s as easy as riding a bike, but that might give one the impression this is not a difficult effort.

I have never sweat so much in my life.

I almost blacked out the first morning.

My legs were sore for almost a week.

Sounds like fun, huh?

As I began this new brand of torture, I also started looking at changing my approach to food. I’ve been watching very carefully what I do during the day, keeping fat content and other stuff at bay, while trying to kick in the protein and other good stuff.

As I was thinking this morning about what to get to take me through the week at work, I had a troubling thought:

I will put a tremendous amount of thought and effort into what I eat, how food is prepared, portion size, etc., and there’s certainly nothing wrong with that. But why is it so much harder for me to bring that same intensity to bear on what is my biggest problem? Why is it that I can focus for a year and a half on busting my gut, but I have trouble maintaining my focus on holiness and righteous living for more than two weeks at a time?

Don’t misuderstand – I’m not going back to old patterns of behavior every two weeks; instead, I find that I am intently focused on taking all the right steps, calling people, being highly involved in others’ lives…all for brief periods. Then I retreat again, back into my coccoon, back to the safety of not having to deal with real people.

It perplexes me. I see what I need to do, and I can talk a good game – but there are times when my heart just isn’t really in it.

I know that a muscle builds endurance through being torn and rebuilt. Strength doesn’t come from light work. As Benjamin Disreali said, “No pain, no gain. No gain, no brain.” Most people leave off the last half of that quote. I’ve been able to retrain my brain regarding exercise. I know what will likely happen if I don’t work out, and I know that losing the weight of a sack of concrete has made my days much less painful.

I also know that there are similar benefits and risks in not getting “fit” spiritually. The obvious problem is that the risks are less tangible.

So what do I do to make the risks more real? How do I reach a point where I take to heart what my head already knows, that I don’t want to cross the finish line in the back of the pack?  I really want to hear, “Well done – good job” at the finish line, not “Well, I guess you made it.“

Perhaps I’ve forgotten one of the mantras of recovery – one day at a time. Thinking ahead is not a bad thing – but maybe I need to establish a pattern of single days – one that lasts longer than two weeks – before I start getting concerned about the long term.

finches, phlox, and fear

Anxiety is a sobriety-killer.

For an addict, the drug of choice often had initial appeal because it brought pleasure, or at least because it distracted us, numbed us, from the cares of life. So what do you suppose happens when the everyday stress level is ratcheted up a few notches?

• The struggler who is trying to go it alone is more likely to fall back into old, familiar, destructive patterns.
• The addict who is recovering with an occasional slip here or there feels the pull more strongly than they otherwise would.
• The person who is thought of as a model of recovery is blindsided by a desire they believed was a thing of the past.

Anxiety is a constant gnawing, the slow dripping sound from that faucet that keeps you awake at night, and pervades your dreams when you do sleep.

In the last several verses of Matthew 6, Jesus spoke to the issue of anxiety (my paraphrase here):

Listen, don’t worry about stuff like your 401k, your car payment, even your job. Isn’t life about more than that stuff?

Ever seen the bluebells along the highway in Texas, or the sunflowers in Kansas? How much time do they spend worrying? They don’t spend two hours commuting and nine hours in a cubicle farm, staring at a computer and wondering about whether that job will still be there tomorrow; they just sit in the dirt and take in what God sends them.

How about the birds around you? How much do they focus on the finer things in life? They build their nests, eat worms, and maybe say, “Dude, it’s getting frosty. Let’s go south” once a year.

You are God’s special creation – princes and princesses in an eternal kingdom. How much more do you suppose he cares for you than these things?

Look, I’m not above feeling anxious. We’ve been feeling the pinch in finances lately as so many others have. My industry is considered a good one to be in, but I see things slowing down. We will have to make some lifestyle changes if we want to keep working to get out of debt. We will likely have to sacrifice a few of the comforts to which we’re accustomed in order to keep our house and feed the kids.

But I am holding on to the fact that the Creator of the Universe sees me as His child.

Oh, I know there are a lot of people who don’t buy into creation, let alone the whole God thing. If that is your belief system, I don’t know how you avoid despair.

