Through the Red Door Blog

I have always been a person who marked life events with something tangible. It could be as simple as a new dress, a book to remind me, a souvenir of somewhere I visited. When I looked at the items I have collected, I would be taken back to the event or place and remember.

Sobriety is marked often with coins, and I have many. For me though I have marked the change and growth I have found in being sober with jewelry. My great grandfather was a jeweler and I worked in jewelry stores in college. I thought about becoming a jeweler myself once.

I wanted to mark my journey in sobriety and spiritual growth. When I had one month without drinking, I bought a hollow gold bead and put it on a chain. It was a way to mark the month and I wanted another bead, so it helped me stay sober that month and the month after and the one after! I bought another one each month until I was sober for two years—24 gold beads. I loved my necklace and wore it often.

After the two years, I changed what I did to mark my days and months of sobriety. I marked the years instead of the months, often with some simple jewelry. Some years it was something like a ring that had inlays of turquoise that matched the number of years I had and one year it was a ring with February’s birthstone—amethyst, for the month I got sober.

Years after it had been two years of sobriety, I was sitting in a meeting one day. I was excited to share that I was having a yearly anniversary. While I was waiting to speak, I noticed that I was wearing the necklace with 24 gold beads. Tears came to my eyes. It was my time to speak. “I am celebrating 24 YEARS of sobriety today”. I told them about my first 24 months and how I had bought the beads each month, never imagining that one day at a time, one bead at a time I would have 24 years! Time takes time I had learned, and it passes in the present moments of life. Change takes time and I found I had arrived in that place by learning, and sharing, and making and keeping the changes that would support my sober spiritual journey.

I started to buy beads again and have bought a bead for every year that I have continued to not drink one day at a time. Now my necklace has 34 beads on it. The gift of sobriety is all the moments I have connected to spirit and been able to share my sobriety with others. Thank you.

This is an excerpt from my book God Shots, Libbie S.

In his book THE RETURN OF THE PRODIGAL SON, Henri Nouwen writes, “At times this dark voice is so strong that I need enormous spiritual energy to trust that the Father wants me home as much as he does the youngest son. It requires a real discipline to step over my chronic complaint and to think, speak, and act with the conviction that I am being sought and will be found. Without such discipline, I become prey to self-perpetuating hopelessness.” *

“God loves you.” I can’t think of the number of times I said that to others and watched them tear up as it finally got through to them that they were worthwhile.

My problem was that I did not believe God loved me. I was a priest. I was drinking and periodically using drugs. On the outside I looked normal. Internally I was like a cave filled with ashes, pools of water, dank, dark, and had no idea as to what to do about it.

When advised to go to therapy, I did. I told the therapist what he or she wanted to hear and what I wanted them to hear. I was deemed to be “sound.” That was cause for a celebration, a drink. One can’t celebrate without a drink.

I remember only too clearly when I slipped one rung of the moral ladder. Before too long, I slipped another rung, and another. Then this became my new normal, properly excused as “everyone does this” but I knew that was not true.

One by one the lightbulbs went out on the inside. God could not love me. I didn’t love myself. The night of my thirtieth birthday I drank all night and cried that I had no home, no wife, no children. I had nothing to show for my life. What I was failing to see was my vocation as a priest as being worthwhile.

I participated in leadership in retreats I don’t remember as I was in a blackout. I talked about a loving, kind, forgiving, compassionate god. He or She was not my God. My god was going to punish me one day. My weekly flights to one city or another were a nightmare. I just knew we were going to crash, and I was going to hell. I repeated the act of contrition until Jack Daniels renewed my spirits and all was going to be okay. But it wasn’t. I did not “trust that the Father wants me home as much as he does the youngest son.” I could not trust that. As far as I was concerned, I was in a living hell of an existence, I was like a duck in a lake, calm but paddling fast under the surface. I was drowning in my own self-pity and awareness of my own sinfulness. How could god love me?

Looking back to my participation in the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous, I realize that God—my Higher Power—had been pushing me toward A.A. from the time I began drinking. Initially, I was helping A.A. in Dublin (Ireland) to find meeting places. Working with adolescences brought me into a new world of addiction. I came to the United States and found myself again working with young adults with alcohol and drug problems. I took university courses in addiction and not once did I see myself in any of the profiles.

One day I found myself at the door of my boss’s office saying I thought I had a drinking problem. Two months later, in a staff meeting, I said I wanted to go to treatment. In neither of these situations had I planned to say what I said.

