Not a record to be proud of

Twenty-nine days without a post.

Not a sign of spiritual or emotional solidity, to be sure. Which, I guess, is what a friend would call "the God's honest truth of the matter."

My blogging absence started with not feeling quite well - a winter cold that turned into a sinus infection, then into a series of bloody noses and all kinds of plague-like symptoms that even grossed me out, at times. Started right about the time I signed up for a year of YMCA membership - which really annoyed me, at times. Sadly, however, I literally was too exhausted to even care, most days.

And then the announcement that we've been afraid of for more than a year came out: The Evil Empire will be closing our office by December 31st, and will be outsourcing our operation to their operations in Mumbai, India. The original target for the "transition" was originally in the June-to-September timeframe. But our offshore operations ended up with a surplus of India folks who have "transitioned" from another team (one of our clients, a national department-store firm, went bankrupt and ceased operations in December).

So we are creating "standard operating procedures" or SOPs (euphemism for idiot-proof job guides at the "...and the monkey pushes the button..." level of detail), and have begun the process of actually training the men and women who will be taking our jobs. I wish that I could say that I have been a resentment-free, willing participant in this process, but I have found more than a couple days when it took every fiber in my being to walk from the bedroom to the kitchen and sign on to the network at The Empire. (Could I call this chapter in my life The Empire Strikes Back, I wonder?...)

Then, my sister and brother-in-law have been even sicker than I have been - having both the respiratory and gastro-intestinal varieties of plague. Jeff is still without a job - although Sue has been sending out resumes and doing what she can. But she has been struggling with her own health, and both the advancing symptoms of fibromyalgia and the ongoing financial burdens of the now-abandoned condo (keeping enough heat on to keep pipes from freezing has still cost them almost $200 a month in this bitterly cold winter).

We do not have winters like my Canadian brothers and sisters - not even like br'er Ben up in Lansing. But the consensus of the long-timers here is that this has been the longest stretch of below-freezing weather that northwest Ohio has had in many a long year (some would say back to the epic Blizzard of '78). That has probably contributed to my bear-in-a-cave syndrome. Being sick and cold and cranky is not a pretty combination, even in a man of great character. In a whiney, self-centered bear like me, it's not been pretty at all.

But there is still much to celebrate.

Chris started his new job at a local hobby center at the end of January, and is vastly happier with his days and nights than he ever was with The Spawn of Satan Hotel. He has had a couple dances with his someday-future dream job in Champaign, but a recent trip there basically told him that the dream will still be deferred a while longer. However, our relationship remains strong, and I still thank God that this wonderful guy is in my life.

After a long-ish drought, a young man has asked me to sponsor him in the recovery process, and that has loosened some of the spiritual logjam in my soul. (I was beginning to believe that somehow I'd lost whatever it was that was attractive in sobriety, and nobody "wanted what I had." Thankfully, that doesn't seem to be the case...)

I wish I could find a faith community in which I could feel comfortable; partly I have resisted because of Chris' Sunday schedule, but to be honest, I just don't want to get into it, right now. But as Ash Wednesday came and went, I have to admit to missing the sounds of the "Holden Evening Prayer" and being a part of a caring face-to-face community of believers.

The liturgical calendar says that it is Lent - but it seems like the Easter Vigil - somewhere between crucifixion and resurrection. A time of waiting, a time of not knowing the answers, hoping for recreation, for new life. And, for now, a time for "trudging the road" - even when it seems like it is covered with cold molasses.

One day at a time, one trudging step at a time, trusting that we are moving forward - even when we cannot see the way.

Brushing the dust off the keyboard

Yes, in response to a couple of your emails, I am alive. Even fractionally well - "sunny-side-up, suckin' air and sober," as my Kansas friend Bob L. would say.

It has been a busy month. Full of challenges, hopes, and fears. A brief recap, to catch you up:

• Work - I am in Chicago this week, as the Evil Empire has summoned me from the hinterlands of Ohio to the the outpost of Payroll World, downtown Chicago. They didn't have the money to bring me in to train my co-worker, seven months ago. But they evidently are bringing me in so they can drain my brain before turning our work over to the folks from India (Mumbai or Guragon, depending on the task). I have missed some key deadlines, and I have at least a partial fear that they are bringing me in to set me up to be laid off or fired. Needless to say, that's not helping my attitude any...



