new beginings?

I got to bed about 2am after a relaxing evening of dinner & dancing with sober friends only to be jolted awake at 6 by the phone - the hospital - calling about my neighbor and sponcee, Jason T.

A car accident. Broken leg, lacerated liver, punctured lung, ICU, etc.etc.etc. A tree. Blood alcohol almost 3X legal limit. BTW can you go next door and walk the dog?

Anyone who has been sober for a good while has gotten at least one of these calls.

Jason has been struggling with sobriety for 2 years now, after a successful period of 7 years in Philly. He had 29 days sober when he went to work last night; now he has a tube in his lung.

Cunning, baffling, powerful --- and maddening.

Will this be the wake-up call he's been waiting for? Each time it is worse than before, yet he continues to go back to the bottle. Will he survive his bottom and have a new beginning this time?

With this kind of object lesson in my face, I know I will.

I just spent 1.5 hours counseling his parents. They are elderly, have little understanding of alcoholism or bi-polar illness, and have just drive 3 hours to see him in the hospital and collect the dog. He was already trying to make his problems into their problems by convincing them to chase down his keys, his wallet, his car etc., but I convince them to just leave it alone. There will be plenty of time for him to clean up his own mess later on, and besides, if any of that stuff exists it will become evidence in a police investigation.

They tell me he was ejected from his convertible and was brought into the hospital naked and with one shoe on (his clothes were apparently cut off during transport). It is a miracle that he didn't break his neck since he had surgery in September to have a rod inserted in his spine to correct a crushed disc problem).

And while sorting thru his papers at home to find needed bills & contact numbers, I find 5 different prescription bottles, all from the same doctor ... an old story for us in recovery.

And while all this is going I amuse myself by roasting a 23# turkey ...

Did I mention my new beginning - my bankruptcy filing? Kind of important to me, but also kind of besides the point when alcoholism rears it's ugly head like it did today.

A Prayer for Romantic Love

"The Breath of Love" by Michel Quoist

My beautiful love as yet unknown
you are living and breathing
somewhere far away
or perhaps quite close to me,
but I still know nothing of the threads
that form the fabric of your life
or the pattern which makes your face distinctive.

My beautiful love as yet unknown
I would like you to think of me tonight
as I am thinking of you -
not in a golden dream that is far from my real self,
but as I really am, a living person
that cannot be invented without distorting the truth.

My beautiful love as yet unknown
I love you already although your face is hidden.
If I can make myself richer now
I shall be able to enrich you
and I want to learn how to give
rather than always to take.
When you enter my life and I recognise you,
I do not want to take you like a thief.
I want to receive you like a treasure
and let you give yourself to me.

My beautiful love as yet unknown
will you forgive me in the future?
I hope you will forgive me
when you are curled up beside me
and when your eyes seek out the most distant clouds
in the open sky of my eyes.
I hope you will forgive me for knowing too well
the gestures of love
because I have learned them from others before you.
I would like to forget them now for your sake.
How lovely it would be
if we could seek and find together
the chords that would form the right accompaniment
to the songs of joy and suffering
that we shall sing together.

My beautiful love as yet unknown
I want to pray for you tonight
because you already exist,
because I already want to be faithful to you
and because you are already having difficulties
and possibly because of me.
I am preparing myself for you
and you are preparing yourself for me.
I hope with all my heart that in the future
I shall be your sun and you will be my source
and I will warm you in my rays
and you will wash me in your water.
Our bodies will be grafted together
and we shall give to the world
what it needs most of all -
the strength of our love that it would lack without us.

My beautiful love as yet unknown
we have to wait for one another now.
We know how painful it is for lovers
who do not know each other's faces
to go on waiting for each other.
But we also know that, although we are still apart,
our two lives are looking and calling for each other.

And I am also sure that, in the darkness of our longing,
God's longing and his light are present.
Our Father who is in heaven
is looking at us, my love, and loving us.
And he is saying now
as he has been saying for all eternity
"If that is what they really want
they will be one in the future."
That is his dream as our Father
and that will be our decision as his children.