“They tried to make me go to rehab but I said 'no, no, no'”
---Amy Winehoue, Rehab (2007)
She sat in my office, a mother worn out from caring, emotionally drained, sharing her pain of a son who had been in and out, in and out of drug rehab. Now he had left rehab again. And she didn’t know what to do.
It’s a problem that’s affecting more and more families. I could trot out statistic after statistic to prove what we already know: alcohol and drug abuse is a real problem no matter where you live. A friend of mine, a local police officer, tells me the increase in drug usage during the last ten years in our town, Lebanon, Ky., is, in his words, “unbelievable.” His statement could be echoed by police officers in Anytown, U.S.A.
For the burdened mother who sat in my office, only one drug statistic mattered: the one that involved her son. When it’s your son or daughter, husband or wife, it’s one, that one. And that one hurts. Deeply.
Once that one, your one, steps into that world of drug and alcohol abuse, it’s difficult to step out and stay out. Just ask Ted Williams, if you can find him. You remember Ted Williams, the homeless man with the golden voice who became an overnight sensation on Youtube? After being cleaned up, and fed, Ted’s story of hope and second chances appeared on all the major news broadcasts. But Ted had a little problem that loomed ever so big: alcohol. According to his daughter, during Ted’s sudden rise to fame, he "consumed at least a bottle of Gray Goose a night. That's not including the Coronas he ordered, that's not including the Budweisers he ordered, the other alcohol, the wines. He drinks heavily." But with the support and encouragement of Dr.Phil, Ted entered rehab, but is reported to have checked out only 12 days later. Let’s hope the best for Ted, wherever he is. It’s an uphill climb. Celebrity status doesn’t change the addiction within.
Charlie Sheen should know it, even if he hasn’t hit bottom yet. Sheen, as of 2010, was the highest paid actor on television, earning $1.8 million per episode for appearing on Two and a Half Men. But Sheen’s personal problems abound: Partying with reckless abandon landed him in rehab once again. A few days later, Sheen announced his decision to rehab in the comfort of his L.A. mansion. We wonder how seriously he is about rehab when he admitted to radio host Dan Patrick, “I was sober for five years a long time ago and was just bored out of my tree." Sheen then confessed, "It's inauthentic -- it's not who I am. I didn't drink for 12 years and, man, that first one, Dan. Wow." But Sheen knows the fragility of his condition. Addressing the producers of Two and a Half Men, Sheen warned, “Check it. It's like, I heal really quickly. But I unravel pretty quickly. So get me right now, guys."
And there she sat, the broken hearted mother in my office, a mom with images of a son lost to an addiction and memories of an innocent little boy who played in the back yard, loved his guitar and four-wheeler. A good kid. Just like Ted Williams and Charlie Sheen, and thousands of others who have been sucked into a black hole of addiction, a hole where the drink or drug of choice drains life, dulls the senses, dissolves right from wrong, true from false, and once having destroyed a life, tosses its lifeless victim into the lap of grieving loved ones who are left to ask--- “Where did we go wrong? What didn’t we do?”---crying aloud like coyotes in the loneliness of the midnight air.
But even in despair there is hope. As one man tells it in the classic book, Alcoholics Anonymous, “I once knew a woman who was crying before a meeting. She was approached by a five-year-old girl who told her, ‘You don’t have to cry here. This is a good place. They took my daddy and they made him better.’”
Addiction is an illness. But there are treatments. And there is One who helps, never abandoning the distraught, the depressed, and, yes, the despised, the One who hears the humble prayer: "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference."
Life Matters is written by David B.Whitlock, Ph.D. David’s email is drdavid@davidbwhitlock.com. His website is DavidBWhitlock.com
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Thursday, February 17, 2011
People are Work
“People are work, brother. A lot of work. Too much work.” So said Detective Frank Keller (Al Pacino) a New York City detective in the 1989 movie Sea of Love. Keller had just solved an emotionally draining, life threatening, relationship changing investigation of a serial killer. In the movie, Keller falls in love with Helen Cruger (Ellen Barkin) who happens to be a main suspect in the case and doesn’t know that Keller is an undercover detective. They begin a serious relationship, but she rejects Keller, who had just saved her life, because she felt deceived by him. The “people are work” quote comes close to the end of the movie, when Keller is venting his frustration in a bar to his friend and fellow detective Sherman Touhey, played by John Goodman.