• Work II - we have had some significant setbacks in our team. We have a Unit manager, and two payroll operations managers. One POM is leaving effective November 21st; the second, who is pregnant, is widely rumored to be departing at the end of November, even if her "due date" is not until Dec. 17th. With that, plus the rest of the "domestic" (non-outsourced) team looking for a job, it will make for an interesting year-end close process.



• My health - despite reductions in weight, I have had to go on insulin shots - so far, just once a day long-acting Lantus. That really, really, really felt like a massive failure, in a number of ways, and I haven't dealt well with that whole process. It's not the shots, so much - although that IS weird.

Sisterly health - Sue has been struggling a bunch with back problems, and I have tried desperately for a month or more to help ease her pain with using a massager and ice to help reduce her back inflammation. She resisted the idea of going to a chiropractor, and has had it with conventional medicine altogether. Finally, last week, she resignned herself to going to a local chiropractor, and she seems to be getting slight improvements in her ability to move, if not in her overall pais levels. Most of the "massage/ice" treatment I've done came in the morning - when I was usually doing my blogging...

A new relationship - albeit a long-distance one - has come out of a trip I took on a lark to Springfield, MO. We've spent a couple long weekends together - he's met my family - and we are trying very hard to go slow and be reasonable. I've not said much about it here - and probably won't. But that has been a distraction as well, if a rather welcome one.

So other than work, health, and personal relationships in a state of flux, life is going pretty well.

I will try to post more regularly - although this week (by virtue of the work nightmare) will be more spotty, rather than less.

Thank you to those who set off the "Where are you?" sensors. That means a lot, in this world....

Looking back, looking ahead

There has been a long silence in the camp of the squires. As I climb back into the light of the digital community, a look back over the last month wouldn't be out of place....

October 1st marked one year in Waterville - 365 Chicago-traffic-free days. Despite that joy, it's not entirely a comfortable anniversary, because much that was challenging on that day (even the physical state of the household) still is unresolved.

I spent some time over the weekend trying to figure out what to do with some of the stuff I've accumulated - and part of me wants to just throw out massive amounts of stuff and start over. There are books on the shelves that are good books, but books that I may never read again - and some books that are like Oreos, that I go to as comfort food or candy, just for diversion. If I cleared those off the shelves and took them to the library as donations, I'd have more shelf space...

Finding the discipline to pick up anything - papers, clothes, anything - and deal with them once would be a blessing. Hell, finding discipline, period, would be a blessing, these last couple weeks.

November 17th will likely be my brother-in-law's last day of work until March or April - he's been designated as "seasonal worker" after 30 years at his job at the country club. Of course, he's spent 30 years at a job with no benefits, no retirement - and finally no assurance of re-hiring. So that's scary. We cannot survive another winter of him only receiving unemployment for six months.

And there is the looming deadline of January 31, 2008 - which will is latest possible date for outsourcing my job, and the rest of our jobs, to India. That's an entirely separate post - so much of that is tied up in asking, "Well, when are you going to find the job you WANT to do, rather than the next-lifejacket-job?"

I've made a set of what I consider very positive steps, however.

The first is that I'm trying to do something - every day, even a little bit - to improve my conscious contact with God. That's been something that's been sliding downhill for a while. Writing, praying, yelling, something - anything. Because that's at the heart of it all. If that ain't happenin', ain't nuthin' much good gonna happen.

I've restarted exercise. (Yes, again. And again and again, if need be.)Well, i wouldn't even call it exercise, so much as cessation-of-sloth. I become such an inanimate object, working and blogging and posting to online communities - it really is an act of discipline to push away, walk away, and do something (anything) physical. Walking around the block twice has become one of those "just do the next right thing, dammit!" things.

I'm looking at the "stuff" in my life, and trying to look at what I can do to "keep current" - little bits, every day. Not world-changing stuff, but do something, dammit.

The last one will be a bit of good news. For more than six months, I've been struggling to find a framework to put so much of my writing into some kind of book format. My friend Ted gave me some inspiration for part of it - but finally the spirit spoke in the words of a song by Ken Medema titled "The Call."

