Recovery Month – Day 30 – Freedom and Beauty

Sobriety has given me so many gifts over the years, but the first gift it gave me was the ability to see clearly again.

— Jay Meyer —

This is the end of Recovery Month.

When I started this journey on September 1st, I had no clue what I was going to write about, but I believe God did.

In closing…


It was September 15, 1987. Thirty-seven days earlier my wife had ‘thrown my butt’ into a chemical dependency treatment center hoping upon hope I would change and learn how to live sober.

Now here I stood outside the doors of Greene Hall waiting for her to pick me up and take me home.

She pulled up in our red Toyota Celica GT.

She looked so beautiful…and I’m not talking about my Celica.

I soon found it wasn’t just Lori, it was everything. For almost five years my addiction had closed my eyes to the Divine Artist’s beauty that surrounded me.

My mind was thawed out and my vision was clear again.

My long weekend had finally ended.

With the help of many, I had climbed out of my self-induced prison of addiction, and was now being reintroduced to freedom and life around me.

Gray was no longer the only color I saw.

The sky was blue again. The grass was green. Flowers had color. People were alive.

The only thing that had changed was me.

Lori surprised me on the way home when she popped Michael Jackson’s newest album (Bad), into the cassette player in our car. She knew Michael was one of my favorites and Bad had been released a couple of weeks earlier. It was her way of saying ‘Congratulations!’ We jammed to that album all the way home.

The music to that album played for thousands of hours during the early years of my recovery as I drove to AA meetings, sometimes four in one day, all over the area, with a goal of staying sober one more day,

I listened to Man in the Mirror, on the Bad albumover and over and over and would sing out the lyrics below…(click on the Man in the Mirror link above, if you’d like to watch an awesome video of Michael performing his song).

I’m starting with the man in the mirror
I’m asking him to change his ways
And no message could have been any clearer
If you wanna make the world a better place
Take a look at yourself, and then make a change.

These words inspired me to look in the mirror every day knowing it was all on me, along with my faith in God, to make the changes I needed in order to whip my addiction.

What is so ironic and quite sobering, is the fact that Michael Jackson’s words played a huge inspirational role during my early years of recovery, but yet he succumbed to the disease of addiction on June 25, 2009.

But, for the grace of God, there go I.

Addiction is not selective. It has three goals–to steal, kill, and destroy. It will execute these goals on anyone at anytime if it’s able.


This is it…for now.

About two weeks into this journey I decided I would turn this into a book.

Unlike my first two books, In Search Of P.E.A.C.E. and Fear-Proof, which were devotionals, this book will be a story of my recovery experience.

When I was able to get off opiates many years ago, I had no idea they would end up becoming the source of the biggest health epidemic of the 21st century to date.

My goal is for this new book to give the addict and his or her family a little bit of hope.


One final thought…

I continue to look at the man in the mirror on a daily basis and know positive change and making the world a better place begins with me.

What is God calling you to do?

Where can you utilize your talents (life experiences, gifts and strengths) to make the biggest impact on God’s world?

Someone, somewhere, needs your help…I write from experience.

1 Corinthians 12:4, “Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit. And there are varieties of ministries, and the same Lord. There are varieties of effects, but the same God who works all things in all persons.”

P.E.A.C.E.

Jay@EagleLaunch.com

 

 

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