Years ago in a profound dark night of the soul I often had conversations with a dear friend about what we would do when we came out on the other side, if we came out, when the immense spiritual and emotional pain we were immersed in would finally go out like the receding tide. We pointedly remarked that the epic for us would not be getting on airplanes, going to Africa and saving thousands of orphans from miserable death. We merely wanted to go to the grocery story without the demons of panic, anxiety and agoraphobia on our backs. For us it would be truly epic to merely traverse an entire day without fear.
Even in the immense darkness enclosing me I was able to discern God had provided this friend to share my struggles with. He was dealing with the exact same struggles; he was just enough further on his path to recovery to give me immense hope there could be light at the end of the tunnel and it wouldn’t be a train. In recovery work we often speak of how sharing a problem, of telling on ourselves, results in the problem being half solved. This certainly proved to be so in my experience. That a huge robust man nearly seven feet tall could be mowed down by emotional crisis in seconds and then begin a convincing recovery with God’s help was in my tiny dark world truly epic. Being able to tell on myself to someone with understanding was immensely cathartic, and therapeutic.
Then we got well. The tide did go out, very slowly. We both found solid refuge in God, delivered from the on-going scourges of panic, anxiety, and agoraphobia. As we got better, living more in life’s challenges rather than life’s problems, we became able to handle bigger things. I could again wash clothes, prepare meals, and even stay alone at night in my house, the truly epic. For a long season, such activities were out of reach.
Then the day came when I actually bought an airline ticket and put it on my refrigerator door as an icon of my progress. For years I was unable to travel and would often sit wistfully at the window and gaze at jet contrails, wondering how it was possible for people to ride above the clouds. I wondered even more intensely how was it I once was able to do so with impunity. That I could again sit at a computer and print an airline boarding card was a huge marker for the success of my spiritual and emotional recovery, the truly epic. At one time I could not conceive of driving ten miles to see one of my favorite plays directed by a dear friend, despite my fifteen years of theater work and a free ticket.
I made it through that tentative return to air travel successfully with only a few spots of emotional turbulence. I called my gentle giant when I hit emotional shears and he talked and prayed me through them. I landed safely at the far end and again at this end. I felt as if I completed the Iron Man triathlon in record time.
In spiritual recovery we learn deeply we cannot accomplish very many things alone; it really does take a circle of caring compassionate friends to accomplish many things. I was only able to risk getting back on an airplane five years ago with the great encouragement and send off of my circle. Every one of them knew getting through a day without shared support was often problematic. Many people do successfully get on airplanes without send-offs and circles of support, but for those who have been to unspeakable emotional and spiritual hell, merely getting on one can be an ultimate challenge, our four-minute mile.
In the years since, I’ve been on countless airplanes, traversing at least a dozen time-zones many times. I’ve been granted first-class travel to any place on earth. The circle around me has deepened and I now bask in friendships of a stature previously unknown to me. None of those planes have taken me to anyplace as satisfying and wondrous as those quiet ones on back porches where we sit in companionable silence and enjoy the gathering aromas of BBQ while thunderstorm convections bring welcome relief to a sultry southern night. We remember whence we came, and bask in the wonder of the present.
As I face the near-term prospects of extended travels taking me as far as the Gold Coast of Australia, the Maritimes of Canada, a transcontinental road trip, I again wonder about what constitutes the truly epic. Is the ability to again cover my refrigerator door with first-class flight coupons epic? Attractive? Yes? Epic? No. I have to take a moral and fearless inventory of why I feel compelled to cover my life with assorted coupons and admission tickets.
In my meditation this morning I was challenged with this imperative. “Today, I will accept where I am as the ideal place for me to be. If I am in-between, I will strive for the faith that this place is not without purpose, that it is moving me towards something good.” I can state emphatically that my present place is a very good one, for me.
We speak of living lives of attraction rather than ones of promotion. We believe spiritual transformation can be incited in others still in their darkness if they see lives being lived well, believable lives within their reach. For a season I’ve been caught up in increasingly misguided ideas of what is truly epic. Coming out of a dark night of the soul and a few good investments have allowed me to travel the world and do whatever I want. I developed a misguided idea of what my ‘new normal should look like. Despairing people just coming out of prison, alcoholism, and addiction are not going to relate to my first-class world junkets. The heroin addict crying yesterday because she cannot afford cigarettes to blunt her intense cravings for more heroin is not a bit interested in my eight-week junket across the South Pacific. She just might be more interested in my making the journey fifty feet to take down the avalanche of trash piling up behind our meeting rooms, a legacy of strangers who’ve decided dumping on a place where alcoholics and addicts find experience, strength and hope is okay. My efforts to provide her with a clean, safe and attractive place to come each day might be nearly epic. It will actually require finding trucks, helpers, lifts, and grinders.
The truly epic is being content where we are. The truly epic is driving three miles to a dear friend’s house, sitting in companionable silence, watching the fireflies ignite in late dusk while the cicadas sing the chorus.
Blessings,
Craig C. Johnson
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