Can you hear it down the ages, like a mighty trumpet sound
A call to leave the night and step into the morning
It's a call to joy and gladness in a world of war and pain
And yet it sounds a note of danger and of warning

It's a call to leave your treasures and your trinkets on the road
It's a call to join the weeping, and to bear the sufferer's load
It's a call to live like fools, by another set of rules
Well, it's a call to take your cross in hand and follow
Yes, it's a call to take your cross in hand and follow

Well, yesterday I sent a email to Ken Medema, asking for his permission to use the song lyrics in a book tentatively titled A Call To Live Like Fools. (I actually attached an audio file with my background and request, since Ken's sight-impaired.) Without his permission to use the lyrics in the introduction and the title, the whole concept wouldn't be worth much.

So while I'm waiting for his reply, I'm working on the outline of what I want to include in this. My hope is that it can be snapshots of life along the road to (and through) faith, a kind of my personal credo or "this I believe," and yet I want to make sure that I include enough of my own brand of humor and irreverence to make it palatable.

So the process is begun. We'll see what brother Medema says.

That's all for now, folks....

Days of sadness, days of wonder

I have been too long away from these pages. I have missed you all.

Today is a day of anger, and yet of joy. Like Gimli the Dwarf in Tolkein's The Two Towers, I am torn between such fury and such celebration that I might well burst.

The fury is three-fold. First, I am furious that this is the fourth anniversary of the war in Iraq. I want to dump everything I am doing for my employer and just go protest - chain myself to something, take some anarchist action. Three thousand lives irrevocably lost; five hundred billion dollars spent in useless destruction. Do you feel any safer today? Any more terrorism-proof? I sure as hell don't.

It makes me want to hit something.

Second, almost every indication at The Evil Empire is that they are preparing to "outsource" a significant number of jobs on our project, either to other teams doing similar actions or to our service bureaus in India. I'd say that I probably have no more than 2 months of employment left; perhaps much less. I am terrified (for myself, and for my family), and furious with myself for not seeing it sooner. What a freaking waste of life this last year has been. What an incredible sucker I have been, to allow this to happen to me.

The urge to hit something comes back, big time.

Third, I am once again reminded of how badly out-of-shape I am physically, and how little I have done to counteract that condition. Buying a new suit for interviewing was yet another reminder of how disconnected from reality I am about my health and my physical appearance. Once again, I am at the "I need to change everything right now" stage of the game, and I hate it.

None of that makes where I'm at a necessarily nice place to be.

Yet despite all that, some incredible blessings have come my way. The work I get to do with new people in sobriety has been incredibly frustrating, yet incredibly fulfilling. Every "ah-ha!" moment is an amazing gift of joy and bliss. It's not that I am some kind of hero for having been a part of this; I know better than that. But I cannot help but see the positive changes in certain lives... and that is worth everything that went before.

I've had the opportunity to share some of these writings with some people outside the traditional Christian community, and that has brought a great deal of blessing, as well. And I'm going to be spending some time away this weekend - first, visiting a DeMolay chapter with my friend Ted on Thursday night, and then at a recovery conference in Troy, MI through the weekend. So that's all good.

My brother-in-law is going back to work at the job that laid him off at Thanksgiving. While it's not the answer I would have prayed for him, it's better than four months of unemployment. And sister Sue is starting at a new employer, as a permanent employee (even though she will not have benefits for 3 months yet) - and so far it seems like a much less toxic situation than her previous attempt. So there is hope there, as well.

But perhaps the most incredible gift of affirmation came from my friend Tim B., a faith brother from Kansas. He recently sent me a CD of my former church's choir, and some incredible photography of the church at Easter and Christmas, and of landmarks from around Kansas City. Those, by themselves, were true blessings. But his hand-written note contained the greatest gift of all:

As my blog comment from the other day said, I truly believe God is using you and the talents He has given you to the fullest, and He wouldn't be able to use you as effectively after ordination.

I believe you are truly living God's will for your life. Do not discount yourself for a roadblock He purposefully placed in your life, so you would be better able to do His will. If you are the blessing to other's lives as you have been in mine, you are making a far greater difference than you know.

Thank you, God. And thank you, brother Tim. I needed to hear that, more than you know.

As the old story goes, I ain't where I wanna be; I ain't where I'm gonna be. But thank you Jesus, I ain't where I used to be. And for today, that's enough.