I did not come into the Fellowship willingly. It took just over four years of a dry drunk, white knuckling it, before I acknowledged “I am powerless over alcohol.” It took a while longer to admit “my life has become unmanageable.           

I learned that recovery “requires a real discipline to step over my chronic complaint and to think, speak, and act with the conviction that I am being sought and will be found.”

A real honest fourth and fifth step cleared the way, opened the door to seeing myself as a human being with character defects, and in need of a good hug. Internally I was able to look back, not in anger, but in thanksgiving, for the grace given to me to live while I was dying.

Steps eight through twelve became my discipline. “Without such discipline, I become prey to self-perpetuating hopelessness.” Read the Big Book. Go to meetings. Get a sponsor. Prayer and Meditation—the maintenance of our spiritual condition. “I’m Séamus. I’m an alcoholic. Thank God for those words of freedom. Thank God for the discipline of recovery.

Séamus D
A retired Episcopal priest in the New Orleans diocese.

*The Return Of The Prodigal Son – Heni J. Nouwen.

Step One: “Powerlessness and unmanageability.” Ask yourself—now be honest, “Am I powerless over whether I’ll take that first drink?” I was powerless. I knew I would. I was drinking too much. I’d watch my friends, they could have two drinks and stop, but I couldn’t do that.

We must see this as a crossroads—to drink or not to drink, that’s the question—it’s that simple. We must see drink’s dead end and decide whether we select its path or the path of life.

Step Two: Yet we know as did Christ, that we are all sinners and that as alcoholics we may honestly mean that “I quit” one day but maybe not the next. We need help and Step Two hits that dead on, for it calls us to look to a “Power greater than ourselves to retore us to sanity.” We proved we can’t do it alone. We must reach for our Higher Power’s hand, Christ’s hand. We reach for that at an AA meeting, for our sponsor, the Big Book, for the others who have walked on this path. They can help us because that’s the very essence of the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. Christ and AA people will walk with you. And you will be welcomed just as Christ welcomed the man on the Cross on that first Good Friday.

Step 3: I “made a decision” to turn “my life over” to God—unconditionally, not temporarily, not just for today, not just until people get off our backs—unconditionally, like a defeated nation in war surrenders on the battlefield, just as that headline should read,

“....Unconditionally Surrenders.”

When we do so, we are surrendering our ego. No more are we to look to it for guidance. Our ego is what brought us to this point. If we “turn it over,” if we but surrender, we’ll not be alone.

I’ve talked with alcoholics right at this point in their lives—right at that “White Light point” —that same point Bill W saw as he lay on that hospital bed. The question becomes, “What are you going to do about it?” Yes, we surrender, then what? And you know deep down it isn’t going to happen without assistance—and your present assistant, Mr. Ego, is destroying you, for he in the past has stopped your efforts to avoid drink. But he still sits and waits. Mr. Ego knows he has a chance to win you back. Your struggle with him doesn’t end there, so accept this Program of action.

The Program of AA thunders into action if we now reach for its assistance and take the last next several Steps. This raw newbie will find that AA is a program of action and practicality. The Big Book tells us in detail what’s next in Steps Four through Nine, or as some would say, “How do we in the Program learn to stop that next drink, reach some peace, remain sober, and rid myself of all those past ghosts?”

And yet, and yet Christ knew we were sinners and Bill and Dr. Bob also knew that, for they had “gone back out.” The next Steps tell us how to fight that…

Jim A, St X Noon, Cincinnati, 2-7-24

A saint, I believe, might be someone whose life’s work and witness continue to affect the lives of others after their death. Hoping to achieve one thing by their life’s work, their work might instead unexpectedly inspire another. Such describes the life, witness, and ministry of Sam Shoemaker, who, although not called a “saint” in the traditional sense, is listed among the holy men and holy women of the Episcopal Church. And well he should be. Without him my life, and the lives of countless others in recovery would be very different! His feast day is January 31.

It's no exaggeration to say that without him it’s likely that recovery as we know it would not exist. There might not have been an AA, Al-Anon, or any other Twelve-Step fellowship. His work, witness, and ministry laid the groundwork for AA and through it, for the other fellowships. What he did fundamentally altered my life, even though both he and his work were completely unknown to me when I entered recovery in 1988. I was also hardly aware of AA, let alone Bill W. and Dr. Bob. Even so, the recovery program which Shoemaker inspired and nurtured was there when I needed it. Through Bill W, Dr. Bob, and the early AAs as the vehicles of God’s grace and mercy, Shoemaker exerted a profound influence on the course and direction of both my life and the lives of others. 

