3 Threads

God has blessed me with a wonderful wife and three amazing children, and it is because of those four people that I have a lifetime of warm, loving memories that I cherish and that, at times, sustain me. My youngest child, my daughter, has struggled with oppressive levels of anxiety most of her life. For those of you who have not had any serious issues with anxiety, I can tell you that, mentally, there are very few things worse than the crippling levels of fear and panic that severe anxiety causes. And it doesn’t stop. It is a constant, crushing presence in your mind and the pit of your stomach every second of the day. I compare it to having a ball of barbed wire in the center of your chest. It’s hard to breathe. It’s hard to move, and it’s impossible to do anything except obsess over what is causing your brain to truly believe the sky is falling.

I have struggled with anxiety throughout my life, with the most severe instances coming in the aftermath of some horrible things I’ve done or said while I was immersed in my alcohol and painkiller addiction. At its worst, anxiety can quickly devolve into a full-blown panic attack, leaving the sufferer virtually powerless to move, mentally and physically, as it did after my wife and children left me one morning after a 19-hour blackout/binge. That morning, I was able to get out of bed, still drunk and with a massive hangover brewing on the horizon. I stumbled into the kitchen, grabbed a handful of ibuprofen and a lemon-lime Gatorade, and headed for the bathroom for a long, hot shower. When I stepped onto the cold tile floor of our bathroom, it suddenly hit me, “They’re gone. They’ve all finally left.”

I don’t remember much of the following several hours except some broken images of me curled up in a ball on the floor next to the shower, naked and crying hysterically. My mind had stopped functioning, and my body had taken over. It was trying its best to cope with a level of mental and emotional despair that I had never experienced before. I don’t remember my sister stepping into the bathroom and helping me dress. I don’t remember the drive to the ER. I vaguely remember lying on an examination table, still crying. I don’t remember getting a shot or what particular flavor of benzodiazepine I was given, but seconds later, I was able to speak for the first time in hours. The crisis had passed, but the fear of losing my wife and kids remained, which meant the anxiety remained as well. Over and over, I saw their faces, and over and over, I thought about living without them. So, over and over, I thought about dying.

In time, I was allowed to come home. In time, I was able to stop drinking and swallowing painkillers. In time, I began to understand the nature and reasons for anxiety. More importantly, I began to see the purpose and necessity of pain, loss, and fear and was able to see anxiety in a completely different light than I had before. It was this knowledge that I recently tried to pass on to my youngest daughter as she found herself in a dark, seemingly inescapable nightmare of anxiety created by fear, disappointment, shame, and embarrassment. She had sent me a text expressing how lost and sad she was and how hopeless she felt. In years past, I had tried to help her with trite platitudes like, “Trust me, it's going to be okay.” Or, (one of my favorites), “Just breathe and get your mind on something else.” Each time I said these things, I knew they were pointless and offered no true insight or help. But I kept saying them. I guess I was hoping she would just “trust” me and eventually get strong enough to gain some modicum of control over her anxiety. When I think about it now, I’m physically unable to stop myself from rolling my eyes. I mean, those pearls of wisdom never helped me, so why in the world did I think they would help her?

This time was going to be different because this time I made the conscious decision to put what I had learned into a letter to her. I didn’t know if anything I said was going to help her, but at least the words would be genuine and the letter an honest attempt to convey knowledge that I had obtained from 60+ years of breathing air. That letter is below, and it now serves as the foundation of everything I am trying to do for the rest of my life. It’s called “3 Threads.”

Sweetheart, I wish there were some way you could spend just a few minutes inside my head. If there were, you would be able to know the truths that I have been ineffective at communicating for some time now. Those truths are surprisingly easy to say but equally difficult to understand if you haven’t been alive 62 years and drug yourself into and through all of the countless dark and desperate times I have. But, looking back on my life, I can see multiple threads that connected all those awful times to every beautiful and bright memory in my life. In fact, I can now see that had it not been for the dark and desperate times, those beautiful and bright memories and experiences would not have happened.

The First Thread is HOPE.