On occasion I have echoed the Pacino quote. I can identify with the minister in the cartoon that shows him arriving home late for supper. When his wife asks him why he is an hour late, he replies, with a tired, bewildered look on his face, “I asked Mrs. Jones how she was doing.”
People can be work indeed. And some people are as Pacino observed, “a lot of work.” We all know those special folks who try our patience, push our buttons, and unravel our day. As Mme. de Stael said, “The more I see of man, the more I like dogs.”
I recall my dad, a dentist, shaking his head late one Saturday night after a patient called him. Seems this man had a real emergency, a toothache that was unbearable. “And how long has it been bothering you?” Dad asked. “All week,” the man replied. “But I just didn’t have time to make an appointment earlier in the week, and now, I can’t stand it, Doc. Can I meet you at your office now and get it pulled?” “Now,” happened to be midnight.
People are work. The problem is, unless you are a hermit or a solitary scientist in a think tank somewhere, people are an unavoidable part of work. Without people, we have no work. That reminds me of the burned out school teacher who confessed, “I love teaching; it’s just the students I can’t stand.”
So, what to do with those few---those ones who are “a lot of work,” the minority whose voices cackle with the loudness of a majority, the small ones who can gulp huge portions of our time and attention?
Psychologists recommend sharing your frustration with someone you totally trust. That’s what Pacino was doing. If you have no such person, get alone and shout it out. Let off some steam. And, as much as possible, don’t take it personally. Conflicted people bring conflict. And even though you have to stand your ground, don’t fight back. The Psalmist said, “Seek peace and work to maintain it.” A dear elderly lady used to say to me, a young, inexperienced pastor, “Just rise above it.” That’s not bad advice, regardless of your profession. Within that, remember, maintaining boundaries is essential because some people will dominate you, sucking the joy from your life, draining you of the energy you need for the ones who matter most.
And sometimes people surprise us. In my first full time pastorate, I didn’t mow the lawn of the church parsonage. Soon after I had I arrived, one of the church members grumbled to me, “Our former pastor mowed the lawn.” I responded, tongue in cheek, “Well, I called him and he doesn’t want to come back and mow it.” The disgruntled church member wasn’t amused with my stab at humor.
But in time, my grumpity critic invited me to join him and some others on a mission trip to help build a church in Indiana. And I hesitatingly agreed. Maybe it happened on the road trip, or perhaps it was in working side by side, but somewhere in the process, he ceased to be “a lot of work” and became a friend. He requested that I preside at his funeral. And years later, I did.
Sometimes, not often, but sometimes, those “a lot of work” people enlighten our eyes to new and fascinating vistas of life. After all, in that movie, Sea of Love, Helen Kruger forgave Frank Keller (Al Pacino), and if they got married, she would have become Helen Keller.
People are work, but sometimes they can help us see that even in darkness, there is light.
Life Matters is written by David B.Whitlock, Ph.D. David’s email is drdavid@davidbwhitlock.com and his website is DavidBWhitlock.com
On occasion I have echoed the Pacino quote. I can identify with the minister in the cartoon that shows him arriving home late for supper. When his wife asks him why he is an hour late, he replies, with a tired, bewildered look on his face, “I asked Mrs. Jones how she was doing.”
People can be work indeed. And some people are as Pacino observed, “a lot of work.” We all know those special folks who try our patience, push our buttons, and unravel our day. As Mme. de Stael said, “The more I see of man, the more I like dogs.”
I recall my dad, a dentist, shaking his head late one Saturday night after a patient called him. Seems this man had a real emergency, a toothache that was unbearable. “And how long has it been bothering you?” Dad asked. “All week,” the man replied. “But I just didn’t have time to make an appointment earlier in the week, and now, I can’t stand it, Doc. Can I meet you at your office now and get it pulled?” “Now,” happened to be midnight.
People are work. The problem is, unless you are a hermit or a solitary scientist in a think tank somewhere, people are an unavoidable part of work. Without people, we have no work. That reminds me of the burned out school teacher who confessed, “I love teaching; it’s just the students I can’t stand.”