People who normally would not mix

We are average Americans. All sections of this country and many of its occupations are represented, as well as many political, economic, social, and religious backgrounds. We are people who normally would not mix. But there exists among us a fellowship, a friendliness, and an understanding which is indescribably wonderful. We are like the passengers of a great liner the moment after rescue from shipwreck when camaraderie, joyousness and democracy pervade the vessel from steerage to Captain's table. Unlike the feelings of the ship's passengers, however, our joy in escape from disaster does not subside as we go our individual ways. The feeling of having shared in a common peril is one element in the powerful cement which binds us.
(from Alcoholics Anonymous, "There Is A Solution," p. 17)

My friend and co-worker Dave G.'s last day as an employee of The Evil Empire is today. He hasn't even left yet, and I miss him already. But as I contemplated our brief time together, I thought of this passage from the AA text, and how it also applies to my relationship with Dave, as well.

I was at an AA meeting Thursday night when I thought of Dave. My sponsor, Bob S., and I were talking with a new guy named Jon at the end of the meeting. Jon was 25 (maybe), a college dropout, and only 12 days sober; then there was me, nearly 50, 16 years in recovery, and a college graduate; and Bob S. is 76, nearly 46 years sober, and a life-long tool-and-die man who didn't finish 8th grade. Bob's known me since my first night in the fellowship; we'd never seen Jon before.

Yet we understood each other perfectly, because we had been given common experiences which gave us a special fellowship and a common "language of the heart."

In many ways, it is the same with my young friend Dave and I. Dave is 23 today (happy birthday, brother!) and I am a month away from fifty. Dave naturally multi-tasks on about twenty different channels, while I have trouble walking and chewing gum at the same time. (A geek friend of mine would say that Dave is definitely USB 2.0, while I am closer to RS-232 serial.) He is a trim, attractive young man in the prime of life - and I am (to be kind) somewhat past that. He is quite comfortable with social drinking - he will likely never grace the tables of the fellowship that I attend regularly.

Externally, we could not be more different.

I've only worked with Dave for about 8 months now - and due to the virtual nature of our work, I think I've only actually met him in person about twice in all that time. But like so many virtual friendships I've already made across the blogosphere, we've managed to develop a special relationship despite the physical distance.

Poor Dave was recruited to The Evil Empire out of college in June; I came here after my ministry career plans soured, eight months earlier. Dave got drafted onto The Client from Hell team, and sometime in his first week or two he got stuck with me, as I was (a) trying desperately to get our weekly payroll operations completed and (b) trying to provide him with a mind-dump of what I knew about the operation and the system we'd been stuck with.

It's a tribute to his durability and resilience that he didn't run screaming from the building....

The crucible that forged our friendship was a series of crushing system failures, our impending year-end processing, the simultaneous effort of recoding a significant portion of our system, and his providing technology to Band-Aid our system together until the recoding was complete. As part of his trying to create specifications out of thin air for the "panic-code" projects we needed, Dave and I spent a lot of time on the phone and in instant-message-land. We discovered a common love for science fiction, dry humor and a certain level of cynicism, and an appreciation for just how much good material Dilbert would have found at our firm. Dave's experiences with many of the folks in EE-Land (like my own) have often been very much like this classic comic:










Which brings me back to my opening quote: We are people who normally would not mix... The feeling of having shared in a common peril is one element in the powerful cement which binds us.

It's true that if we had met at a restaurant, or a theatre performance, we would likely never have connected. But we have been through wind, and rain, and fire together - and I have to say it has been a blessing to "trudge the road of happy destiny" with him. In fact, I don't know that I would have made it through without his help - period.

When he first told me of the call from the recruiter, and the offer of a much more lucrative position, he said something to the effect of, "Leaving the job won't be hard - but it will be tough leaving the people" - and I know that many people feel the same way about him. It's amazing that when people of goodwill band together to do good things, a special bond forms that (like the rope of three strands) is not easily broken.

Though Dave's last day as a fellow employee is today, the virtual community of the Internet will ensure that we will be no further apart than email or instant messaging. He will join the binary band of sisters and brothers I have been blessed with in the virtual world - digital disciples working toward a more peaceable kingdom. But in our little band of co-workers, he will leave a hole not easily filled, and I will miss the laughter at work most of all.

The words of singer/songwriter Wayne Watson, perhaps, say it best:

Sometimes I'll think about you
Some old memories'll make me cry
Remembering the good times makes me laugh
But all in all, I'm richer for the happy and the sad
And thankful for a season in your path.

Fare thee well on all the roads thou must travel, my young wizard friend...

Sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly

Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change. Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us. We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us. We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.