But for those who believe, I need only look back at a few other lean years in my life to see that God cares and will provide. He won’t give me my every desire; but He will provide for my needs.

All it takes is a little trust.

a half-hearted man

His arm would twitch every once in a while. We never really thought that much about it; it wasn’t that noticeable, at first. But then it became a tic, a repetitive movement which he could not control. That was when he decided to go to the hospital.

It was Tax Day, April 15th, 1991. I was working at my office when my parents’ neighbor called me.

I don’t think there’s anything to worry about, but your dad is at the Emergency Room.

I left work and went to join my mom. We waited for a few hours, not hearing anything, not seeing anyone. Finally they called us back to his bedside. He told us about a battery of tests, where they seemed to be focusing their attention, what little anyone had said thus far. About then the attending physician stepped in.

I’m afraid I have some bad news. It’s a tumor…

…somewhere about an inch and a half in and behind his right ear. They would schedule surgery immediately. There could be no prognosis until they did a biopsy of the tumor, but it was not encouraging to note that a scan they had done on New Year’s Eve hadn’t shown anything, and there was now something this large, this soon.

He had seen his regular doctor somewhere between New Year’s and Tax Day about the spasms or tics. The doctor had told him to take an over-the-counter medication and let him know if the spasms got worse.

As it turns out, had his doctor pursued the cause a little more deeply, it probably wouldn’t have made a bit of difference for my father – he had a gliablastoma multiformae. The thing that killed my dad is now in the news because it is the same animal that is stalking Teddy Kennedy.

My dad would find some irony in the idea that he and Teddy Kennedy had anything in common.

My father had a tumor that is 100% fatal, thus far. He was one of the lucky ones – the tumor was relentless, and he only had a short time of suffering. He was gone before the next March came around. Others live for a couple of years as this beast eats away at their faculties, robbing them of their personality and dignity before taking away their cognitive ability and eventually their control centers. My father died, officially, of a massive organ failure. But like the tics or spasms, the organ failure was just the final symptom of a terrible disease.

I, on the other hand, have a heart disease; but not the kind that a doctor would be interested in. My symptoms have included acting out sexually and eating nearly everything in sight. It is tempting to think that I could use some over-the-counter approach to those issues. There are pills you can buy that will expand like styrofoam in your stomach, convincing your body that it is full. There are medications that warn of ’sexual side effects,’ which can mean either an effect on desire or performance. Yep, we could stop those symptoms pretty darn quickly.

But I’d still be left with my heart condition. There would still be a hole in me, something that is incomplete, something that goes a lot deeper than the symptoms.

I’d still be a half-hearted man.

The first serious attempt I made at dealing with my addictions was a behavior-based program.

Follow these steps, and keep your zipper closed, and you’ll be cured.

So it was all about my performance. As an American and a man, I liked the sound of that. I could make it happen, I was in control.

But the reality was, and is, that if I continue to focus on behavior, I’ll just develop a different set of symptoms.

If you find yourself trying to stop some behavior, and failing time after time, it isn’t because you are weak. A compulsion that overcomes your rational mind repeatedly is not going to go away that easily. The good news is, there are qualified people nearby ready to help you with your treatment. You just have to get past yourself, and be willing to admit that you can’t beat it alone.

Your sickness need not be fatal.

entropy

Though it is oft stated differently, entropy is seen in physics as the amount of energy no longer available in a usable form to do work. Once an ice cube melts, the energy that was in the atoms of the ice cubes has been dispersed throughout the warmer air surrounding. And unless you have some device capable of trapping the energy used in that process, that energy is essentially lost.

One of the byproducts of addiction is a kind of entropy.

There is within us a great deal of potential energy, just waiting to be applied to the world around us. Each episode of acting out reduces that by some measure. And without some kind of intervention from some outside force, that energy is lost.

The laws of physics apply to addiction – who knew?

Think about this one, Newton’s First Law:

A body in motion tends to stay in motion

Having a little trouble breaking the cycle of your addiction? Newton tells us why. And with each cycle, we have less energy available to affect a change.

That’s why I find it difficult to understand those who try to break out of addiction without some serious Higher Power.