So, what to do with those few---those ones who are “a lot of work,” the minority whose voices cackle with the loudness of a majority, the small ones who can gulp huge portions of our time and attention?
Psychologists recommend sharing your frustration with someone you totally trust. That’s what Pacino was doing. If you have no such person, get alone and shout it out. Let off some steam. And, as much as possible, don’t take it personally. Conflicted people bring conflict. And even though you have to stand your ground, don’t fight back. The Psalmist said, “Seek peace and work to maintain it.” A dear elderly lady used to say to me, a young, inexperienced pastor, “Just rise above it.” That’s not bad advice, regardless of your profession. Within that, remember, maintaining boundaries is essential because some people will dominate you, sucking the joy from your life, draining you of the energy you need for the ones who matter most.
And sometimes people surprise us. In my first full time pastorate, I didn’t mow the lawn of the church parsonage. Soon after I had I arrived, one of the church members grumbled to me, “Our former pastor mowed the lawn.” I responded, tongue in cheek, “Well, I called him and he doesn’t want to come back and mow it.” The disgruntled church member wasn’t amused with my stab at humor.
But in time, my grumpity critic invited me to join him and some others on a mission trip to help build a church in Indiana. And I hesitatingly agreed. Maybe it happened on the road trip, or perhaps it was in working side by side, but somewhere in the process, he ceased to be “a lot of work” and became a friend. He requested that I preside at his funeral. And years later, I did.
Sometimes, not often, but sometimes, those “a lot of work” people enlighten our eyes to new and fascinating vistas of life. After all, in that movie, Sea of Love, Helen Kruger forgave Frank Keller (Al Pacino), and if they got married, she would have become Helen Keller.
People are work, but sometimes they can help us see that even in darkness, there is light.
Life Matters is written by David B.Whitlock, Ph.D. David’s email is drdavid@davidbwhitlock.com and his website is DavidBWhitlock.com
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
This Valentine's Day: Send a Love Letter
Gimme a ticket for an aeroplane,
Ain't got time to take a fast train.
Lonely days are gone, I'm a-goin' home,
'Cause my baby just a-wrote me a letter.
---“The Letter,” The Box Tops, 1967
My heart beat faster as I slowly opened the mail box. Was it there? Did she write? Three weeks of anticipation was wearing on me, three weeks of fumbling through the mail, three weeks of mumbling, “That’s not it, not that one, nope, not that one either,” three weeks of closing the mail box, sighing to myself and then hoping for tomorrow. I was about to break under the pressure.
And then it arrived: the letter.
And so began a flurry of love letters between Lori and me. Well, at first they couldn’t be classified as love letters. We weren’t “there” yet. But we would move in that direction. And soon I would write her weekly love letters. I even vowed to continue my practice of writing weekly love letters after we were married.
And I did for a while. But gradually, the weekly flow of love letters trickled into one a month and then dribbled into an occasional note. The Don Juan of love letters collapsed into the reticence of Briscoe Darling’s boys.
It happens. There are kids to raise, bills to pay, laundry to wash, a house to clean, meals to cook---not to mention responsibilities of the day job. And in the midst of all that, Lori and I got connected to the internet, and we learned to text.
With life as busy as it is, it’s so much easier and quicker to text a, “Love you,” or email an, “I was just thinking of you when I read this article I’ve enclosed.” It’s not necessarily that romance has waned, it’s simply more convenient to tweet your sweet, to communicate by email rather than by snail mail, to send an instant message rather that find paper and pen, and struggle with hand writing.
But yet, there is something about getting that handwritten letter and seeing love words written in that color of ink on that particular stationary. Lori still has a letter I wrote her from Bangalore, India over thirty years ago. I can read the writing just now (even then I didn’t properly cross my t’s), and she cherishes a card and letter I sent her when I was a lovesick freshman at Baylor University. How much nicer and neater I wrote back then. Was it because I took more time?
Time, that’s it. It takes time to write love letters. Time---something we seem short on. The express lane of life moves too quickly to slow down for romance.