Are these extravagant promises? We think not. They are being fulfilled among us - sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. They will always materialize if we work for them.

(just a few of the promises from the text Alcoholics Anonymous, page 84)

If you were outside Wednesday evening about 5 PM Eastern time (4 PM Central) and you heard a great sucking sound followed by a loud pop!, I can tell you all about it. I know what that sound was.

It was the sound of loving hands helping me to pull my head out of my ass about my employment situation.

For more than three months, I and my co-workers have been led through a seemingly unending series of crises at The Evil Empire. The carrot at the end of the stick that led me to put in more than 300 hours of unpaid overtime in the last quarter of the year (leading up to my hospitalization January 5th) was the promise that the Empire would "make it up to us," with some kind of financial compensation. What each of us heard was variations on this line: "I know that it's been difficult, and I know you've been putting in impossible hours - but we'll work to make it up to you in the new year."

And then, the second week of January, the person who had provided this assurance was abruptly slid out of managing our team, and those promises were deferred. Then they were rejected by our former manager's boss. The expectation that we would continue to breathe life into the ongoing processes through working late into the night every Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday didn't go away. Just the promise of any kind of compensation or flex-time-off for it. Our position was getting a wee bit ambiguous, to say the least.

So I sent the obligatory "here's what we've done for you lately" memo, and suggested that if we were going to be expected to keep doing this, we needed a different compensation model.

Silence from the camp of the princes and knights. Growing annoyance in the camp of the squires.

So I sent a second copy of the email - with a read-receipt attached, this time. A swift response to this one - basically saying, "Hey, I've been busy. But you should know that these positions are salaried, exempt positions. That's what you signed up for. And exempt positions are not eligible for overtime or bonuses. Oh, and by the way, you guys shouldn't have to be doing all this stuff anyway - don't know what you were thinking when you agreed to do it. I'll call you later and we'll talk about it."

I re-read his email, and I thought, "Well, that is many things - but it is certainly not ambiguous."

I got angry. How dare they do this to me, after all I've done for them! Then I got a fleeting dose of reality. I put on my CSI:Miami glasses, and looked very carefully at all the evidence - all the timecard entries, all the software and all the files. And guess what? An objective examination showed that everything that had hurt me had my fingerprints on them. No weapons had been pointed, no poison threatened. No GSR anywhere. If I had any wounds out of this deal, they were entirely self-inflicted.

Selfishness - self-centeredness! That, we think, is the root of our troubles. Driven by a hundred forms of fear, self-delusion, self-seeking, and self-pity, we step on the toes of our fellows and they retaliate. Sometimes they hurt us, seemingly without provocation, but we invariably find that at some time in the past we have made decisions based on self which later placed us in a position to be hurt.
So our troubles, we think, are basically of our own making. (ibid, p. 62)

It seems that my twisted logic went like this: if I were just selfless enough, willing enough, committed enough, and just fixed enough, saved them from the fire enough, then surely they would have no choice but to reward extraordinary effort with extraordinary rewards, eh?

/sigh/

(The sad part is, I am the one who keeps taking the institutional church to task for being stuck in the 1950's. But evidently my work ethic and motivation comes out of that same twisted history...I just think it should "work," in my case. Bleah.)

Well, after passing through anger, denial, and self-examination, the humiliation led me to just a wee dose of humility, and a massive dose of depression. I got vastly demotivated to do much of anything.

And the combination of all those things led to that great sucking sound, and that pop, I referred to earlier.

And I surrendered.



So today, at work, I didn't kill myself responding to anyone today. And by the time dinner-time came in northwest Ohio, I was logging off from whatever passes as "virtual reality" at my employer. No "hey, I'm leaving," no explanation. Just "Take me off the grill; I'm done." Watched a little CSI:Miami with my brother in law. Went to the Thursday night men's meeting, and told them of my uncomfortable revelations. Came home, had dinner with the family, and here I am.

I am still grateful for my job, to be sure. I am still employed, I still got paid this week, and I still have benefits. (There are 13,000 Chrysler workers who would gladly swap with me, today. ) The vast majority of my co-workers think that what I do has value, even if my managment does not. It didn't take another trip to St. Luke's Hospital to get here, this time. I'm still sunny-side-up, suckin' air and sober. This lesson didn't cost as much as others I have learned from....I am still a very, very, very blessed man, still very much in the bonus round.