To paraphrase the author of Ephesians, Shoemaker’s life’s work, ministry, and witness were offerings, pleasing to God, whose fragrance spread abroad through the lives of the early AAs into the lives of countless others. While other spiritual movements arose during the Twentieth Century, for millions the most significant one was arguably the Twelve-Step movement spawned by AA. All of those fellowships arose from Shoemaker’s fostering of Oxford movement groups both in this country, in Canada, and at his parish in New York City. He was the midwife and spiritual inspiration for the original two Oxford meetings of alcoholics from which AA arose. 

Ironically, Shoemaker probably never intended that his life’s work spawn either AA or the Twelve-Step movement. Focused, instead, on church renewal, he and his mentor, Frank Buchman, the founder of the Oxford group movement, fostered that renewal through the formation of Oxford group meetings throughout North America. He, therefore, probably never intended to inspire a group of drunks to use an Oxford group meeting as their model to create the makings of AA in 1935. But ironically that seems to be how God’s Spirit, which blows unpredictably where it will, creates surprising effects! 

Shoemaker’s efforts with the Oxford group movement began in 1925, when the vestry of Calvary Episcopal Church, New York City, called him as their rector. Hoping to revive the parish by applying methods he’d learned from Frank Buchman, Shoemaker saw parish participation and membership increase. Despite the onset of the Great Depression four years later, he led the parish to build a multi-story building, the Calvary House, next to the sanctuary to provide housing for the church offices, for the Oxford group movement’s activities, and for the church staff. More importantly for the emergence of AA, he encouraged the parish to refurbish a rundown Calvary Mission which served unemployed street people and the homeless. Many were alcoholics such as Ebby Thatcher, who through that mission, not only became a parish member, but also led Bill Wilson to join an Oxford group meeting at the church. That meeting consisted of leading men from the parish who were struggling with alcoholism. Later calling themselves the “Alcoholic Squad”, their Oxford group evolved into one of the first of two meetings of alcoholics which became AA. The other, also originally an Oxford group meeting and the one in which Dr. Bob and wife, Anne, were participants, was in Akron, OH. Shoemaker nurtured and encouraged both.  

From Shoemaker, the men in the “Alcoholic Squad” learned the core of what would become AA’s self-understanding—the Steps. Later reflecting on Shoemaker’s influence, Bill Wilson honored Shoemaker by calling him AA’s “cofounder” and crediting Shoemaker with being the source of “most of the principles” and “spiritual keys” of AA, such as self-examination, admission of character defects, restitution for harms done, working with others and prayer and meditation. 

A Prayer

Merciful God, we give you thanks for Sam Shoemaker whose work inspired the founding of AA and the Twelve Step movement and whose life, witness, and ministry, by enabling our recovery, have immeasurably enriched our lives; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with you and the Holy Spirit, are one God, now and forever, Amen.

I am an organized person. My father would say: “A place for everything and everything in its place”. I like my life orderly and predictable—at least I think I do but I know I often fail and then try to wrestle my life into the order I want. It’s really about control. I want everything to go the way I want.

Recently, I heard someone relate a story about a friend who was very controlling, especially around events that they were responsible for at work. I too had been responsible for many years for large events and would get totally stressed out and irritable thinking that would ensure that the event went off with no mistakes or problems. I made the experience not very enjoyable for all the people I worked with and even many guests.

The person shared with me that their friend wanted to let go of the overly controlling way they were and so asked God to help. The prayer was: “Please surprise me”. What they were asking for was to let go of the outcome and trust. Trust that God would take care of the event and that it wasn’t all up to the planner. The surprise would be to leave room for a—well—surprise!

So, I recently tried the prayer. I had a very important meeting with someone I cared about. We had hurt each other badly over several years and were meeting to try to make amends and apologies to each other. I knew what I hoped for. I wanted to listen and to share myself without expectations of how it would all turn out. I sat in my car before the meeting and meditated. Just before I got out of the car, I said out loud: “God, Please, surprise me, thank you”.

We were to meet for an hour or so. It turned into 5 hours of real connection and deep sharing of so many things. We both took responsibility for the hurt we each had contributed to the breach in our relationship. We talked and walked and even had lunch together. It was a miracle, a God Shot experience. We hugged as we said goodbye knowing that we were open to a new kind of friendship.

As I got to my car, I realized that I had been given my surprise! I had forgotten all about my prayer from earlier in the day and all I knew was that a surprise miracle had happened and I said again, “Thank you”.

