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I’m about to go on a rant about travel, and I swear there is a spiritual message to pass along. I’ll get there. But you gotta let me cook for a minute. I just had some of the most bonkers travel scenarios a fella could ever hope to not have.
I had a pretty basic trip planned for this week. From Connecticut to Virginia on Tuesday night, then back to Connecticut on Thursday morning. Simple, right? Oh man, I wish.
I got to the airport on Tuesday evening just as a biblical storm was arriving. I mean, it was some Wizard of Oz b******t. In fact, right after I got through the TSA line, the airport power went out. Completely dark, for two minutes. Never heard of that happening before.
It was like something out of a Die Hard movie. Gates started closing, with people rolling on the ground to get in or out of terminals. State troopers appeared out of nowhere. ATM machines were blinking. Alarms were blaring. I thought I was in the middle of an Oceans 15 heist.
Finally, things calmed down a bit, even though all of the computerized screens were still off. They eventually boarded my plane about 45 minutes late, and we started down the runway. Then we stopped and pulled off. We sat and sat and sat for another hour, with the pilot occasionally saying it’d just be another 10-15 minutes. At about 7:55 p.m. he came over the loudspeaker and said something I hope I never hear again: “Ladies and gentlemen, we were told by the air traffic control tower that if we didn’t hear back from them by 8 p.m., our flight path is most likely clear and we can take off. So we’re going to sneak one past the control tower and get up in the air momentarily.”
Uh, what? Do we want to be sneaking planes past air traffic control in any way? I think I’m voting against Team Sneaky on this one.
So we got in the air and oh my, it was bumpy. Big drops. People yelling as we hit pockets of turbulence.
But the plane eventually landed in Philadelphia, and I had about 15 minutes to get to my connection to Connecticut. Haha. I forgot that one end of the Philadelphia airport is in Philadelphia, and the other end is just west of Pittsburgh. I rode two different buses to a terminal that was packing it in for the day. The plane was gone. I got a hotel room at the airport and grabbed another flight the next day.
As I type this, it’s Thursday morning and I am staring at an airplane I was supposed to be on. I had a 6:25 a.m. flight and woke up at 4:30 and started trying to get an Uber. No luck. Tried getting a taxi. “We don’t really have taxis around here any more,” the hotel front desk guy said. Finally, I got an Uber to the airport and arrived at 6:15. The airport was small enough that I thought I had a chance.
Nope. The airline said I arrived too late to check in for my plane, so they bumped me. So I am at the gate waiting for my next flight, three hours from now… and the original plane is sitting there, blinking at me. I’m kinda waiting for the pilots to put the cockpit window down and give me the finger.
All right, enough of me whining. I’m telling you this story because spiritual experiences aren’t always lilacs and unicorns and parted clouds and sunshine beams. Sometimes I learn more from bumpy experiences than smooth ones. In this case, it’s about how unmanageable life is, sober or not.
In active addiction, life was totally unmanageable and I was powerless over alcohol and drugs. I accepted that immediately when I went to rehab. I have no hope once I put that first drink or drug to my lips.
Then I got sober, and in early sobriety, life was still pretty unmanageable. I didn’t have the money to pay all my bills, and I mean that literally and figuratively. The collection agencies were after me, for sure, but friends and loved ones now knew the truth about the 10 years before. I didn’t have the metaphorical currency to pay those tabs at four weeks sober, either.
But then I started putting together days and weeks and months, and good things began to happen. I got promoted twice in my first six months without drugs and alcohol. My relationships improved. I connected with a nice sober network and found a higher power that worked for me. My life had turned around.
And it stayed turned around, to this day. But here’s the thing about finding success in recovery—it can extremely detrimental to the way I view the world. I start to think I am very smart and good at lots of things and good at making lots of good things happen. It’s not that I think I am God or anything. It’s just that I start to pull back my will, pull back my trust in something bigger than me and subconsciously start to think, “I got this.”
So that’s why the dumpster fire from this week can be valuable for me. I have no control over biblical storms. I can’t make airplanes take off or land. I can’t summon Ubers at 5 a.m. out of thin air. I am at the mercy of the universe. I prayed more the past three days than I did in the three weeks prior.
Granted, it wasn’t the kind of prayers I want to be making. I want to have a steady relationship with a higher power, not desperate foxhole prayers of “God, get me to the airport.” But hey, it’s a first step. It’s the equivalent of the sorta sad late-night text to an ex-girlfriend, “You up?”
I have about two hours till my new flight takes off. Hoping this one is on time, smooth and doesn’t require, you know, sneaking past air traffic control.
ALCOHOLIC/ADDICT JOKE OF THE DAY
This newsletter is a place of joy and laughter about the deadly serious business of sobriety. So, as I will often do, let me close with a joke.
Then there was the guy who arrived for an intake session with the rehab psychiatrist—constantly snapping his fingers.
The doctor politely inquired, “Why are you doing that?”
“To keep the tigers away!”
“But there aren’t any tigers here.”
“See,” the man said, “it works.”
(Credit: AA Grapevine, August 2000, Anonymous)
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