"Reflections Of Sanity" - JR Everhart

When someone lashes out at me, the first thing I think is, “What place of pain is this aggression coming from?”  Hurt people typically hurt other people.  And a person that refuses to feel the pain of their suffering will most certainly take out that pain on anyone that gets in their way.  I’m someone that has struggled with anger and bitterness most of my life.  I lived my life running from the sorrow that seemed to cloud my world, and all it did was turn me into someone I couldn’t tolerate.  I hated who I was for decades, but I was paralyzed to do anything about it.  I didn’t know how to find my way out of the dark forest of bitterness that I had found myself within.  Hence, I initially drank and hopped on the rollercoaster of prescription meds in order to try and find some peace.  From there, I chose to use women like mindless toys from a child’s toy box.  None of these falsehoods made anything better; in fact, it only got worse. 

I did finally reach out for professional help.  I started seeing a Christian counselor which lead me to a Christian 12-step program.  That was almost 11 years ago.  I wish I could say God waved his hand over my life and from there, I was perfectly fixed.  But that’s not how it worked for me.  The complexities woven into / throughout my story were intricate, therefore they took years of very uncomfortable self-inventory to properly examine.  I am a completely different person now.  As such, God's great love has transformed my heart.  I’m no longer a person reacting to the world around me, but instead, a stable actor in the narrative of life.  

I wish I could say everything pivoted towards peaches and cream at the moment I chose sobriety, but that wasn’t the case.  I found myself having to walk through a third divorce, and I must admit that there are days (still) I think about drinking again.  Yesterday was one of those days.  

Being sober and walking in wholeness doesn’t deter life’s challenges from trying to blow you out of the car you’re riding in.  Why?  Because wholeness does not mean immunity.  What it does mean is that I know how not to react to the troubles of this world like a pissed off 8-year-old.  It means that I’ve learned to stop and breathe before responding to inconvenience.  And that I value healthy connection with my support system around me more than isolation (which tends to lead to self-hatred).  

Self-control looks a little different for everyone, but ultimately, it leads to the same sane response in lieu of chaos.  To summarize, my life is now manageable.  It's not perfect - by any stretch of the imagination - but it is manageable.  God is with me and his love for me is not based on how well I can behave / follow all the rules.  Instead, it's based on what his son has done for me at the cross of Calvary.  Self-control is zero fun, and in all honesty, my flesh hates it, but I am so grateful for the seatbelt that it represents within my life.  

In closing, it’s never been about perfection.  Perfection is an illusion.  Instead, for me, it’s about progress.  Praise be to God in heaven for his glorious mercy and grace.  I am nothing without it.