Consider this; if you had it within you to make the change, to break the cycles, on your own – wouldn’t you have already done it?

Or do you like living with the constant threat of losing the people you hold dear?

Or of hurting those who love you?

But you don’t have it within you to change yourself.

I go back to the man who sought healing from Christ – “You have the power; I know it. All that is required is that You would be willing.”

A body in motion tends to stay in motion … unless acted on by an outside force.

You need a force greater than your own to provide the energy you lack. You aren’t getting free of that repetitive motion otherwise.

It has been said that gravity is not just a good idea – it’s the Law!

Don’t think yourself to be the exception. You need a Higher Power. One with limitless energy. One that is above the Law.

get control of yourself

You’ve got to learn to pace yourself. – Pressure, Billy Joel

We were talking at the dinner table last night about how to handle emotions. My son is very young, and is still learning how to process the way he feels about things.

Turns out it isn’t just him.

The issue as I saw it was that virtually any emotion he experiences ends up being expressed through crying.

E, if you read this later, I’m not trying to shame you with this. It just explains what happened next.

My Princess said something along the lines of how “mommy cries a lot. ” My wife agreed. Then my Princess floored me.

Daddy, you don’t cry; you just get mad.

She just turned five, and she understands so much. I’m embarassed and ashamed.

I felt a little numb as I tried to explain that my daddy didn’t cry in front of me more than once or twice in his lifetime, and that we tend to learn how we handle our emotions from what we see in our parents … and I could see her very sharp mind processing “and daddy gets mad, so that must be an OK way to handle emotions.“

It isn’t an OK way. It is what I turn to because I refuse to numb out in my old patterns, and I haven’t figured out how to express my hurts, my joys, any of it in a consistent, appropriate way.

So I get mad.

And my five-year-old therapist is pointing this out to me as I’m trying to explain appropriate behavior to my three-year-old.

I’m getting a tension headache just thinking about it now.

One of the real challenges to overcoming addiction is the struggle I’m facing today – figuring out how to deal with my stuff. I think this is one of the reasons that addicts tend to cross from one addiction to another – we treat a specific behavior, but we tend to not want to deal with the underlying issues. The result is that we find another substitute for dealing with whatever the root issue may be.

This is, of course, where we go back and blame our parents for everything, right? Um, no. This is where we figure out what it is that triggers our behavior, that initiates the feelings that used to take us into our addiction. This is where I recognize that, for me, most of my frustration stems from situations where I feel disrespected. And that does, in my case, have a lot to do with a subtle kind of abuse I endured as a child, and how I chose to interpret that as I grew older.

I’m typing this as I sit at my desk, waiting for feedback on something “mission-critical” for my company, a project that interrupted another “mission-critical” project. Those who can answer my questions are busy, so I can’t get an answer I need. My natural tendency is to interpret that as some sort of slight towards me, as if they are ignoring my questions just in spite. The fact is that one of them was derailed by a car accident this morning, and hasn’t been anywhere near his email yet. The other person has been in a meeting about another mission-critical project, and walked out of that meeting as I typed this paragraph. They aren’t ignoring me out of spite; they have other stuff going on too.

That may sound trivial, but I offer it as an an example of what goes on in my semi-aware mind, of how I build a case to justify my frustrations, to find a way to blame someone else for my inability to properly process the situation. If all of that sounds like I’m just being childish, you’re beginning to see the heart of the issue.

At the heart of it, there is some adolescent milestone I have not yet passed – the point where I was supposed to have learned that the world is not about me, and that things sometimes happen that aren’t a slight towards me.

It would be simple, and fairly honest, to say I learned this from family. My dad was not deficient in this way, but everyone else from his birth family was. Their temper-trigger was set to fire on very low pressure, and then in full-automatic mode. Dad was more restrained, but once he reached his melt-down point – well, he never beat anyone; but he could be pretty harsh.

So I’m trying to find a better way. I’m trying to find a vent that isn’t a cover-up. I’m trying to release honestly, without some vehicle that becomes my next addiction. I fear that my dedication to fitness over the last several months is verging on becoming just that. Hmm, something unhealthy about my efforts to get healthy.

