Be Still

The other day I came home from an exhausting day.  It wasn't a bad day, merely one that was full of many different activities, running around, switching roles from employee to wife to patient to parent to customer.  It was the kind of day that would normally lead me straight to a glass of wine as I unwound and made dinner.  What I did when I got home was pour myself a glass of non-alcoholic wine.

What's wrong with that, you wonder.  I was holding to the letter of my law; I wasn't drinking alcohol.  But I was using the faux wine in the same way that I used real wine - as a way to calm myself down and not face head on the emotions that had been stirred up.  I was reaching for something outside of myself to avoid what was going on inside of me.

What I hope for in the future is that I will be aware enough of what I am experiencing that I will take moments throughout the day to just breath, to check out of whatever is going on and check in with myself.  Some days I just run and run and run, don't you?  What if I took some time during those days to stop what I'm doing and be still?  

I bought myself a necklace as Christmas present last year and I wear it all of the time.  It says "Be still" and I wear it because I so often forget to do that.  You may know that is the beginning of a passage in the Bible that says "Be still and know that I am God."  When I bought the necklace I wasn't ready to finish the verse.  I found a lot of jewelery with the full verse, but it took me a long time to find one that simply said "be still".  I think now I am ready and it is helpful to me to know that he is God and I am not.  I don't have to do or be everything; I can relax and know that he is in charge. 

But until I can make it a regular habit to check in with myself during the day I don't want to be using fake wine or fake beer in the same way that I used alcohol before.  That would make this whole year long experiment pointless.  I wouldn't learn anything.  

I need to be able to sit with the feelings that come up at precisely those times when I reach out for something.  After wearing this necklace for a year, I really do need to be still.

 

Habits

I am amazed at how uneventful this has been so far. 

I feel like I should be either A) struggling more or B) learning great lessons about myself or C) both of the above.  The only thing I've learned so far is that my nightly wine habit was merely that, a habit, and one that was easy to break.  I've been to one holiday party where I normally would have had a glass or two of wine, and having water instead was no big deal.

Unfortunately there's this little lizard named Yes Butt who lives on my shoulder and whispers in my ear 

• ... you haven't really been tested
• ... things will be harder the longer this goes on
• ... you won't be able to resist a glass of wine on the deck in the spring
• ... you can't do this

You know what?  Here's the thing.  That right there is exactly what I have conditioned myself to expect.  I've lived a long time with that voice in my head but it is time to accept that Yes Butt is getting tinier and tinier every day.  If I pay attention to what I'm actually thinking and not what I expect to be thinking I barely hear him at all anymore.  

Have you ever had that happen?  You look at something that you have believed about yourself for a long time and ask yourself "Is that really true?"  Sure, it was probably true at one point, but somewhere along the line I changed, and those thoughts no longer line up with reality.

A year or so ago I was driving with my daughter.  We were coming home from meeting with a friend who had said something along the line of how I am an adventurous person.  I told my daughter that I was really surprised she had said that because I don't see myself that way.  She said "Mom, when are you going to stop being surprised when people say stuff like that to you?  How do you see yourself?  If you had to describe who you are, what would you say?"

Not too long after that I was in a class and one of our assignments was to write down what we were feeling before we ate.  The first day I started to write horrible stuff about myself and my food choices, only to stop and wonder "Do I really think that?"  Well, no, not really.  I had been living so long with the voices from my past that I didn't stop to re-evaluate them.  Ever.  I eat pretty well most of the time, so why was I continuing to beat myself up about it?

Habits - they're not just having a glass of wine every night.  Habits are also the way you think about things without really thinking.  They are programmed responses to stimuli.  I have a habit far worse than my nightly wine habit.  I have a habit of selling myself short.

That is going to be a far more difficult habit to break.

Or not.  I don't want to sell myself short.

And on the Seventh Day ...

A couple of times over the past week I've thought about various situations I am going to encounter in the next year.  When I've found myself doing that I've gotten discouraged, thinking there is no way I am going to have enough self control not to drink.

