of God go I. I grew up hearing this but could not begin to appreciate until life had shown me a few things. First and foremost perhaps, as in any lesson of grace, humility. Humility and grace are not about good planning, or inherent worth. They are not part of any equation we can control.
Earlier this week, in between labeling jars and wrangling dogs, I had one ear on Morning Joe when they played Chris Christie’s recent, moving riff on addiction. He tells the story of a friend, a guy who had it all A to Z, but lost it, including, in the end, his life, to addiction. An addiction that began with Percocet for a midlife athletic injury. Who of us can’t relate? Powerful: listen here.
Christie describes the funeral of his friend, and the man’s beautiful family sobbing, and he says to himself, there but for the grace of God go I. One of those expressions that it is only in living it, down in the foul trenches that life can be at times, do we get it. No one, it tells us, is immune from the slings and arrows of life. No one. Tragedy, illness, ruin. Shit happens. And like the somewhat corny book title of some years ago, it happens to good people.
My own life has delivered a few challenges as well as tragedy these past years. And it’s true, as in another overused expression, you don’t know who your friends are til you are down for the count.
I’ve lost a few friends along the way, friends who chose judgment based on arrogance, ignorance, fear rather than compassion based on understanding. Not to condemn them entirely, this story of my son defies understanding. Sad that they could not believe in me, and stand by me, and learn from what I am traversing. Because of course though in their hearts it is unimaginable, it could as well be them on the other side, with me saying there but for the grace of God. I’d like to think that I would not let go of their hand, the way some have let go of mine.
Addiction and the grace of God.
My experience navigating these soul-wrenching times has brought to mind the premise of AA, or any like-minded support group. It is one day at a time. The next day– the next hour– could present something to bring you down, to send you into a spiral. In the addict’s case, of returning to their substance; in mine, of being brought down by unimaginable sorrow.
But meantime. There is great joy and beauty, there is redemption in giving yourself over to work and to living as decent a life as you can. It is a choice. And thank God for friends of long date.
Whatever we do, whatever we eat, wherever we live and send our children to school, at some point it is not about us. Life, as the REM song goes, is bigger than you.
What life may or may not deliver, tough as it is for us control-freak Americans to accept, is pretty much out of our hands. Our reaction to it, and how we choose to be human or not, is all in ours.