Necessity is the mother of invention. That formula aptly describes how my search for Grace began. By the time I turned fifty, I had perfected the artform of faceplants. My journey to that point had been a series of avoidable accidents. Rather than staying in the center of life’s road, I ran my personal vehicle into one ditch after another. Many of those wrecks were barely survivable.
That pattern continued throughout those years when I was engaged in weekly psychotherapy as well as following the Twelve Step program. Both lifted me out of the muck to be sure. But as a rather ornery pig, I continued to find unwittingly creative ways to continue life’s mud roll. The eventual result put me not only into a deep state of malaise but brought on a kind of psychic pain that begged addressing.
Using Twelve Step program parlance, I was sick and tired of being sick and tired. I asked myself how many times I must fail before admitting out loud, “This ain’t working!” How much harder must I bang my head against life’s wall in continuing frustration? How much longer must I white-knuckle my way through a miserable existence?
Years of working the Twelve Steps had delivered many promised results. Previous forms of self-abuse had been arrested and I’d become a better person. Unfortunately, the internal pain never really subsided. I may have entered the Twelve Step process with a loosely held belief in God still intact, but years later that faith was gone with nary a replacement bulwark in sight.
When it came to developing a spiritual identity, my scorecard flashed zero. I had instead become yet another walking testament to Albert Einstein’s definition of insanity: doing the same thing again and again while expecting different results. I kept looking for God, praying I might experience His/Her presence. My lifelong failure left me feeling a kind of inner madness.
Make no mistake, the Program’s gifts to that point were many, providing much more than I expected after first walking through the Twelve Step’s door. Not only had substance abuse issues abated but I had simultaneously been freed from so much of my past, especially those damaging parts that I had been unwilling to look at. Thanks to working the Steps, I had learned to live more openly and honestly.
But that did not change the fact that I was still hitting the proverbial wall after nearly fifteen years of trudging. I remained lost as to why I was descending while others were ascending. Such failure to strengthen my spiritual game, especially in recovery, was nothing short of soul killing. Securing my happy destiny seemed more distant than ever.
Fortunately, throughout that period of my life, suicide never crossed my mind as an option. I knew that facing myself was the only way forward. So rather than giving up, I made an affirmative choice to skip the mystical and let God go. Forget heaven. My only interest was escaping hell.
Writing has always been my most effective way of working towards greater self-understanding. I have found no better tool for internal digging. In fact, nearly twenty-five years ago when I first started my exploration of Grace, I envisioned the work as nothing more than simply collecting ideas on paper. Whenever I stumbled onto a new spiritual awareness, a guidepost to Grace, I would write a page or two capturing my thoughts then metaphorically toss it into Grace’s basket.
Following those crumbs of insight was my Hansel and Gretel approach to seeking Grace over the next ten years. The design I pursued would provide nourishment for me to munch on while I found my spiritual way home, wherever that might be. This series of lessons is my detailed report describing just how well that formula worked for me.
I also decided to end a lifelong study of other writers’ interpretations of the human realm. Third-party input related to building a better life I found no longer helpful. If an author appeared on Oprah, it is unlikely I read his or her book. Although such thinkers may have offered illumination on a given self-help topic, it was of no use to me given the rather personal nature of my revised spiritual expedition.
That said, I really had no idea about the direction of my journey. I’d chosen to move forward without God as a safety net but, rather than fearing a fall, I felt empowered. Free will had granted me permission to follow Grace as my guide. My spiritual identity was entirely mine to define.
Weaving Grace’s tapestry stopped in 2009, thanks to life’s interference. As the Series Preview mentioned, my life was at that point defined by one crisis after another. Whether my father’s death, my being stricken with life-threatening cancer, or the blindside of an unexpected divorce, I could not seem to escape my downward spiral.
The story of Job in the Old Testament resonated loudly enough to wonder whether we were twin sons from different mothers born centuries apart. As far as I was concerned, Grace had so completely disappeared from my life there was no point in writing about it. However, with time, I again discovered that thinking wrong-headed.
I awoke to the fact that all the pretty flowers I had placed into my writer’s basket were, indeed, lovely to look at. But their arrangement on paper did not yet offer a reliable roadmap. I would learn the only soil in which Grace’s crop can mature is found on life’s field of battle. By assiduously following my theoretical understanding of Grace, its truths became mine.
The Grace I’d uncovered over the previous decade represented seeds which required planting through inquiry and examination. My life’s next series of reality checks provided an opportunity to apply those seedlings to real life situations. Grasping such insights meant nothing until I had learned how to live by them.
My reliance on such virtues became the only actual protection I had. However, by placing myself within the sheltering protection of Grace, I survived one violent storm after another. Once those threatening skies finally cleared, Grace’s rays of encouragement and hope came back into view. No longer lost in Dante’s dark wood, my pursuit of Grace had delivered me back into life’s glorious light.
I remain stunned, even now, by what I found on the other side of that gauntlet I had run. I’d not only escaped from my hell but stood within reach of the very heaven I had been searching for. My emphasis today is nothing more than continuing this amazing voyage although it comes with a disclaimer.
My arrival to a state of Grace does not mean I never leave. Not in the least. I remain the same crazed dancing bear I was before finding Grace. Indeed, I am deeply grateful for having overcome myself in a variety of ways. But none of it is a permanent feature.
The maintenance of personal Grace requires my daily effort. Without it, like the Second Law of Thermodynamics, entropy results. In the same way that life withers without sustenance, I fall apart without regular infusions of Grace. Keeping one’s personal house in order requires diligence.
I am and will forever be a human in the process of being. On those days when I wander away from home, my state of Grace, I am immediately confronted with clear lessons I still need to learn. Until the day I die, I will remain a student-teacher of Grace’s path no different from the person taking his or her first few steps.