Discovering a Personal Relationship with God

I want to remind the reader and those following along with my story in this structured month of May that these practices are how I encountered them in my journey to a life in active recovery. I refuse to believe that taking these practices in this exact order is the only way to find yourself on the path of recovery and I want to stress that point as I lay out the next practice of recovery that I encountered during my time in rehab and beyond - Spiritual Connection. This is the most deeply personal practice yet, and also the most critical in maintaining myself on my path of recovery.

In reflecting back on my story, I feel that each of the preceding practices (Movement, Gratitude and Vision) all contributed to my ability to be able to approach and experience the practice of Spiritual Connection. There’s an interesting problem that I have been thinking on lately - can someone practice their way into a Spiritual Connection? Where they’re able to establish a real individual relationship with a higher power as they understand it? Or is it something that has to be experienced only? Let me share my thoughts on it based on my story.

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Overall, I feel that an individual has to make themselves willing and open in order give themselves the highest probability to have a spiritual experience that can then lead them into being able to practice and strengthen their spiritual connection on a near constant basis. Based on my experience, I have found that willingness and openness allowed me to see things that were right there in front of me, that I had largely ignored previously.

In my case, willingness and openness was like turning on the radio and at least turning up the volume so that if there was something broadcasting over that frequency, maybe I could hear it at last. When it came to spirituality and religion, I had stuffed that radio as far back into the closet as I possibly could for many years. Rehab allowed me to pull it out.

The exact experience that I had that changed me and made me willing and open (please note, I did not say convinced) to having a spiritual connection was hearing someone share at an AA meeting and simply state, “I do not want a God that I understand”.

For those of you who have followed along with my story, I am certain you are rolling your eyes as, “Kyle is bringing up that random old guy from an AA meeting again that he’ll never meet again”, because, yes, I am bringing up that random old guy from an AA meeting again that I’ll likely never meet again.

That statement was and is just so profound to me. I realized what a blocker that I had created in my life when it came to spirituality because “it didn’t make sense” or “no one seems to have a good explanation”. I refused to accept God on the basis that I didn’t know and things just didn’t make sense, until that specific AA meeting.

I feel that my hang up with God and with spirituality was that when I was looking for or seeking answers, what I was initially finding wasn’t very compelling to me. This was especially true during the phase of life that I was going through at the time (early 20’s). On top of all that, leaders of various religious organizations seemed to me to be behaving in ways that were very much anti-pattern to the lessons and stories that came out of their mouths. From my vantage point, I saw manipulation and treachery and I wanted nothing to do with it.

I will spare the details of once again going through my return to faith and my acceptance of the fact that, yes, there is something more powerful than me in this world. If you want to hear the full details give the podcast on Spiritual Fitness and Spiritual Connection a listen. What I will expand on is how forming this relationship with God, or a higher power, kept me on the path of recovery without even a single urge to go back to alcohol, as we carried the weight of decisions and information that came along with Lucy’s life on earth.

There’s a concept in AA that I actually have a counter argument for, and that is that one should never pray for selfish things. I have realized, very early in my recovery journey, that being an alcoholic makes one incredibly selfish and I’m not going to necessarily change that over night. Given that fact, I am very focused on pointing my selfish tendencies at activities and thought patterns that keep me on the path of recovery versus tailspinning me off and back to drinking. I also attempt to be as aware as possible of when I am engaged in a selfish activity or thought pattern.

Prayer is one of those activities. I found a very healthy balance and approach to prayer every time that Alyssa and I went to a doctors visit as we were monitoring Lucy’s health and growth when Alyssa was pregnant with her. Doctors had warned us - Lucy’s condition makes it such that her heart is likely to give out at any moment. Each visit for an ultra-sound was an unknown if we were going to hear a heartbeat that week. So Alyssa and I would take a moment in the vehicle once we were parked at the hospital and just pray together.

We would pray - “God, we selfishly ask that Lucy has a heartbeat today and that Lucy is growing and gaining her health back. But we are not in control and so we ask you for the strength to accept whatever plan that you might have in place.”