So, later on today, it's back to the exercise routine. And I'll suit up, show up, and give 'em a full day - but no more, and let the chips fall where they may. There is a God, and They are not it.

When we sincerely took such a position, all sorts of remarkable things followed. We had a new Employer. Being all powerful, He provided what we needed, if we kept close to Him and performed His work well. Established on such a footing we became less and less interested in ourselves, our little plans and designs. More and more we became interested in seeing what we could contribute to life. As we felt new power flow in, as we enjoyed peace of mind, as we discovered we could face life successfully, as we became conscious of His presence, we began to lose our fear of today, tomorrow or the hereafter. We were reborn.

May it be, even unto me, God. Amen.

Starting over again, looking for more light

Here's an interesting coincidence. January 11, 2007 marks 21 days since December 21st - the winter solstice. Twenty-one days since the year's shortest day and longest night - the time of the least light and the most darkness of the winter.

In the olden days, on the solstice I understand there were huge bonfires to bring light into a darkened world. It's from these supposedly heathen celebrations that we have the traditions of lights on Christmas trees - illumination to a darkened world, reminiscent of a Star shining on another dark night, bringing the Light of the world.

It would be nice to celebrate the coming of more light, wouldn't it?

I'd really like to take that high road of philosophical imagery today, but I can't.

For me, Thursday is simply the fourth day that I have been out of the hospital.
.....

Anyone who has been reading these posts over the last year know that the single most significant focus of my life for the last fourteen months has been a sadly codependent, addictive relationship with my employer. It has been a battle to do the impossible - to take a series of systems that don't play well together and an undertrained but desperately committed staff and somehow make them work for a deeply-unhappy client. The intention was always that "when things get better, when things get stable, the work schedule will ease back." But we "went live" on New Years' Day 2006, and twelve months later the situation is not in the least improved. In fact, it is in many respects worse.

And I've been an idiot - somewhere between a John Candy imitation of the Man of Steel and a badly-drawn Dudley Do-Right, trying desperately to save the day, to make things right, to "get it all together" somehow so that life would be good. Through increasingly manual intervention, I (and others) have tried and tried and tried to defeat the shortcomings of systems we barely understood. And the more we tried, the more we (especially I) failed. Once again, I have learned the painful lesson that the blue tights and the red cape still don't fit, and almost certainly never will. In fact, they never did fit. It was all a lie.

Over the last four weeks, the hours have gotten (if one could believe it) even more insane - aided and abetted by the fact that since my move to Ohio and my work-at-home situation, I don't even have to walk to the train anymore. My "commute" is now about 8 feet - from the bed to the desk in my spacious bedroom/den/office. Over the last three months, physical human interaction (e.g., non-instant-messaging relationships), exercise, even eating dinner with my sister and brother-in-law, all fell off significantly. And when I finally did take time for myself - for sleep, for recovery meetings, for fixing and eating meals (or, eventually, eating the meals that my disabled sister fixed for me) - it always felt like there was too much left to do to get up and walk away from the desk, from the crisis at hand, from the heart of the battle.

All that changed Friday, January 5th. For about two weeks, I'd been having some uncomfortable spasms in my chest when I finally did get to go to sleep. Being overweight, hypertense, diabetic and nearly 50, I was getting a wee bit nervous about what those spasms might mean.

So I went to the doctor on Friday, in the midst of the latest end-of-year and start-of-new-year battles at The Evil Empire, to get it checked out. I figured it would be as it had been in the past - new medicine, new/fresh warnings about my lifestyle, and that would be that... that is, "until things got stable" and I could actually find some leisure time to take some action.

Then the doctor said the words no one wants to hear: "I don't like the looks of this - I can't be 100% sure, but I'd say you really need to be in the hospital to get this checked out."

I said, "But..."

...and the doc gave me a look that spoke volumes, and said, "Today. As in, right now. As in, 'Do you need someone to drive you? Or should we call you an ambulance?' "

So I called my brother-in-law, and I went.

When I got there, my blood pressure was at stroke level, my blood sugar was in the stratosphere, my heart was racing like I'd just run a 50-yard dash, and I was damning all the time that I spent working and NOT either praying or getting my will and durable power of attorney updated. All the things that were so critical two hours earlier - other people's lives and information - seemed to shrink to insignificance as I confronted the admissions form saying, "Indicate your next of kin."

Those five words will get your attention.

So will having a nurse start an intravenous line in your arm.

