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How Losing Almost Everything Brought Me One Step Closer to God
I woke up right across the road from hope
I don’t think I will ever forget the first night I slept in my car.
It was near the end of my active addiction to alcohol.
I’d bought a bottle of bourbon earlier in the day and had not yet earned enough money delivering food to pay for one more night in the hotel where I’d been staying.
It was late. I was tired. I needed to eat.
I bought some snack cakes and water. I moved the blankets from the trunk to the backseat. I would turn the car on when I woke up to get some heat on a cold November night.
I’d sleep in my car two more times before I finally reached out and committed to doing the work to stay sober.
Just months before, I had two great jobs and a side contract. Was earning more money than I had in my life. At 45, I felt I’d reached the mountaintop — completely ignoring the giant weight of substance abuse that was tied around my neck.
At that point in my life, despite receiving repeated second chances, I’d stepped away from both church and God.
From the comforting confines of not one, but two offices in a growing city, I knew that I had arrived — and had done so through my own efforts.
Sure, I drank more than I should. But, that hadn’t stopped me from rising like a Phoenix from the ashes of a past filled with missteps and outright bad acts.
I started pondering this juxtaposition the other day in the car as I heard a calm, soothing tune from one of my favorite bands, U2. The song is call ‘One Step Closer.” Here are some of the lyrics:
I’m ‘round the corner from anything that’s real
I’m across the road from hope
I’m under a bridge in a rip tide, that’s taken
Everything I call my ownOne step closer to knowing
One step closer to knowing
Not far from hope. Away from all my possessions.
That’s where I found God.
I didn’t see God’s work in restoring me time and again. Didn’t see him in the blessing of a nonprofit board willing to take a risk at a time when I desperately…