At a recent 12-Step meeting the topic was New Year resolutions. As I thought about the topic, I first felt guilty, because I had not made any or even thought about it. But then I remembered all the broken resolutions I have made over the years. What I have learned in my recovery is that I cannot resolve to do anything to change myself. I do not have the will or strength to bring about the desired changes in my life.

So what, do I just give up making myself a better person, or trying to stop bad behavior?

My understanding of change comes from 12-Step recovery and scripture. I have learned that most change happens slowly and involves struggle. If I want to change any aspect of my life, I need to follow the principles of the 12 Steps—first surrender and trust God, then a willingness to examine my issue and why I have it, then a confession to God and another person—but there is more. There is a process of becoming willing to finally let it go. And then when I fully realize I do not have the power to bring about this change, I humbly ask God to remove it. That is when God does for me what I could not do for myself.

This long painful struggle is designed into humanity. When God rescued Israel there was a lengthy process of back and forth between Moses and Pharoah and it was not until there was this long terrible struggle that they were finally set free.

Joseph had to go through his brothers trying to kill him, and then live as a slave, then as a prisoner for something he did not do. Through this long painful struggle Joseph was used by God to keep his people safe and deliver them from a terrible famine.

God is at work in our struggles to bring about healing. Change is happening in my life all the time and when I am struggling, I know it is because God is doing a good work in me. I will be better for it on the other side. I just need to be patient and trust.

After all, our ultimate deliverance came after an exceptionally long wait, then a bloody and painful death and resurrection. Awful but also magnificent.

Our world is in a struggle right now that requires some momentous change. The change will come I believe, but not until we have gone through the terrible struggle. All good things have come through pain and struggle—but they do always come. I do not like it, but I trust it.

Blessings to you in the new year as you struggle with the changes you seek in life.

God’s peace
Ed T.

Many years ago, I heard Fr. Joe Martin tell the story of a man who was leaving home to go to his evening A.A. meeting. On the way out, his son asked him to play “Catch.” The man said he did not have time as he had to go to an AA Meeting. “Can’t you miss just one meeting?” the son asked. “Miss a meeting? And then get drunk? Is that what you want?” The son relied “it makes no difference, you’re never here anyhow.” Fr. Martin’s response to this story is, “First things first and then Second things first.”

First things first: understand your disease, go to meetings, read the Big Book, get a sponsor, work the steps, and live the program.

We’re told to go to ninety meetings in ninety days. We’re told “Go to one hundred and eight meetings in 180 days.” We’re told “If you drank every day, then you need to be at a meeting every day. In other words, get an understanding of this disease into your head. But it doesn’t have to take a year-long absence from one’s family to get this into one’s head.

As we get into sobriety and the family, coworkers, friends, and acquaintances see that we are serious about our sobriety, then it’s time to put second things first, put family first. Yes, there are those who say if you begin to miss meetings you’ll drink again. That’s not true for the majority of us. I’ve missed a lot of meetings, and it did not cause me to drink. What did happen was this, when I began to go to meetings again, I found myself more relaxed, happier, at peace. There’s something in these meetings that impacts us mentally, emotionally, spiritually, socially.

The meetings are not therapy, but they are therapeutic. If I don’t drink for another month, I’ll have forty-five years active in the fellowship, (2/2/24) . That said, I remind the newcomers at the end of a meeting that what all of us have is today and that is based on the maintenance of our spiritual condition.

When I first began attending AA meetings, I attended a lot, and I mean, a lot of meetings, but for all the wrong reasons. I spent over four years white-knuckling it as a dry drunk. That is no way to survive. It certainly wasn’t living. I was a single dad with custody of my thirteen-month- old daughter and was a single dad for ten years. When I was blessed with my spiritual awakening I learned about this disease and did all I could to improve my spiritual condition. I found a Power greater than myself that restored me to sanity. Then I was able to give the name “God” to that Higher Power and begin the processes of cleaning up my life by working steps four through twelve. It was then, I believe, that having had the spiritual awakening, I began to live the program.

Living the program is how we learn the balancing act of family and other commitments in life. We begin to live mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and socially and all of this impacts us physically.

Living the program, practicing the principles in all aspects of my life gives me the freedom to decide when and which meetings to go to. When out of town and in a new environment, a meeting becomes part of that experience.

By the time the Steps were written, Bill W. and others had done some serious reflection on how they got sober and the balancing act of integrating meetings with the rest of our life’s commitments. It was not either/or, but both/and.