The coming weeks with the holidays seem challenging.  No wine at the holiday party tonight?  No champagne toast on New Year's Eve?  How do people do that?  How do they celebrate without raising a glass with everyone else?

Then for a moment I get sad.  I'm sad that I "won't" be able to participate.  I'm sad that I don't get to have a drink.  Everyone around me will be drinking and having a good time, and I'll be doing what exactly?  The obvious answer is "having a good time without drinking" and I hope obvious = true.  We'll see.

The interesting thing to me is that these thoughts and feelings have come and gone in no time.  It is entirely too much to think about the next 51 weeks stretching out in front of me. The old adage about taking one day at a time suits me just fine. I don't have to resist an icy cold beer on a hot summer day just yet, do I?  When I get there, I'll be there, and the same power that has kept me from drinking for the past seven days will be there with me, possibly stronger, perhaps, I don't know, maybe a little weaker that day, but it will be there nonetheless. 

I think in the past I have gotten waylay-ed by the thought that I can't possibly keep this up for any length of time.  If it's not tonight's wine it will be tomorrow's promise of a Manhattan, so let's open the bottle and be done with it.  I think that temptations in the past have been easy to succumb to because I have let myself down so many times that I no longer trust myself.

What is different about this time is that I still don't trust myself but I do trust God.  Wow, it is still really difficult to write things like that even though that is what I am doing.  I can't do this on my own.  I have proven that. It helps too that I have committed to just a year of no alcohol.  There are a lot of things I can put up with if I have a predetermined end in sight.  I've gotten through many a set of burpees that way, not to mention a half-marathon or two.  Just tell me where or when the finish line is and get out of my way.

This time I hope to stay out of my own way as well.

One week down, fifty-one to go.

Spreading the Word

Surely soon I will run out of psuedo Biblical titles for my posts.  It would be a lot of pressure on myself to keep this up for any length of time.

I have started telling people of my YONA (Year of No Alcohol).  One sibling mentioned that I am at the age when our mother possibly began drinking too often.  He said that while it is too strong a word to call it an intervention, he remembers that our father and some of their friends had a sit down talk with her about her drinking.  Both of her parents were alcoholics, so it seem reasonable to assume that she ... You know what?  I can't finish that sentence.  More and more these days I find myself questioning what it is reasonable to assume about my mother at all.  Although I was 31 when she died I didn't really know her as an adult.  The list of the things I would ask her now is a mile long and growing.  I don't know how she felt or what she thought about her parents or drinking or any of that.

Another sibling, hearing of the first sibling's observation of age similarity, suggested that it is more a stage of life similarity.  When our mother was our age she and our father moved away from all of us children.  She was facing an empty nest and wondering what next.  Although my nest is currently not empty, I am reaching the end stages of my career and the likelihood that the nest will soon empty.  Possibilities abound, but I must admit that I sense that time is growing short to live the rest of the life I want to live.  I often think of a quote that goes something like this: At the end of the day the Universe asked "Is that all that you wanted?".  No! I want to shout.  I want more.  Did she want that too but not know what to do or how to go about it? Did she, instead, just drink?

A friend, not tying this to my mother at all, suggested that having this be a project for a year is a way to make it less threatening to those around me.  There is definitely something to that. 

Another friend simply replied "Excellent!"

When I told my daughter she immediately asked me "What do you need from me?"  I love that girl.

My husband is concerned that I'm doing this because I think drinking alcohol is a bad thing and I am a bad person for doing it.  Not too many years ago he wouldn't have been far from the truth, but I'm not that person any more.  Alcohol is fine.  Me drinking alcohol is fine.  I just want to see what it's like not to do it for a year.  He is behind me 100%, as he has been for every single thing I've ever gotten it into my head to do.  Well, there was that one chiropractor he hated, but that's another story.

From here on out it will be less a conversation to be had and more just a gradual "oh by the way" sort of thing when out with friends and family.