Throughout my life, it was there even in the darkest of days. Whether I truly believed everything was going to be okay or not, I still hoped it would. When I was alone, drunk, and crying in my apartment in Lubbock, I had hoped I would one day find the woman I was meant to spend my life with. After my father died in my arms, I had hoped I would be able to find a way to go on with my life and become a man he could be proud of. During three trips to hospital delivery rooms, with each delivery, I had hoped I would have a healthy child. Every time I sang the song that made you cry at birthdays, I had hoped we would all remain close and that each of my children would grow up to be kind and have a sincere concern for the well-being of others. When I was standing on our driveway asking God to help my son because I didn’t have the money necessary to pay for rehab, I had hoped He would one day allow me the opportunity to be the help to others who weren’t there for my son that night. During 26 years of addiction, I had hoped that one day I would be able to get sober and that my family would forgive me and love me. Pain, fear, and remorse were always there, but so was hope.

The Second Thread is KNOWLEDGE.

With every decision and resultant action, I never realized I had always learned something that, in turn, prepared me for something else. Every desperate situation has held some amount of knowledge that enabled something good to happen. Even in the darkest times, I came away with some realization or resolution that made it possible for me to help my family, myself, or a total stranger. I have learned that nothing is an accident. Nothing. Every physical and emotional scar is connected to a piece of knowledge that I have drawn upon to help my family and friends, and any strangers that God has dropped into my life. Nothing was an accident.

The Third Thread is JOY.

At the time it happens, the very moment when we feel joy, it’s just that, a feeling. Joy isn’t a location or something you can purposely create. Joy is actually the byproduct of perseverance and appreciation, but no one ever tells you that. We all walk through life waiting for joy to come to us...to save us from our sadness or reward us for our suffering. And the longer we wait, the more desperate and sad we become because it hasn’t arrived.

Our world begins to lose its color, and soon, all we can see are four or five shades of gray. Nothing is good and almost everything is bad. After all of the colors have faded, we begin to believe nothing is going “right” and that everything is going “wrong” and, inevitably, that “nothing will ever change.” We can’t see the first or second threads, and we fall into despair. Yet, if we understand that nothing is an accident and that bad things are supposed to happen, then we can begin to relax and permit ourselves to look forward to the inevitable arrival of something wonderful, the thing that our pain is preparing us for...aka “JOY.”

So, how do you see the threads? How do you find peace when every emotional, physical, and mental fiber in your body is screaming in agony, telling you to panic, that you are a disappointment, that you will never crawl out of this hole? Here’s how...

Step One: Realize that your self-worth is not contained within any job you’ve had or will have and understand that when you feel unworthy and allow yourself to be embarrassed or ashamed, it’s because you are letting your pride and ego push you into a corner and disconnect you from reality. Your self-worth is in the kindness you show your MeMa. It’s in the hope and connection you give your brother. It’s in the honesty and accountability that you give your sister. It is in the protection and support you give your mother. It is in the sense of calm and peace of mind that you give me. It is in the sincere love and acceptance you give to Steven. It is in your love for animals. It is in the total absence of cruelty and judgment of others. It is in the laughter you create and the laughter you share. Sweetheart, your self-worth, in essence, is in every breath you take because, without them, you would not be a part of our lives. See the divine thread of “Hope.”

Step Two: Take time to recognize and then truly appreciate all of the bad things that have happened to you by taking note of all of the good things that came after them. See the divine thread of “Knowledge.”

Step Three: Make someone smile. Through either your sense of humor or an act of kindness, lighten someone else’s load. Purposely witness the divine thread of “Joy.”

So, after you read this, I want you to go somewhere alone. Turn and face the sun with your eyes closed and begin to take deep breaths (in on 4, out on 8). Keep your eyes closed and tilt your head up so that you can feel the warmth of the sun on your face. Raise your arms a little and turn your palms up. Listen to every sound, smell every smell. Plug into the world around you and think about the three steps and the three threads. Release your fears and let them evaporate into the air around you. After a while, turn away from the sun and open your eyes. Now, look around and see all that is real, and remember:

“O that a man might know
The end of this day's business ere it come!
But it sufficeth that the day will end
And then the end is known.
― William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar  

In other words, relax. Nothing in your life is an accident. You are not an accident. Rest in the knowledge that everything will resolve precisely how it is meant to be, precisely when it is supposed to, and that it will be worth the wait. It always was for me and it always will be for you. That’s how God works.