First things first is a morning “Thank You” to our Higher Power, a cup of coffee and some quiet time to ground ourselves on the gift of today. Second things, getting to work, kids to school, meetings, groceries, car maintenance, and all the other things that may fall into our lap. We create time for the sacred hour of Fellowship in the morning, noon, or late evening.

A book, written a few years ago, had the title “First, make your bed.” For us in recovery it could be titled “First, talk to your Higher Power.” It is that conversation, or lack of it, that can make a difference to the remainder of the day.

As we begin this new year, it may be an opportunity to review our values and ask ourselves are we putting first things first, and then are we ready to put second things first.

Séamus D.

Seamus is a retired Episcopal priest in New Orleans.

I’m sitting tonight in an assisted living facility writing a paper on my family’s history to be read to a group that gathers to hear papers by its members. For no reason, this thought raced across my mind: “I’d worked the Program of Alcoholics Anonymous for years and I recalled my ups and downs and that I was finally able to surrender to my depth of being and to work the Steps, all of them, one-by-one.”

This stopped my focus on my paper so I checked my emails and found one from Lucy asking if I could write something for “Red Door … “Yes of course” said I, then the thought, “About what?” … But it really wasn’t too hard to come up with something: acceptance.

If there is anything to learn about living in assisted living, it is that “acceptance” is the key to serenity. If we don’t take that path, we wilt and crumble—physically, mentally.

To understand the Program, we had to accept our addictive living, else we’d die. We had to face that reality and twist it into something positive, for yes, I am a sinner. I’m an addict but I saw that our Higher Power was always with us offering a hand of assistance if we but reached out, if we but surrendered our ego-driven ways and reached for something better—a way of life, of love, fellowship, concern for those still suffering, a way for us to check ourselves so we didn’t become so self-impressed that we’d fall victim once again to our demons.

The Program gives us ways to work through those ups and downs and to correct our behavior. Easy-peasy? …’course not, but we are called to keep at it, to work the Steps each day, to address mistakes and to move on. What a blessing.

Strange, isn’t it—a simple program for complicated people and it all came from a Higher Power through Bill W and Dr. Bob in that Gatehouse at the Seiberling Estate in Akron, just two drunks talking to one another.

My take-away? Get to a meeting, work with someone, and whatever happens, keep coming back for as someone said, “Sinners are Welcome.”

Jim A, St X Noon, Cincinnati, 1-4-24.

My family went to my grandparents’ house for Christmas dinner. After they both died, we went to my Aunt Sally and Uncle Bob’s. They lived in the same town as my grandparents and had lots of room. The grownups would eat buffet style in the living room and the kids (I had lots of cousins and 3 sisters) would eat in the basement at the ping pong table.

Before dinner there would be lots of loud visiting time and what I came to know—lots of drinking—EXCEPT for my Aunt Sally. She would sit quietly in the living room and visit with folks. Often someone would ask: Does Sally have her Tab? (Tab was the precursor to Diet Coke). I remember wondering why so many of my adult relatives wanted to know this. I don’t really know why I always noticed all the attention my relatives had about Aunt Sally’s drink.

As a young adult I learned that Aunt Sally was an alcoholic. Her disease started when she was young, and her system had a terrible time with it.  She had blackouts and seizures. Apparently, she was too drunk to go to her own mother’s funeral. In the 40’s there was little that could be done but to have her go to a hospital and dry out, which she did repeatedly. I learned all this indirectly through comments made here and there. No one really talked about it.

By the time I was 10, she was sober. No one in the family talked about it. She never talked about it, but later I found out she had been in AA. I think the family (many of whom I believe were also alcoholics) believed that only Aunt Sally was an alcoholic and that their drinking was normal. My family was a whisky and wine in crystal glasses type of alcoholics. The only thing they did to acknowledge Sally’s drinking and then sobriety was to make sure she had her Tab. I believe she was the only adult at those Christmas dinners who wasn’t drinking heavily.

Fast forward to when I was 36 years old, drinking daily, and Christmas is coming, and I am falling apart. I was angry, irritable, and very discontent.  My anxiety was out of hand and all I could do was to figure out a way to drink and not have it show. Our elegant Christmas dinner that year was tense, though I think some of the friends who came (by then I lived 300 miles from my family) didn’t think anything was amiss. I was the one though who kept going to the kitchen to get another bottle of wine.

By the end of January, I knew I had to do something. One of my oldest friends was two years sober and one of my sisters was sober as well. I went to see my sister and she took me to many AA meetings—it was my version of a treatment center. I returned to Seattle, my home, and my life got better and better.

