It was already past 10. Those last two lines I double-barreled were kicking in fast and I was getting annoyed that the girls weren’t ready. But I knew I’d have to choose my battles that night so I poured another glass of Makers over ice, went outside, lit a cigarette and sat on the steps. It was a week before Halloween, 2001. I had been back in Minneapolis less than 5 days and still hadn't gotten use to even being in the States.
Inside, four beautiful girls from 18-25 frantically changed their outfits over and over having to re-do their hair with each new style as they cut lines of coke, smoked weed, and yelled in laughter over the blaring techno music. It was good to be back in the Twin Cities.
A couple weeks earlier I had left Mazatlan on a midnight bus toward Tijuana owning nothing but a leather suitcase full with Cuban Cigars, 3 bottles of Napoleon Brandy and about $200. It wasn’t much but enough buy, barter and trade my way to the Spearmint Rhino in Vegas where a friend of a friend said he had a job waiting for me.
Well before I even got there, the job had dissolved along with the entire tourism industry in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks leaving me sitting on a couch in an American Inn across fro the Rio with my last box of cigars, 1/2 bottle of brandy and no money while making collect calls to anyone who’d get me out and onto the next city.
The answer finally came from a stripper girlfriend named Goldie in Minnesota. She said she could get enough money from one of her regulars to fly me in but when I got there I’d have to come home with her and be her boyfriend, “This time for real.”
And I still wasn’t about to make any sort of commitment to one country, one state, or even one city, more-or-less to her but I had no other option for escaping Vegas so I agreed with a lie. Within 10 days I was back in Minneapolis sitting on those frozen cement steps, flipping up the collar of my tuxedo and wondering if we were ever going to get to this damn party.
Now fast forward almost exactly 10 years as I stand on the sidewalk outside an Alcoholics Anonymous club in Nampa, Idaho with my 52 year old brother who just hosted tonight’s meeting. In attendance were 3 middle aged women, two old men, a kid with a court-card and me.
“Gonna see you tomorrow for dinner?” I asked my brother. “Yep,” he said as he lit another hand rolled cigarette made from pipe tobacco (because it’s cheaper). “Alright then,” I said, “I’ll tell Mom we’ll be there around 4:30.” And with that I got on my bicycle and rode 3 blocks to the only late night coffee house in town.
There’s a term in AA called “Dry Drunk”. Here’s a brief description I heard blurted out during a meeting one afternoon, “I used to be a drunken, selfish, self-centered, A-Hole. And now thanks to this program, I’m a sober, selfish, self-centered, A-Hole.”
On a spiritual and slightly more literary level Edward Welch wrote, “Dry Drunks are individuals who have reformed themselves in the sense that they are sober, but who are still mastered by the demons that drove them to drink.”
I’m a dry drunk.
I’ve been sober now for 10 months and 15 days and as I sat in that coffee shop with my Bible in lap, highlighter in hand, and ear buds blaring Christian rock I couldn’t for the life of me stop staring at every pretty girl in a low cut shirt and tight jeans sitting, standing, and stalling all around me. And I’m still sizing up the clean-cut men they’re laughing with while thinking, “Wouldn’t take much to scare him off.” And as I turn my eyes away to stare out the window I can distinctly smell the smoke from one lit cigarette being exhaled over 200 feet past the front door.
And if you watched the video sermon I posted on my blog called Jesus Without Sin you’d hear Mark Driscoll describe it as, “Satan re-baits the hook.” And as I sit there in a cloudy yet open eyed fantasy of lust, violence and nicotine I think of Satan and say to myself, “What a jerk.”
But I know its more serious then that. I finish my coffee, pack up my things and shuffle quickly out the door. Half way on my ride home I’m in such a deep prayer that I have to stop my bike, get off and stand still.
When I do get home, I let my dog outside and I go into my bathroom shutting the door so it’s entirely dark. Then finally on both knees I start to pray completely.
I pray with shouts, I pray with tears, I pray with begging. I pray with anger, with despair, and with demands. I pray until I am standing in resolve again, pointing my fingers to the ceiling saying, “You are my God; you alone. You are my God.” Why? Because of Luke 11:24-26
“When the unclean spirit has gone out of a person, it passes through waterless places seeking rest, and finding none it says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’ And when it comes, it finds the house swept and put in order. Then it goes and brings seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and dwell there. And the last state of that person is worse than the first.”
I know my house is swept. I’ve spent every day of the last 10 months cleaning every corner of wreckage from my whole life. But sometimes in all the cleanliness I can feel so… empty. And there in that little bit of space and silence, Satan temps me.
So I pray for Jesus to come and fill my house. I pray for his spirit to completely fill all of me until I finally worship Christ alone. Alcohol, Drugs, Violence, Women, all these things are the idols I worshiped all my life. Like barricades, I’ve let them be built between me and the true God. And knowing that I am created to worship, knowing I will always worship something; I get scared when in my weakness I wander back into their shadows.
And some might fault me for writing all this and un-bashfully sharing it with everyone. But you see I have to live in the open now. I have live in light. And rushing home like a child in tears, calling out for Christ, is my gospel. It’s my life. It’s my testament in faith of my trust in Christ to save me.
I love you.
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