When I was home several months ago, I read love letters my dad wrote my mom when he was stationed with a medical unit in Korea during that war. Dad filled lonely nights---no television, no internet, no cell phones--- with writing letters to Mom. Those love letters are now sixty something years old, but the faded ink still shines with passion and drips with the longing Dad had for Mom. I carefully handled the fragile, military issued stationary and imagined what kind of pen Dad used when he wrote those letters in some M*A*S*H* like tent on some cold winter’s night, warmed as he must have been by the flame of love.
But it didn’t end in Korea. I also read a more recent love letter of his. “I am so glad we met at the tennis courts some 66 years ago,” Dad wrote. “You still look cute and beautiful to me. And you still have that quality of life that inspires and excites me!!!”
I read where, according to a survey, 2/3 of women ages 18-70, said their most cherished gift on Valentine’s Day wouldn’t be that diamond, that luxurious dinner at a five-star restaurant, that trip to an exotic resort, nor a dozen roses. It would be a letter, a letter!----a signed letter, handwritten by their lover, sealed and delivered by mail.
Did you get that?
So here’s my challenge: Mark out some time, maybe thirty minutes to an hour between now and Valentine’s, get a pen and some paper, go to a place where you can have the quiet to write, and simply tell your lover how much you love him or her. Be specific. Give examples of what your lover does that you admire, and what your lover is and means to you. Make it personal. Write from your heart. The main thing is to do it.
That’s exactly what I am going to do this Valentine’s. I’m going back to the good old fashioned handwritten love letter. Then I’m putting a stamp on it and mailing it.
But please don’t tell Lori. I want to surprise her.
Life Matters is written by David B. Whitlock, Ph.D. His email is drdavid@davidbwhitlock.com and his website is Davidbwhitlock.com.
Ain't got time to take a fast train.
Lonely days are gone, I'm a-goin' home,
'Cause my baby just a-wrote me a letter.
---“The Letter,” The Box Tops, 1967
My heart beat faster as I slowly opened the mail box. Was it there? Did she write? Three weeks of anticipation was wearing on me, three weeks of fumbling through the mail, three weeks of mumbling, “That’s not it, not that one, nope, not that one either,” three weeks of closing the mail box, sighing to myself and then hoping for tomorrow. I was about to break under the pressure.
And then it arrived: the letter.
And so began a flurry of love letters between Lori and me. Well, at first they couldn’t be classified as love letters. We weren’t “there” yet. But we would move in that direction. And soon I would write her weekly love letters. I even vowed to continue my practice of writing weekly love letters after we were married.
And I did for a while. But gradually, the weekly flow of love letters trickled into one a month and then dribbled into an occasional note. The Don Juan of love letters collapsed into the reticence of Briscoe Darling’s boys.
It happens. There are kids to raise, bills to pay, laundry to wash, a house to clean, meals to cook---not to mention responsibilities of the day job. And in the midst of all that, Lori and I got connected to the internet, and we learned to text.
With life as busy as it is, it’s so much easier and quicker to text a, “Love you,” or email an, “I was just thinking of you when I read this article I’ve enclosed.” It’s not necessarily that romance has waned, it’s simply more convenient to tweet your sweet, to communicate by email rather than by snail mail, to send an instant message rather that find paper and pen, and struggle with hand writing.
But yet, there is something about getting that handwritten letter and seeing love words written in that color of ink on that particular stationary. Lori still has a letter I wrote her from Bangalore, India over thirty years ago. I can read the writing just now (even then I didn’t properly cross my t’s), and she cherishes a card and letter I sent her when I was a lovesick freshman at Baylor University. How much nicer and neater I wrote back then. Was it because I took more time?
Time, that’s it. It takes time to write love letters. Time---something we seem short on. The express lane of life moves too quickly to slow down for romance.
When I was home several months ago, I read love letters my dad wrote my mom when he was stationed with a medical unit in Korea during that war. Dad filled lonely nights---no television, no internet, no cell phones--- with writing letters to Mom. Those love letters are now sixty something years old, but the faded ink still shines with passion and drips with the longing Dad had for Mom. I carefully handled the fragile, military issued stationary and imagined what kind of pen Dad used when he wrote those letters in some M*A*S*H* like tent on some cold winter’s night, warmed as he must have been by the flame of love.