When Christmas came around again, I wanted to have a big dinner. It was my first sober Christmas. I looked at the crystal wine glasses in the china cabinet and felt sad. What would I do with these goblets now that I didn’t drink? I took my sadness to a meeting and talked about it and shared that I didn’t know what to do—a few people laughed and I didn’t understand why. One woman came up to me after the meeting and said with a smile that she understood but wondered: “Have you ever thought that you could drink some other liquids in those glasses other than wine”? Then I laughed—“no, I never thought of that!”. I was sober! 

I could have a wonderful Christmas and be honest about my sobriety and I could fill beautiful glasses with juice or something else. I toasted my Aunt Sally, who had long since died, that Christmas with a Diet Coke in a beautiful crystal wine glass and thanked her. Now I understood on some level why I so remembered her drinking her Tab. She was planting a memory that I would need 26 years in my future.  —Libbie S.

Job 11:18 And you will have confidence, because there is hope; you will be protected and take your rest in safety.

Over four years ago (this was written in 2008) I lost my job. At first, I was confident this was a momentary setback, that a new and better situation was sure to turn up. After several months of looking without success, and on the verge of losing my unemployment, I was getting scared. I had foolishly failed to significantly adjust my living expenses and my savings were dwindling. Feeling depressed and frustrated, and uncertain what to do next, I accepted an invitation to spend a few days visiting a friend in New York City. What better place to forget my troubles and have a little change of scene. I rode the bus (amazingly cheap transportation!) and slept on my friend’s couch. My troubles, of course, came right along on the trip, and soon the fears returned and, with next to no money to spend, I just wandered around Manhattan. This aimless wandering when I was feeling fearful and anxious was dangerous for me. As a recovering alcoholic there was a real danger, I would suddenly decide a drink would make me feel better, take a turn into some anonymous bar, and lose the sobriety I had worked on for thirteen years. Drinking again would mean a slow and steady descent into a living hell. As I walked down Second Avenue with this self-destructive impulse growing inside of me, I remembered that the national office of The Episcopal Church was at 815 Second Avenue. I figured there must be a chapel in the building somewhere, and I decided to stop there and pray.

When I entered the chapel there was one other person seated there. I closed my eyes to meditate, and I said a prayer. I continued to pray in silence with my eyes closed, but I was aware that others were entering the place. Then a woman began to play the piano and sing. She was very talented, and I love good music, so I stayed rather than leave. The thought did enter my mind that maybe some service was about to start because by now there were others entering the room. But I was near the door and thought I could exit once things started in earnest. I looked around to see that the chapel was filling with around thirty people, all women.

It was surely God's hand pushing down on my shoulder that kept me in my seat once they started the prayers for the day. This was no sedate Episcopal Noonday Prayers service but rather a circle of black women swaying, singing, and praying with hands in the air. I’m a child of my church, and I’m generally uncomfortable with extemporaneous and spirit-guided praying, but this group had me spellbound.

Then one of the women came to me and asked me what had brought me there that day, what was it that was weighing on my mind? The words “I need a job” tumbled out of my mouth. I thought I would faint from the sensation of lightness and release I was feeling.

The women had me stand in the center of their circle as they surrounded me, placed their hands on my shoulders and head, and prayed that God would give me strength and courage to find my way to new life. I felt like I was swimming in warm, clear water and I wept.

I don’t remember much about the rest of the service although there was a sermon preached on the verse from Job I read at the start of this story. Afterwards many of the women came up to me and hugged me. Then I realized that they were putting dollars in my shirt pocket!

I wasn’t actually broke at the time, and I thought I should refuse the money, but it was so freely given that I had to accept it. The last person, the woman who asked me what was troubling me, gave me this small New Testament as she said goodbye. The next day I was on the bus back to Columbus. I renewed my job search, and I was working again within a couple of weeks.

Life is all about change. Sometimes those changes feel a lot like death, and we simply have to accept that. Trusting in God is not our only option when we walk these valleys full of shadows, but it is the only option I’ve tried that releases me from fear and offers me a new life of abundance. God does not exempt us from enduring life's darker moments, but God does travel with us through those darker times and is there even when we have difficulty finding a Divine Presence. Jesus felt a moment of desperation and fear in the garden before his arrest and trial, and he prayed to God for deliverance. Later Jesus prayed a prayer of abandonment on the cross just before entrusting his spirit to God. He taught us to pray "Thy will be done" and that is how I try to end my prayers now. Practicing resurrection... for me it is the only way to live ...an abundant life.