Taking Stock of Where We Are

Sometimes the hardest stories hold the potential to be our best teachers.

Waking up to reality can be scary, but it’s also our invitation to healthy living.

Learning that I need Acceptance

Difficult experiences feel awful, no question about that. You’ve heard the phrase, Who knows what’s bad news and what’s good news; I’m a strong believer that no situation is ever strictly one or the other. Life comes to us on life’s terms, and tricky situations often wake us to our need for better tools. Every situation benefits from good help. That’s what happened here.

A strained relationship

I’m trying to repair my strained relationship with my husband who is deeply unhappy with his job. He’s spending more time in the basement which makes me squirm; his drinking is gaining momentum and I’m alarmed. I want to help – let’s talk about this; tell me what’s happening, let me in. Let me help us find a better landing place – but mostly, I’m hitting brick walls.

“Everything is fine,” he says. “You’re overreacting. It’s job stress. It’s not about you.” I feel squeezed out of his life and out of finding a solution that works for both of us. Surely, if he knows how this affects me, he will try something different.

Before heading to the basement, I check my motives. I want to be part of his life again but am I sticking my nose into a beehive? Taking on more than I can manage? Am I trying to control an unmanageable situation? Or am I doing the responsible thing, facing what I need to face?

I’m not sure. I just know I need to do something; avoiding it isn’t working. Rounding the corner, I find him shaking substantial amounts of vodka into a cup of the diet soda we keep around the house in great quantities. All my calm intentions fly out the window.

I react

Flaring with frustration, I grab the bottle out of his hand and hiss, “This is killing me.” I don’t slam the bottle down; I just lock eyes with him and set it very deliberately back onto the table. “This choice is yours, but it is not working for me.” He picks up the bottle, carries it into the laundry room, and empties the contents into the drain. There. Problem fixed. He gives me a look. Are you happy? He doesn’t say this; he just glares this.

I’m not happy because within a day a replacement shows up. Of course, it does. And I am no closer to knowing what to do than I was before. I’m overwhelmed, confused, and so, so, afraid. Why isn’t he listening? He’s not acting the way he used to act. This feels so unstable. I think: How can we live our lives with you doing what you are doing? You are shipwrecking us. That’s how I felt.

Getting help

Deeply embarrassed that I can’t fix this on my own, I find myself at Al-anon – the club nobody wants to join (at least that’s how I saw it). I’m surprised to find these people to be remarkably peaceful, even while they share experiences far more unsettling than mine.

What is it about them? What do they have that I don’t have? I feel relief; I didn’t expect to feel at home in this room full of strangers. I attend six weeks of meetings before I gather the courage to say, “I don’t know what it is that you have, but I’m going to stick around until I figure it out.”

Keep coming back, they say, and get a book. There are several books I can choose from. I get a book and start reading; I read a little bit every day.

Awareness, Acceptance, and Action

Attending these meetings, I learn about “The Three A’s” – awareness, acceptance, and action. I am aware – I know that much – but what is acceptance? I’m confused. Can I just change my mind and be okay with whatever comes? Could acceptance mean “just don’t let it bother you?” After swinging from denial, “this can’t be happening” to condemnation, “this is killing me” – I tried “I can be okay with this. I’ll just go about my business.”

The trouble was I could not be okay with this. My body shook and my face drained of color every time I thought of going home. I found reasons to stay away for as long as possible. And when I finally had to go home, tears welled up from deep in my gut and I could t hold them back as I turned into my neighborhood.

This approach wasn’t working. I wasn’t sure what acceptance was, but I was discovering what acceptance was not. Acceptance is not condoning, because acceptance is safe, but condoning is not.

What is acceptance?

In psychology, acceptance means actively embracing our experience, even when it is distressing. Dr. Andrea Gurney explains:

Acceptance is taking stock of the situation — your feelings and emotions surrounding it — and seeing it clearly for what it is, opening to it, and feeling it deeply.

When you can acknowledge and accept your feelings, you can then begin to work towards productive action and change, choosing how you want to move forward and get where you want to go.

(Acceptance does not mean you have to like it. Not at all. But it does mean you can’t run or avoid!).

~Dr. Andrea Gurney

See it clearly. Open to it. Feel it deeply.

For me, acceptance involved pausing long enough to let what is soak in – to acknowledge my situation without trying to change, deny, condone, or condemn – it simply is what it is.

Let this be. It is what it is, and it affects me as it does. Until I can do this, I am not dealing with reality – I’m caught in the way I wish things were, or I am pressing the way I want things to turn out. That felt accurate.

Acknowledging that I couldn’t manage our situation felt deeply hard. Sad. Scary. The full weight of my anger and confusion felt unbearable. These big feelings carried such heavy consequences that I did not want to face them. And yet there they were.

Treating our stories gently

To get where we need to go, we must first acknowledge and accept how we feel. Without this, we cannot figure out ways to move forward. Difficult feelings are “first responders” that summon the courage to change what we can, and that brings hope.

