The Dry Bones community is filled with real people, just like the people in your life. Just like you.
Life is ups and downs. It mirrors the natural rhythms of expansion and contraction. It’s the exhale only followed by the next necessary inhale that allows life to go on.
I’ve known a young man named Jake (name changed) since he was just a kid struggling to survive the streets of Denver. Jake has encountered all aspects of the Dry Bones community: hundreds of games of pool and bowling, camping trips, bible study, sleeping bags and hygiene, transitional living house, picnics in the park, Purple Door graduation, resource navigation, therapy, deep community, and much more.
He’s no “project.” He’s family.
I’ve celebrated Jake’s GED graduation and most of his birthdays. We’ve even shared a few tears together along the way.
We used to go to Texas Roadhouse to celebrate anything because it is his idea of heaven. Jake knows, “You’ve got to eat those Roadhouse rolls while they’re hot!”
It feels like a decent metaphor for our story, “Share it while it’s hot!” because a happy hopeful story today may become less scrumptious tomorrow. Such are the rhythms of life.
Jake’s life has been a series of peaks and valleys. His main goals are to stay sober, live honestly, walk with God, and be a more present father to his son than his own dad was able to be for him.
He had been working towards these goals with unwavering determination. (An inhale of expansion!)
Then, he relapsed…again (whoosh). At that point, my intuition told me to step back and fully trust him to discover his next inhale along the path, all on his own. While I would always love and support him spiritually and emotionally, the next step was completely his to discover and take. Of course he can find the way! He can, right?
He struggled for several more months before finally being ready to give sobriety another try.
Jake intentionally found his way to western Colorado, a place where he wouldn’t be surrounded by familiar streets and temptations.
He found his way to a shelter and then a rehab center. Now, Jake has been sober for almost two years, excelling in college (4.0 GPA!), working full time, and maintaining regular contact with his son. He even encouraged our common friend “Scott” to join the same rehab program, and Scott is now a few months sober too.
I recently called Jake to wish him a happy birthday, and he told me about his day. He took Scott to Texas Roadhouse (obviously), bought food to share with people living in the park, and went bowling before returning to the sober house. Scott’s voice could be heard in the background, “Love you Matt!”
What a perfect birthday celebration. Jake inhales.
And then, I too, inhale.
Tell it while it’s hot. Other stories from this week feel not as, uh, heart-warming, impressive, inspiring, or scrumptious. “Drew” got housing, but continues to abuse drugs. Someone on our staff got the flu. “Martin” got arrested for arson. “Jessica’s” baby came 5 weeks early. You get the idea! Whoosh…Exhale.
My teacher, James Finley, talks about how we begin our life with a big breath in. That inhalation and exhalation continues to maintain its perfect balance until the very end, plus or minus one.
As I reflect on it, our ongoing life stories are always “hot” – alive and dynamic, unfolding, fascinating, mysterious, inhaling and exhaling, all somehow sustained by a Loving God. Breathing in and out fills each moment with a constant and dependable rhythm that repeats 20,000 times each day and gives Life.
So never-mind. Don’t tell it while it’s hot. Just breathe in the here and now of each moment of this complicated, beautiful, real life.
I don’t hold any expectation that my friend will relapse again. Instead, I’m believing that this will be the moment that he stays sober. Somebody has got to keep believing in him. I hope you have people in your life that believe in you too; people that remind you to take another breath – right now! I know I do. Jake is one of them.
Here’s to real Life—mine, yours, and my old friend Jake’s.
Let us continue breathing together.
Matt