Diving Into the Water

I am planning on starting my Year of No Alcohol (hereafter known as YONA) after a pre-midnight glass of champagne on December 31st.  You may ask why not now?  Why isn't December 6, 2013 the start of a year without alcohol?

The first answer that comes to mind is because it is the holiday season.  There are parties for hosting and marshmallows for toasting ... and drinking to be done.  I understand how pathetic that sounds.  This time next year, as I'm approaching the end of my YONA I will have had a year of practice and will be better able to face the stigma of not drinking.

It's a funny thing, the subconscious thoughts that arise as I am contemplating how this is going to be.  Do I really have the idea that there is a social stigma attached to not drinking?  Is it really something I have to face?

Part of the reason I am waiting is because I am afraid I can't do this.  If I name a date and sneak up on it then I can prepare myself to fight the fight.  That also is ridiculous considering I have been preparing for this since August. 

This leads me into negotiations with myself.  First I'll get these social gatherings out of the way, and while I'm doing that I will do some research into resources that can help me with the cravings and the struggles. I can't start now if I'm not ready.

This sounds familiar.  Let me tell you about the time God talked to me in my hot tub.

I have never trusted God.  I was in our hot tub, contemplating baptism, and had made up this whole list of things I had to do first.  I was going to study the Bible and read his word.  I was going to figure out this whole repentance thing, how to turn away from sin and towards God.  Then, maybe then, I would be ready to get baptized.  Out of no where a voice in my head said "Are you going to trust me or are you going to wait for me to convince you to trust me?"  Over and over, "are you going to trust me?"  Note, it was not me asking "Am I going to trust God?"

As I am sitting her now typing this out I am getting the same sense of resistance on my part to just jump in to the YONA, even as I know that is exactly what God is calling me to do.  I keep turning away, and he keeps gently leading my face back towards him.

I will never be ready to do this.  I will start today.

Let the YONA begin.

In The Beginning

I'd like to say I don't exactly have a drinking problem but considering the number of times I've said to myself ... or my husband ... or my daughter ... that I'd like to stop drinking so much, that probably isn't entirely true.  I drink often, although rarely to a point of actual drunkenness.  There have been many a morning when I have woken up and hated the dehydrated groggy feeling of one too many glasses - you know, I almost typed "bottles" - of wine the night before.

The fact that I say I want to stop or cut back and haven't been able to do so is troublesome to me.

As a test I went through the entire month of August without a drop of alcohol.  It wasn't as difficult as I imagined it would be and as I took the first sip of my celebratory beer when it was done I thought that possibly I could cut back and be okay.  Unfortunately that beer was at the beach during our annual Labor Day end of summer weekend and the beer was cold and the sun was hot and, well, not much cutting back was done.  Not then and not since then.  I've gone a day or two without a drink, but never more than that.

It hasn't helped that I have been battling pain in my body for almost two years.  It's a long story, and I'll get to it eventually, but for now the point is that a month ago I stopped caring how often I was drinking. It relaxed me and made me forget about the pain in my hip and the pain in my foot and the pain in my back and the pain in my other foot.

Ah, but that's not the way I want to live my life.

I have decided ... here it comes ... to make 2014 The Year of No Alcohol.  There, I've said it.  It is a scary proposition.  No doubt I will be uncomfortable many times.  I am going to do the best I can not to anticipate what is going to happen and just observe what does happen.  Maybe, like I did in August, I will get to the end of the time and think "that wasn't so bad".

I must also say that the name of the blog and the title of this entry are not just clever words.  In October of 2013 I was baptized.  My new found trust in God is going to play a big role in how I get through the next year.  I feel him calling me to stop turning to alcohol and start turning to him when I am stressed or afraid or celebrating.  This is difficult for me to do.  I have had a strained relationship with God throughout my life - more on that later I'm sure - and being obedient for his glory instead of being obedient because I'm afraid of him is an entirely new take on life.

Let's see what happens.