Choices. I think when I look at my life it all comes down to choices I have made. I am sure some of you are thinking, “Well, duh!”, of course, it is all about the choices we make! But when someone has made as many bad choices as I have, it seems that life’s ‘could have’s’ come to mind more often than they should.
There is a song and if you are a Sinatra fan, like myself, I am sure you have heard it more than once, it was a favorite of his later years, ‘My Way”. Before I came to the Lord I used to identify with this song, especially the big finish lyric:
For what is a man, what has he got?
If not himself, then he has naught.
To say the things, he truly feels
And not the words of one who kneels
The record shows I took the blows
And did it my way.
It is the way I felt about the choices I made in my life, basically saying to the world, if you don’t like it then lump it! I did it all my way. Of course, the problem with that is my way was choosing me over just about everyone else.
Sure, I did take some blows. But every one of them were generated by bad choices I had made. And today I look back and know it was because more often than not I chose to live in the shadow of my addictions. I am sure some of you will say, “That was not a choice, addictions are genetic or environmental.” Or something like that. And I am no shrink, so I cannot argue with you. I only know in my case there were choices I made that opened the door to a dependent life. I guess those are called seminal moments. One in particular stands out, but as you will see it really wasn’t a moment.
I have written in these pages that after my first divorce I made choices that were all wrong. When it came to my son, I chose to run once things got out of control and that choice had a ripple effect on everything else. I can’t say I actually remember making a choice like, ‘I choose not to make all efforts to keep my relationship with my son as a number one priority in my life.’ It was more like a little choice each day, today I choose to go to the bar and get blitzed, hence neglect my son. Or today I choose to buy that 8 ball of speed, I will party this weekend, I will see my son next weekend. So, it was like with many of my life choices not one major, bigtime, ah-hah moment. More like a hundred ones that ended up meaning I would have to run from a dealer who wanted what I did not have. I would have to hide in southern California and not contact my son until the trust in our relationship was gone.
I did it my way! And from that point compounded that bad choice into a thousand others, even though at that moment I could have chosen sobriety and face my problems. I did not. The how is complicated. But the why is simple and I have probably wrote it here many times, I had no faith and I had no hope.
If I have learned one thing on this life journey, it is we can live without a lot of things. We can live without fancy cars or homes. We can live without food and even live for a certain amount of time without water. But no one can live without hope. Now my atheist friends might want to argue this fact with me. I read recently that Stephen Hawking, the great theoretical physicist and atheist went to his grave denying there was such a thing as hope in God. But I have been in a place void of faith and void of hope, cursing God. Yet I can testify that even as I cursed him, he protected and kept me. As I made bad choices, he loved me as much as now I live to make good and holy ones. And the change in my life cannot be denied, not by me or the greatest minds that exist. That is why I no longer live without faith and without hope.
“Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” (Romans 5:2-5) I so believe in these words today! That is a miracle in itself. When I read them, I see that choices God’s way, not my way, produce hope. It is a process and it does demand full faith and surrender to God, but man is it worth it. Because in the my ‘My Way’ as sung by old blue eyes, is a bunch of hooey. When I chose ‘God’s Way’ life is good, my friends and that is a choice I can live with!
Blessings John
10/17/18
Baby, this is one of your best. ❤️