The prayer was simple, and there were selfish aspects to it. However, we relinquished any semblance of control that we imagined that we might have and it gave us strength and comfort. One of the arguments against God always circles back to prayer and the fact that there’s no way a single entity could listen to and take action on all the prayers in the world. Case closed, throw it out.

But what if prayers weren’t for God? What if, instead, prayers were our opportunity as massively flawed human beings to sort out the jumble of thoughts and desires in that weird brains of ours and allow us to feel a connection with God? What if, the vast majority of people have the entire purpose and intent of prayer wrong?

Hear me out - if God is all powerful and all knowing, doesn’t he already know your thoughts and desires? If he already knows your thoughts and desires, why pray? As a culture, we have convinced ourselves that God doesn’t require sacrificial slaughterings to appease him anymore, so what’s the point of praying?

I found that the purpose of prayer is to take all those spinning and wild thoughts flowing through our brains, all the selfish desires, the impulses to lie, steal, cheat, manipulate and steal, the human obsession to control as much of their lives as possible and the general weirdness of life and allow yourself to be honest about them and sort your thoughts out more for yourself than anything else. For me, prayer has allowed me to feel a connection with God and to meditate on my weird human and selfish thoughts that are constantly flowing through my mind.

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Based on my experience, I feel that God and life has a plan for us all. Given that, during our experience over this past year, I found comfort in prayer to express two very distinct requests: my selfish, yet real desires as a flawed, but eager to improve, human being and most importantly the request for strength to accept and handle whatever God has in store for us.

There was a saying that I heard when I was struggling in my battle with alcoholism that really impacted me. I had loved ones say, “God doesn’t give you problems that you can’t handle”, which was well intentioned but really wound up hurting me because I was clearly not handling this situation with alcohol well. A simple reframe in my time in rehab changed a single word but transformed its meaning. That reframe is, “God doesn’t give you problems that God can’t handle”.

That statement, mixed in with an ability to be honest with myself and parse out the aspects of life that are genuinely out of my control completely changed my approach to prayer and my relationship with God. If there are situations or aspects in life that are genuinely out of my control, and I feel overwhelmed by them, I give them to God and focus on the things that I can control. I can honestly say that I stop worrying about them.

Lucy and I had a special experience while she was being stabilized in the NICU after her birth. Alyssa and I had done everything in our power up to that point to give Lucy a fighting chance. When the care team and I arrived at Lucy’s NICU room in the minutes following her birth, I stood outside to afford all available space in the room to the care team. I prayed, “God, I selfishly want her to live, but please give me the strength to accept your plan” repeatedly and I observed the team work.

It was an extreme situation in acceptance and knowing your place. There was nothing from a skillset perspective for me to do, and for me to inject or involve myself in this situation would be detrimental to Lucy’s chances at life. So I watched, thought and found myself in an intense amount of gratitude and felt a very surreal bond with God in those moments.

I thought of the lineage of medical professionals that mentored students and staff to get them to this point to be able to care for Lucy. I thought about a random nurse or doctor who I’ll never know that spent years obsessing over the pursuit of perfection in a very specific medical process. I thought of the engineers and manufacturers who created the devices that were being used by the confident hands of the medical team. I thanked God for the miracle of all of these seemingly random occurrences and skilled individuals that were now a part of our lives.

I’m going to cut myself off at this point. One thing that I am discovering with my new found relationship with God is that all of this is so fresh and recently discovered that I tend to chase and explore new ideas, revelations and concepts on this topic. And I get long winded (or written in this case). So for now, I will close out the newsletter on this topic but plan to return to it in the future.

Of all the practices and the pillars of fitness becoming spiritually fit has sustained and saved me from the shackles of alcohol more than anything else. I now would give away every other aspect of my recovery except for my relationship with God, because with it I will never be alone, I will never have a burden to carry that is too heavy and I will be comforted knowing there is a purpose to our lives.

God -

Grant me the Serenity to accept the things I cannot change.

The Courage to change the things I can.

And the Wisdom to know the difference.

That’s all I’ve got (for now),

Kyle