But it didn’t end in Korea. I also read a more recent love letter of his. “I am so glad we met at the tennis courts some 66 years ago,” Dad wrote. “You still look cute and beautiful to me. And you still have that quality of life that inspires and excites me!!!”
I read where, according to a survey, 2/3 of women ages 18-70, said their most cherished gift on Valentine’s Day wouldn’t be that diamond, that luxurious dinner at a five-star restaurant, that trip to an exotic resort, nor a dozen roses. It would be a letter, a letter!----a signed letter, handwritten by their lover, sealed and delivered by mail.
Did you get that?
So here’s my challenge: Mark out some time, maybe thirty minutes to an hour between now and Valentine’s, get a pen and some paper, go to a place where you can have the quiet to write, and simply tell your lover how much you love him or her. Be specific. Give examples of what your lover does that you admire, and what your lover is and means to you. Make it personal. Write from your heart. The main thing is to do it.
That’s exactly what I am going to do this Valentine’s. I’m going back to the good old fashioned handwritten love letter. Then I’m putting a stamp on it and mailing it.
But please don’t tell Lori. I want to surprise her.
Life Matters is written by David B. Whitlock, Ph.D. His email is drdavid@davidbwhitlock.com and his website is Davidbwhitlock.com.
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Just One Word
All it took for Doris Troy was, “Just One Look,” in the words of the hit song she wrote and sang to the top of the charts in 1963. “Just one look/ That's all it took, yeah /Just one look.” Good and right for her.
But sometimes, in other situations, all it takes is just one word--- one word to change a life forever.
We---my wife Lori and I--- waited for that one word, having been told we would receive the results of Lori’s biopsy between 2 p.m. and 4 p.m., Thursday last week. Actually we had been waiting for over a week, including the time for the scheduling of the biopsy itself and the determination of the results.
Waiting can be an unnerving experience: the human mind is capable of a thousand possibilities, mostly negative, creating one more worst case scenario, allowing our ever imaginative thoughts to wander, recalling people we’ve known somewhere---that one where it so suddenly happened to her, or the other one where he went so fast, or the one where she fought so bravely for so long, and the one that so heavily weighs on you just now, the one you await---yours: “What will the one word be: Benign? Malignant?”
It’s just one word; but what a difference one word can make.
Cancer kills more than 1,500 Americans a day and costs over $200 billion a year in medical bills and lost productivity. In Lori’s case the particular biopsy was for breast cancer, a cancer which about 1 in 8 women will develop in the course of their lifetime. Almost 40,000 women were expected to die from breast cancer in 2010. Only one other cancer, lung cancer, claims the lives of more women in the U.S. You are probably thinking of people’s names as your read those statistics. Maybe they died this last year or perhaps they are battling cancer today. Maybe the name you are thinking of is your own because you are struggling with this disease.
And so Lori and I waited for that word: benign or malignant.
“The word ‘benign’ has to be the most beautiful word in the English language,” one of my friends later declared.
“Then ‘malignant’ has to be the ugliest,” a second quipped.
I know something of that. My first wife, Katri, died of breast cancer after a six year fight with that formidable foe. In her unfortunate case the news came like a terrorist bomb on a peaceful parade, exploding on us as we hypothesized the cause for her mysterious symptoms, scratching our heads, all of us, including doctors---experts looking in the wrong direction, searching for the cause of her pain, examining relentlessly--- until the disease, with a Jared Lee Loughner smirk, proudly exposed its sinister self, and snickering at our surprise, “ha!” went on to announce with warped glee, “Breast cancer it is, fourth stage, metastasized to the bones.” And that was the cause for her pain, a pain among many that would dominate the remaining 6 years of her young life.
And now this day, Lori and I anxiously awaited her test results:
2:30 p.m., “I’m good, how ‘bout you?” I tried to exude confidence.
3’clock: “Half way there, they should call any time now.” I was still attempting to console.
3:30 p.m., “It’s okay, but what’s taking them?” I tried to remain upbeat.
3:45 p.m.: “Maybe you should call and see if they forgot.” Now I was getting aggravated.