I have to admit it - I made a great drunk at times, but I would have been a dismal failure as an IV drug user. I simply hate needles. Yes, I get the occasional vaccination; yes, I submit to the periodic blood-test, and don't even whimper much (though I do sing Hosannas to whoever invented those marvelous vacu-tainer things that mean you can get stuck once, and get many vials of blood removed. Thank you God, for those things).

But getting even a short-term hospital IV line set? I'd rather have a gasoline enema. I'd rather be stretched on a rack, or to attempt suicide by hitting myself in the head with a baseball bat. I loathe them - period. My preference would be that if I have to have an IV, I would have them start it, then immediately fill it up with thorazine or pentothal or something to knock me smooth out. The long-term goal would then be to wake me up five minutes after the IV was successfully removed. I don't hate many things, but I hate IV's.

I even tried, pitifully, to hold off getting it started. After all, I just GOT here, for cryin' out loud. Do we have to do this now, of all things?

The nurse looked at me, pointed to my chart and said, "Honey, with readings like those, I may need to get medicine into you quickly. And if I do, you just don't want me fumbling, trying to find a vein. If you're sick enough to be in a hospital, you're sick enough to need an IV line in."

And she pointed again to the listing of my vital signs, and said, "And I'm sorry, honey, but you do qualify to be here. Really."

At least she was sensitive about it, and was successful the first time she tried. The semi-sadistic triage nurse who first encountered me slapped the heart-monitor (EKG) connecting pads on my somewhat-hairy chest without benefit of shaving the spots first. So everytime I moved, one or more of the connector pads would be pulling chest-hair - and trust me, that is a serenity-killer, every single time.

After all the tests and the imaging and this and that, it ended up a 50/50 deal. I was not as bad as my doctor feared - but I am worse off than I imagined. And all those "someday" lifestyle changes? Eating less, doing some exercise every day, watching the vital-signs more, working less?

They started yesterday.

For two days after I left the hospital, I had a 24-hour heart-monitor. Now, I have a heart-rate monitor (like runners use), a new glucometer and an auto-inflating blood-pressure meter. If the heart-rate gets too high, or the BP gets too elevated, it's no longer a "white flag" situation - it's an "international-orange" flag. And I have started the daily stroll to the condo clubhouse, to the exercise bike and the treadmill - starting slowly, but starting. And the work situation? Well, I had a doctor's release for three days off - and my boss extended the offer to just take the week off. And I took him up on it.

I haven't signed back on to see what's waiting for me on Monday. I have no doubt the demands of the addicts will start as soon as I turn the silly thing on.

But I have my hospital arm-band taped to the side of my work PC's monitor - as a reminder.

And my left arm is still well-bruised from where the IV was, and there are still a dozen round bare spots on my chest where the pads were. (They itch, too.)

I've had the three-and-a-half days in the hospital, and four more days at home, to reflect on just what has been happening over this last year. The spiritual, emotional, mental and financial excuses for the insanity of which I've been a part. And the lessons - in all of those categories - that I've ignored to get to this point.

In the communities of recovery, what we call 'hitting bottom' is the process of realizing that you can put down the shovel - you don't have to dig the hole you're in any deeper. As a friend "in the rooms" is wont to say, "If you'll just put the shovel down, and look up, you'll see where you need to go - at least you'll see daylight, for a change!"

It's sad, too - both from a spiritual and a recovery standpoint - how easy it has been to set up worship of false gods - to violate the spirit of the 1st Commandment: "You shall have no other gods before me." How many times have I heard the lesson - where your treasure (in my case, my time) is, there your heart will be. What a sad, sad waste.

But, if I am willing to trust that each day is indeed a new begininng, and that everything that does not kills us makes us stronger, then today is Christmas Day all over again. I have the gift of life, of love, of (relative) health, and hope. Yes, I'm stuck with a heart monitor, for a while - but I still have a working heart for it to monitor, as well. I have spent a long time walking a long way from God over the last year, it's true - but I also know that this God is one whose Son told the story of both the prodigal son and the prodigiously welcoming Father.

So today I am celebrating the light, rather than cursing darkness. I'm trying my best to make wiser choices, even as I acknowledge my seemingly innate ability to live and work stupidly.

Monday will bring a fresh set of challenges to this rediscovered faith - but, just for today, all is not "well" - but it's OK.

And that's enough.