On the weekend of the coming clean—almost one month ago—I travel to Austin for a conference in which I am presenting on the topic of international adoption ethics, how worldview, international legal frameworks, and gospel dignity shape our discussion of it. This has been a pet area of my legal research over the last few years. Riveting, eh?
A group of friends from across the country meet for the conference, and we rent a house at 1900 David Street, split the room and board.
There we are, together. Chad and Sarah hail from California and hide their always-tender hearts behind an ever-playful exterior. Kristen is an expert in psychology, orphan care, fashion, and just about any other thing she sets her mind to. Karen is the literary agent’s wife who nurtures a beautiful mystic spirit. John Ray and his wife, Jane, bring maturity to the group, having walked through too many pains in their one life. Matt is the strong-but-quiet type, and he fights for the rights of children with special needs. Rob is the rescuer of the trafficked. Mike is my metaphorical big brother. Preston is my metaphorical younger brother. And then there’s me.
We gather under the roof of the spacious rented house under the broad-shouldered and gnarled Spanish oak. I note the Spanish oak, the way it reaches heavenward. This could be a house of praise, I think as I toss my bags on the bed and fetch a beer.
And it is. These friends—we’ve all taken to calling it the David House, on account of its address. This is the house after God’s own heart.
In the evening, Troy and Tara, missionaries from Haiti, stop by the house, and our mutual friend Sarah is in tow. Jess stops in too, peppering the conversation with a little preconference banter about orphan reunification. Good people from around the country convene for the conference, and they come in and out of the David House, all chatting and singing and enjoying the low-key house party. I lose track of the moment, though, struggle to keep tabs on my alcohol consumption.
How many drinks can a good drinker drink and still appear to be undrunk? This is my present tongue twister.
I try to balance on the edge between sober and drunk. I shotgun a beer and take nips of whiskey until the buzz sets in, then I cycle drinks on the half hour. I interrogate myself: do I feel drunk? Will the other Christians think me drunk? Am I in control of my vocal volume? Am I grinning too much, laughing at inane jokes, giggling like a sixth grader?
On Friday night, a good lot of us sit on the porch, they sipping beers, I downing whatever I manage to pour straight into the cup. I move from room to room, offer to refill the ladies’ wine glasses or to grab a beer for the brothers. I am hospitable, no? No. When hospitality is motivated by selfish desire, it’s no kind of hospitality at all. I am hosting myself to another drink every time I go to the kitchen.
Around eleven I grab a tequila bottle from the cupboard and make my way to the front porch. I reach for the door, and Preston sees me, bottle in hand. “Hey!” he says, smiling. It is his tequila. I turn, give him a dismissive wave of the hand. “Nothing to see here, don’t mind me,” I say, opening the door. He stands as if he might intervene, as if he might rescue his liquor, but instead, he lets me go. I walk to the railing, slide against it and sit on the coarse board floor, slide the bottle behind my back, between the railing and me.
On the front porch, Karen, Mike, and a houseguest are deep in conversation. Mike is asking Karen what brings her to this convocation, this conference on human rights and human care. Karen shares about her adopted son, how he makes her want to find justice for the many children who will never be adopted. I try to engage, but am a full sentence behind in the conversation. My attempt to enter the discussion spills across the porch. Mike looks at me, shushes me by snapping his thumb and the upper part of his hand together like a lobster claw, then laughs. “Go back to drinking,” he says. He knows that I have passed the point of tipsiness.
I pour a half shot of tequila into the tiny juice glass and throw it back. There is a burn here that blurs the ears, one that mutes the volume of the porch conversation. Karen continues her story, and here am I, choosing to lose presence. Mike asks me a question. I lose his train of thought too, and they roll on, always a step ahead.
I begin to count drinks again. Will the half shot put me over the edge? I had two glasses of wine at dinner and took a break from six to seven. Then I took a double of whiskey at seven, a beer at eight. Another at eight thirty? No, I don’t think I drank between eight thirty and nine. Three drinks between nine and ten thirty?
I step inside to relieve myself, and on my way back out to the porch, I ask, “Where’s my beer?” It is a light-headed eleven o’clock. “You drank it,” says a woman with gypsy eyes. “Maybe you don’t need another?” Maybe she’s right about the beer, but how could the thief in me resist the good tequila at hand?
Back on the porch, I watch as the Spanish oak twirls crooked about the yard.
Am I on the edge or am I over? Have I thrown caution to the wind? Has the wind thrown me against caution? Who cares? I indulge in another double of tequila, then another. Perhaps another? I lose track in the wee hours of the morning and crawl onto the couch sometime before the five o’clock hour. There is a bed waiting for me, but would my roommates hear me stumble in? Would they smell tequila?
This time, even I am out of rhythm. I am an embarrassment to myself.
Yes, Austin is the place where the acute point of the Spirit’s voice divided me, called me to inner sobriety. These things that led me to drink—Titus’s sickness, the lack of healing, the history of cessationist theology, et cetera, et cetera—these are just the bones of my story. These are the walking bones, the calcified facts, the skeleton of self without the Spirit essence. The truth is, the childhood sense of wonder was with me once, the Spirit present in my earliest faith.
One month later, in the sleeping house of new morning light, I heard whispers of this truth. I closed my eyes, gave myself to the quiet. I imagined my five-year-old self oohing in wonder at the wind in the mesquite trees. There was the roadrunner, enlivened by the new dawn, and the scissortail flycatcher, diving on insects in midflight. This was my Father’s house, and his presence was at play in the world around me. I heard my younger laughter in the whistling of the winds in the short, crooked tree arms.
The child is who I am. He is who I’ve always been. But as I sit in the quiet, as I plumb the interior places of my heart, I find the stick-thin me (oh me of little faith!) and the taunting faith healer with the silken pocket square. Their memory is at odds with childlike faith, and they cast shadows of doubt. Did God really dance with me in the mesquite trees? Did his breath animate the roadrunner and flycatcher? This morning, though, I consider the truth and see these inner apparitions of addict and preacher for who they are: sick men who’ve both lost their essence. They are the disembodied pains that underlie my habit, and the liquor lulls them to silence.
We begin this life in unity with God. Along the way, though, a mitosis happens, a division of essence from self. You, me, the faith healer—we all separate ourselves from simple faith at some point.
These days, I’m praying for fusion. I’m praying for a unification of my present self and the essence of childhood belief. I am looking for an inner sanctuary unspoiled by mocking voices. I’m looking for an interior space reserved for the presence of God, which sweeps in like a mesquite wind and casts out all fear and disbelief. Is such a thing possible?
Maybe these thoughts are too disorganized for your liking. This journal comprises, after all, a swirl of memories and metaphors. The place of my childhood calling from which I seem separated, the inner cave where the sick man and the faith healer haunt, the child me whispering—is there a point here?
Disorganized? Yes. If pain took an organized, nameable, tangible, physical shape, it’d be an easy thing to put to death. It turns out, though, that to beat the shame out of you, you have to give the pain in your life contours. At least, that’s what my therapist says.
I’m finding the way around my contours here. Maybe you could start finding your way around your own contours? Are you burying your pain? Are you numbing it with your own vices?
This is not a clean story. This is a story of coming clean.