3:55 p.m.: “For goodness sakes, what‘s wrong? Just call!” Frustration had found a parking place in my soul.
3:59 p.m.: Finally, the phone rings, Lori answers. My ears are attuned. Life hangs in the balance, “Okay, Yes… Yes…Yes. Thank you. Oh, thank you for the good news!”
“Benign.”
I sigh with relief.
Just one word. A wonderful word. Not malignant. Benign. Praise God!
“The Lord giveth.”
“The Lord taketh away.”
In just one word.
For now, I’ll rejoice in the “giveth” and in that one word: “benign”--- at that moment the most beautiful word I could have heard.
Until it’s time for another test.
But that’s another day.
Life Matters is written by David B.Whitlock, Ph.D. David email is drdavid@davidbwhitlock.com. His website is davidbwhitlock.com
But sometimes, in other situations, all it takes is just one word--- one word to change a life forever.
We---my wife Lori and I--- waited for that one word, having been told we would receive the results of Lori’s biopsy between 2 p.m. and 4 p.m., Thursday last week. Actually we had been waiting for over a week, including the time for the scheduling of the biopsy itself and the determination of the results.
Waiting can be an unnerving experience: the human mind is capable of a thousand possibilities, mostly negative, creating one more worst case scenario, allowing our ever imaginative thoughts to wander, recalling people we’ve known somewhere---that one where it so suddenly happened to her, or the other one where he went so fast, or the one where she fought so bravely for so long, and the one that so heavily weighs on you just now, the one you await---yours: “What will the one word be: Benign? Malignant?”
It’s just one word; but what a difference one word can make.
Cancer kills more than 1,500 Americans a day and costs over $200 billion a year in medical bills and lost productivity. In Lori’s case the particular biopsy was for breast cancer, a cancer which about 1 in 8 women will develop in the course of their lifetime. Almost 40,000 women were expected to die from breast cancer in 2010. Only one other cancer, lung cancer, claims the lives of more women in the U.S. You are probably thinking of people’s names as your read those statistics. Maybe they died this last year or perhaps they are battling cancer today. Maybe the name you are thinking of is your own because you are struggling with this disease.
And so Lori and I waited for that word: benign or malignant.
“The word ‘benign’ has to be the most beautiful word in the English language,” one of my friends later declared.
“Then ‘malignant’ has to be the ugliest,” a second quipped.
I know something of that. My first wife, Katri, died of breast cancer after a six year fight with that formidable foe. In her unfortunate case the news came like a terrorist bomb on a peaceful parade, exploding on us as we hypothesized the cause for her mysterious symptoms, scratching our heads, all of us, including doctors---experts looking in the wrong direction, searching for the cause of her pain, examining relentlessly--- until the disease, with a Jared Lee Loughner smirk, proudly exposed its sinister self, and snickering at our surprise, “ha!” went on to announce with warped glee, “Breast cancer it is, fourth stage, metastasized to the bones.” And that was the cause for her pain, a pain among many that would dominate the remaining 6 years of her young life.
And now this day, Lori and I anxiously awaited her test results:
2:30 p.m., “I’m good, how ‘bout you?” I tried to exude confidence.
3’clock: “Half way there, they should call any time now.” I was still attempting to console.
3:30 p.m., “It’s okay, but what’s taking them?” I tried to remain upbeat.
3:45 p.m.: “Maybe you should call and see if they forgot.” Now I was getting aggravated.
3:55 p.m.: “For goodness sakes, what‘s wrong? Just call!” Frustration had found a parking place in my soul.
3:59 p.m.: Finally, the phone rings, Lori answers. My ears are attuned. Life hangs in the balance, “Okay, Yes… Yes…Yes. Thank you. Oh, thank you for the good news!”
“Benign.”
I sigh with relief.
Just one word. A wonderful word. Not malignant. Benign. Praise God!
“The Lord giveth.”
“The Lord taketh away.”
In just one word.
For now, I’ll rejoice in the “giveth” and in that one word: “benign”--- at that moment the most beautiful word I could have heard.
Until it’s time for another test.
But that’s another day.
Life Matters is written by David B.Whitlock, Ph.D. David email is drdavid@davidbwhitlock.com. His website is davidbwhitlock.com
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