I come back to that point in the 12-Step liturgy where I come to a point of not only admitting my defects of character, but of being open to, and asking, God to remove those defects.

40 A man with leprosy came to him and begged him on his knees, “If you are willing, you can make me clean.” 41 Filled with compassion, Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. “I am willing,” he said. “Be clean!” – Mark 1:40, 41, NIV

Lord, if you are willing …

let go

I’ve heard some ‘confessions’ that sounded more like bragging than coming clean. Hence Step Six of the Twelve:

Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character

There are two aspects of this that I didn’t get the first time through; “Ready” doesn’t mean it will happen when you want, and “remove” is usually an invasive procedure.

I believe I’ve mentioned elsewhere that I’m not sure I will ever have these defects of my character completely removed. I’m in remission; I have been granted an indefinite reprieve from the death sentence I was facing. That doesn’t mean I will ever be completely free. What it does mean, in my world, is that I can look myself in the mirror and know that I am trusting the only One worthy of my trust, and laying my weakness at His feet daily.

He can do whatever it is He wants to do whenever He wants.

That’s what I am ready for.

Do I wish I were cured? You betcha. I don’t like having to be extra cautious of the things I see, the places I go. There’s a restaurant not far from my office that I once really enjoyed; but the road between here and there would take me deep in enemy territory, past a few establishments which would call to my base nature. I steer clear. I pray for a day when I can go back to that Thai place without closing my eyes (a definite hazard while driving around here); but there are other places I can go when I need coconut milk soup.

Paul had his thorn in the flesh. Whatever it was, it sounds like it afflicted him much like my addictions have afflicted me. I pray that they be removed, but I am beginning to hear God say, “What you need is not less of something; you need more of Me.” So I wait. Ready. Hopeful. And certain that there will come a day, maybe not in this mortal lifetime, but there will come a day when I will be free.

As to removal…

Ever had a wart or mole removed?

This isn’t like that.

If you are an addict, there is something that has a fairly deep grip on a part of your heart and it will not let go easily.

My father died several years ago of a gliablastoma multiformae, a tumor that sprung up in his brain, and shot out tendrils like a weed digging itself in against any efforts to uproot it. The doctor treating him said that his patients tend to be young kids, and they refer to that beast as “my octopus”. I saw the MRIs from the early stages right up until his final months, and it was a horrific sight. Toward the end, the tumor invaded various control and thought centers. He couldn’t see the left column on a page or a remote control, and he had trouble forming words. The movie Aliens didn’t hold as much terror as this thing, as far as I was concerned.

But what I saw spreading its roots throughout my dad’s brain was a very good picture of what addiction does. A little behavioral issue – probably not unusual or noticeable – slowly takes hold and becomes a little more traceable. Eventually, the tumor that is addiction is taking control, ruling our lives.

That isn’t something that will come out without a fair amount of pain.

There are times I miss the rush of an anonymous encounter. There are times I want to stop at the ice cream shop and binge on the fattiest stuff they have.

It is simple enough to say, “But I get over it pretty quickly when I think about the relationship I now have with my wife,” or “but I sure don’t miss those extra fifty pounds I’ve lost“. But those are simple statements that cover over a truth – regardless of how deadly it was for me, my former life was familiar. It was ugly and complicated, but I mourn it’s loss. That probably makes about as much sense as Smeagol calling after his “preciousssss,” the Ring of Power that left him such a hideous shell of a … whatever the Gollum was.

Loss is loss. Loss causes grief. Grief is pain.

As I write this, it occurs to me that I might come across as discouraging someone who is thinking of changing their direction for the better.

Nothing could be farther from my intent.

I want to make sure you know, dear reader, that it is worth every bit of pain.

• To know that I don’t have to fear coming home to a wife and kids who found something I had hidden away -
• To know that I can look my daughter in the eye and not be a hypocrite when I talk to her about making good choices -
• To know that I can teach my son about being a man and not have to tiptoe around what role sexuality plays in that -
• To not live in fear of being tripped up by phone records, mileage, bank statements -

That is a pretty good taste of freedom. And it just gets sweeter.

MNRecovery