May 31, 2021 entry:
More than Just a Cup of Coffee
As he approached the building’s entrance, he looked back at his car in the parking lot and paused several seconds. “Do I really need to do this?” he mumbled to himself. But he’d made the 30-minute drive and was already there. “Here goes nothing,” he said, as he opened the door and walked inside.
The hallway was dimly lit, leading to a pair of double doors that struggled to contain the boisterous chatter inside the room that awaited. He almost turned around and walked back out, but someone behind him asked, “You looking for the 7pm? You’re almost there, straight ahead.” He nodded and smiled, with the banter becoming louder the closer he got to the doorway entrance.
No sooner than he entered, he realized that he was in the basement of an old church. A small podium was centered in the back, while cheap aluminum folding chairs filled with roughly 35-40 people were neatly arranged facing toward it. The energy was unavoidable, as the folks in attendance were laughing and smiling. It was as though he’d mistakenly wandered into a celebration of some sort.
He found an open seat, near the back row of course, in hopes that he could make a quick escape without anyone noticing should he come to his senses and realize this wasn’t the place for him. The elderly sharply-dressed gentleman sitting in the chair to his left stuck out his hand and said, “I’m Joe! And you are?” He hesitated for a moment, thinking of the first fictitious name that came to mind. Finally, he offered his hand in return. “I’m Jim. Pleased to meet you.”
A few seconds later, another person in the front of the room, who wasn’t nearly as overdressed as the elderly gentleman sitting next to him, approached the podium and gave the gavel a couple of loud raps. “Thank you all for coming tonight. I think we’re in for a real treat this evening. Just a reminder – there’s coffee in the back, so help yourselves if you haven’t already. And if you feel so inclined, drop a dollar in the coffee kitty to help cover expenses.”
The next five or so minutes would be spent giving announcements and doing ceremonial type things that seemed utterly meaningless. Finally, a hush came over the room and the guy behind the podium announced, “Without further ado, would you please help me welcome my good friend who kindly agreed to be our guest speaker tonight, Joe!”
The dapperly dressed gentleman sitting next to Jim excused himself, smiling and waving as he tried to humbly brush off the polite welcome of applause and made his way to the podium in the front of the room. The applause gently faded as he unclasped the top button of his shirt. His eyes were aglow, magnified by the half-inch lenses of the decades-old eyeglasses sitting atop his nose. He took a sip of coffee, cleared his throat, and smiled.
“I’m Joe, and I’m a grateful recovering alcoholic. And I thank God for my sobriety today.”
Over the next hour, Jim would listen to the guy that was sitting beside him just minutes prior give an account of his life. He would learn that Joe had a fairly normal upbringing with two good parents, not all that different from his own childhood. From there, he would listen to Joe explain how his perfectly normal life gradually became destructively abnormal. What was most interesting to Jim though was that Joe looked more like a loving, caring pastor of a community church than an elderly fella with a hair-raising, hell-raising past. As Jim continued to listen to Joe’s story, however, he began hearing bits and pieces of his own past being retold by this neatly-dressed elder who just a few minutes earlier had shaken his very own hand. It was as though Joe had somehow miraculously invaded the darkest crevices of Jim’s mind within seconds of their hands having touched.
As he sat and listened, he found himself leaning in more and more as Joe narrated his eventual demise in life with vivid detail. He spoke about his drinking rather fondly early on in his narration, but as the story progressed – how it quickly became a looming death sentence a couple decades later; how he went from being a young, successful businessman with a great family and everything life could possibly offer, to eventually being lonely, then penniless, then homeless. As Joe recounted the evening he attempted to take his own life by intentionally passing out on a busy section of railway tracks, only to be saved by a Good Samaritan who took him in and offered him a place to live, Jim began to see that same hopelessness that had been a nagging constant companion in his own life for many years. Sure enough, he could see that same exact fate playing out in the not-so-distant future if he continued the path he was on.
As Joe began talking about the miracle that had taken him from the Penthouse to the Outhouse to a Samaritan’s house where he would slowly begin piecing his life back together, Jim began realizing that perhaps he was precisely where he needed to be that evening. Could it be more than a mere coincidence that he had been sitting right beside that gentleman who seemed to know exactly where his life of struggle had taken him?