According to Richard Rohr:

When we go into the full depths […] of anything, […] we can come out the other side transformed, more alive, more open, more forgiving of ourselves and others. And when we come out the other side, we know that we’ve been led there.

We are not holding on; we are being held by a larger force, by a larger source that is not our own. That is what it means to be saved! It means that we have walked through the mystery of transformation.

~Richard Rohr, God Is with Us through It All – Center for Action and Contemplation, April 21, 2022

Coming out the other side

I must find a way to live and trying to convince my husband that his choices are wrong – hoping that he will do something to ease my emotional pain – isn’t living. Ever-so-slowly, it dawns on me that it isn’t his drinking that’s killing me, it’s my expectation that he must change so I can be happy.

Truth is, I must change so I can be happy. This new idea becomes a lifeline that opens choices. Choice number one is making the decision to live, to be more me, to feel more fully the things I feel, and to be true to the way things affect me.

People will say and do things that trigger reactions in me. I struggle with that, but I can let my triggers become my teachers. I’m learning to pause – a helpful tool that buys a whisper of time and space between the trigger and my response. I use this time to face my feelings with courage, to make mistakes and learn from them, to leave space for good to emerge, and to take care of my part only. My inner well-being grows. I begin to live.

Practicing acceptance

My husband feels and addresses things the way he does. When he faces life differently than I do, I can give him space to make his choices. I can let him know how these choices affect me, but I cannot manipulate his choices to be more to my liking. When I let go of trying to “fix” him, we both gain dignity. This frees us both.

At the same time, for me to take care of myself, I must acknowledge the way his choices affect me. I need sober interactions throughout the day. Others may not need this, but I need this. The alcohol-affected mind and spirit are simply too chaotic for me to manage, and I need my home to be a place I can recharge.

Courage to change the things I can

I knew what I needed, but I was confused about how to change. For me, change required time, tools, and help. A counselor trained in helping family members deal with the effects of addiction helped immensely. I found a trustworthy community in Al-anon, I got a sponsor, and I worked the steps with my sponsor. I learned that a trustworthy community eases stress. Sharing with trustworthy people helped me feel less alone. I became less afraid of making mistakes as I found people to talk to. I never needed to make decisions alone. These supportive people helped me face hard things one decision at a time.

Learning to let go

It took time for me to learn that not everything is mine to fix. I had to consider – what would it look like for me to let this go? It might get worse, it might stay the same, or it might get better. Then I began to wonder – what if letting go makes me better? I needed to get better.

One day, a woman in a meeting asked, “Are you ready not to think about this?” I replied, “I am so weary of incessantly thinking about this. Yes, I’m ready.”

“Put it in the God box,” she says, “Let God put muscle into this situation. Now go figure out what you need.”

It took time to figure out what I needed, and it took courage to accept the physical and emotional cost of this situation. I took the time I needed, prayed for guidance, and reasoned things out with others.

Finding peace

I took a weekend to pray for perspective and to find the courage to do whatever God asked of me. Over that weekend, I become willing to stop spinning outcomes to the way I wanted them to go. For the first time in years, I felt peace. God would lead, and I would do my best to follow. I asked God to help me do whatever was best for us all.

Our story is hard. I didn’t get the happy ending I wanted. My decision to leave the marriage was the hardest, most painful decision I ever hope to make. I hated it. But I couldn’t stay either. Staying was destroying me. I needed space and time to get healthy again.

My husband lived only a few years beyond this decision – which saddens me deeply. There wasn’t time to reconnect or do any healing work together. I hate this part too. So many parts of our story feel unfinished and unfair. But even with the parts of our story I dislike, I am grateful for what I’ve learned.

Acceptance has enabled me – over time – to get to a place where I am now able to bless my husband and the journey he needed to take. Getting to this place took demanding work, and I had a lot of help. For a long time, it was hard to see any good at all, but this work has changed me.

Finding acceptance

Now, I am free to value so many things about his life, his character, and the things he loved. And I treasure warm memories from the years we spent together.

More broadly, I no longer feel pressure to deny, condone, or condemn unacceptable behavior. I simply need to get to a place where I can thrive. This has helped me tremendously.

I don’t do well in tumultuous situations, and change is hard. To make necessary changes, I needed both faith – that God was leading me every step of the way – and courage – that I could do what I needed to do. In the middle of things, it can be hard to trust that good days lie ahead, but they do.

The God of grace loves us. In my experience, no matter how difficult the days, God will show up with gentle kindness, deep care, and strengthening courage. This often happens through the kindness and strength of people who show up in the most difficult of circumstances. Sometimes it happens through a word, a song, or even a thought that breaks through with guiding clarity.

I don’t think I would have fully embraced this concept of God’s very present help if I hadn’t walked through these hard things. I still get overwhelmed, but now I know the power of God, of community, and of acceptance, and I’m deeply grateful.