everybody into the sea

it's going to be fine

Hello, friends,

I’m sitting here on the patio of a coffee shop on the very tip of the Wisconsin peninsula thinking about the substance of the past six months. It’s been awhile since I’ve written here, and there’s been a reason for that. It’s not a particularly exciting reason, and I suppose it could be a fraught one, but actually, it’s a good reason and a holy one, and I’m just sort of in awe that such loveliness could emerge in my life from such raw darkness and banal misery.

Everything is fine, and I am (will be) fine - and I am just about to touch the edges of six months of recovery from some mid-stakes Midwestern alcoholism. I came up with about seven sentences to make that sound softer (“a difficult relationship with alcohol” etc.), but all of them did not express what I want to express and that is that I am finally, after nearly a decade of being a twit about things, getting real and good help to at last honor the person my beloved Lord has made me to be.

Naturally, I have been processing some of this by writing, but I haven’t been writing here. Out of shame, mostly. A shame that is mercifully departing my heart a little more each day. I was afraid to connect this substack with these new and wild meditations, and so I made a new one, which you can find here, if you like.

I’d like to connect them, I think, as the rest of my heart pulls together, but for now, most of my sobriety-related reflections can be found there. But of course the reality is that this life is all of me: priest, teacher, wife, firefighter, EMT, neighbor, daughter, friend, and — the phrase is actually helpful for me — recovering alcoholic.

All of it is me. All of it is from God.

I wasn’t going to write here because, quite frankly, I wasn’t sure how things were going to go. Six months ago, I truly could not have told you how things were going to go. But we’re going. I’m going. I’m in the sea. But I’m glad to be here.

Love you much, and know that I am here for you.