Fast forwarding, Jim found himself walking through that same dimly-lit hallway one evening a few years later. As he approached the double doors to the room that awaited, he could hear the familiar reverberations of laughter and banter echoing off the walls beyond those same double doors that he had walked through what seemed a lifetime ago. Just ahead of him was a young fella who appeared to be lost and uncertain of where he was. “Looking for the 7pm? You’re almost there, straight ahead,” Jim said to him. As he followed the stranger into the room, he found himself sitting in the same exact chair near the back of the room he had occupied the last time he was there. The room was packed, the only vacant seat remaining to his immediate right. A minute or two passed before the young fella begged pardons as he wiggled his way to the only chair available that evening – right next to Jim.
No sooner than the young man had taken his seat, three loud raps of a gavel hushed the chatter as someone had manned the podium. “Thank you all for coming tonight. I think we’re in for a real treat this evening. Just a reminder – there’s coffee in the back, so help yourselves if you haven’t already. And if you feel so inclined, drop a dollar in the coffee kitty to help cover expenses.”
The next 5 minutes would be ceremonious in nature, but now they didn’t seem nearly as pointless and mundane. Jim closed his eyes and thought a quick prayer to himself as the announcements were being read in the backdrop.
“Lord, give me the strength and clarity I need this evening to do your will. All I am and all I have today is because of you, your mercy, and grace. Amen.”
No sooner than Jim opened his eyes, the gentleman behind the podium exclaimed, “Without further ado, would you please help me welcome my good friend who kindly agreed to be our speaker tonight.”
As he excused himself from the folks sitting in the back row while making his way to the podium, he smiled and humbly waved, trying to brush off the polite welcome of applause that he felt entirely unneeded, yet appreciated. As he took his place behind the podium, silence filled the room as he unbuttoned the top of his shirt, took a sip of coffee, and cleared his throat.
“My name is Scott, and I’m a grateful recovering alcoholic. Before going any further this evening, I would like to take this moment to thank God for my sobriety today.“
It took a while, but the shame that had accompanied me in that room years earlier had somehow mysteriously, miraculously, vanished. There was no longer a desire to hide behind this impenetrable wall of loneliness and anonymity, no more running from the demons of my past. As my trembling hands and glazed, bloodshot eyes gradually gave way to a clearer vision and a useful purpose for what had been a meaningless life, I began to rediscover the real freedom I had willfully handed over to the care of a bottle years prior.
In verse 48 of chapter 12 in the book of Luke, I’m reminded of this simple code: “From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded in return; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.”
I had been approached by someone a few days earlier to share my own personal story of recovery that evening to a group of people who, despite all of our many different backgrounds, were nevertheless not all that dissimilar to myself. As I gave an account of my life that evening, I payed particular attention to the young fella who occupied the seat next to mine prior to the start of the meeting. At times he seemed distracted, at others I could see him leaning in a bit more and listening intently, seemingly searching for the very same thing I was looking for not all that long ago myself.
Hope. Real, raw, genuine and heartfelt hope. For without it, there is no purpose in life worth pursuing. Without purpose, there is only death in the waiting.
I haven’t seen this young man since, but I know that if he’s still alive today – there is still hope for a better life for him that doesn’t involve alcohol. Sometimes it means taking a chance; doing something that our flawed instincts as humans beg of us to run away from. Unfortunately a lot of us will continue to allow fear to rule our lives. Maybe it won’t be an alcoholic death that awaits some of us as it once was for me, but fear is an extension of death, in whatever aspect we struggle with letting go of. Change is incredibly hard, make no mistake. But when faced with only two remaining choices in life – change or die – it becomes a little easier to find the tiniest mustard seed of required courage.
The same courage to walk through a dimly lit hallway, go through a door into a crowded room, find a seat, and listen to someone remind you of where you have been, what it was like, and the hope for what tomorrow might bring.
Hope. Real, genuine hope.
Happy Memorial Day, fellas!