A Sobering Truth

A fortuneteller once told me I had a curse hanging over my head and only she could lift it. “What kind of curse?” I asked, pressing for details. She wouldn’t specify until I’d paid $50 up front and booked more sessions with her. I laughed, but cringed inside. While I didn’t return to see the woman, I already knew what the curse was. I was 27, and I’d been drinking almost every day for nine years.

A few months before that 1994 visit to the fortuneteller, I’d had a blackout after one of my customary drinking binges. I don’t recall how I got back to my building, but I remember looking up at a mountain of stairs leading to my third-story apartment. I gripped the rail and walked unsteadily up each step. When I got to the top, I lost my balance and fell backward to the bottom of the last flight of stairs. Stunned, I examined myself. Instead of the broken neck I should’ve had, I’d merely banged an elbow. With no idea how I got there, I awoke in my bed the next day with the sun intruding on my drunken slumber.

The fortuneteller was right. I had a curse hanging over my head—alcoholism.

I barely remember what life was like before I started drinking. I grew up in a marginally Christian home and believed the good I did outweighed the bad. As one of the “good” girls in high school, I didn’t have sex, drink, or do drugs. But after my senior prom, a month before my eighteenth birthday, I had my first drink. I thought, I deserve it. I’ve been good for 18 years! After a few sips, my whole body reacted. The feeling was more gratifying than anything I’d ever known. The more I drank, the more pleasant the world looked. I spent the summer getting drunk—as well as the following four years.

Nearly every day of my college career was filled with drinking-related activities. Practically everyone drank, and I had all sorts of “friends.” Days were filled with fun and frolic; nights with emptiness. Drinking caused my inhibitions to fall away, and I became promiscuous. Trying to recapture that first “buzz,” I went through a series of relationships, jobs, and schools—even law school—in an alcoholic fog. I blamed my appalling behavior on drunken blackouts.

In early 1997, I was almost 30, unemployed, and living with my mother. Unknown to her, I drank myself to sleep every night and often feared I’d drink myself to death. I saw myself at age 50 still drinking—or dead—and realized I couldn’t continue this lifestyle. I never was able to recapture that high from my initial drinking experience. For the first time in almost 12 years, I wanted to stop trying.

Although I wrestled with the decision, I decided to get sober by age 30. I couldn’t imagine life without alcohol—my god, my savior, my friend. To no longer worship at its altar seemed unbearable, but something beyond me was pulling me away.

In September 1997—after six months of sobriety—I believed I’d obtained that glory. The months had been tough, but with a new outlook on life, I made plans for the future. Next to go was my sexual activity. I became abstinent—the perfect complement to my sobriety. I felt physically clean and believed I was becoming a good and moral person.

When I’d been sober almost a year, I moved to a different state, found a job, and got my own apartment. I felt confident and invincible. People called me the “Black Dr. Laura” because I sounded like her and listened to her faithfully. I told anyone who’d listen that they, too, could be moral if only they’d make the effort. A walking self-help book, I preached my new religion: “You have the power to change your own life!” Everything in my life was coming together because of my own efforts—or so I thought.

Toward the end of 1998, however, I came crashing down from my high. Although I was a sober, moral person, I was disheartened. I still was thirsty for alcohol, and remained frustrated, bitter, and ashamed about my past. My life didn’t seem much better than it had been while I was drinking. I wondered why I didn’t feel “good.” Then, the hollow feeling that made me put down the bottle two years before returned.

My search for something to fill that empty space inside led me to my youngest sister, a Christian. I told her about my disillusionment, and she convinced me to buy a Bible. Reluctantly I did so. The book sat on my coffee table for months before I removed the plastic wrapper. God was a stranger, and I didn’t think I needed him. Whenever my sister told me she was praying for me, I laughed to cover my hostility.

Fueled by this skepticism and seduced by the existential philosophies I’d read in college, I questioned the point of life and my purpose in it. I rejected the notion I had to rely on something other than myself. I thought about all the lies I’d told and all the destructive things I’d done. How will I carry it all? I wondered. As I seriously considered getting on my knees and asking God for answers, I became distracted: In May of 1999, at the age of 32, I met a man.

I saw “Greg” almost every day at work, and he clearly was interested in me. He asked if he could call me, and we spoke on the telephone several times. Nothing remotely Christian came up in our conversations. I was flattered by his attention, but one question kept popping into my mind: Is he a Christian?

I didn’t know what I believed about God, so I wondered why I was so curious about Greg’s beliefs. But I asked him anyway. “I believe in Jesus, but I’m not living a perfect life,” he said. Good. Neither was I! Before I could ask any more questions, he asked me out. While I was tempted to accept because I hadn’t had a real date in years, I stalled in replying to Greg.

Once again I sought my sister’s advice, and we spent hours discussing my potential relationship with Greg. Though I wasn’t yet a Christian, I wanted to make wise choices. My sister helped me focus on what the Bible says about men, women, and relationships, and not what the world—or my body—says. She told me if I were to live as a Christian woman, the man in my life would need to be a Christian. Together we reasoned that if that were the case, the first thing Greg would have wanted to know was if I were a godly woman. I knew this was going to be the new standard by which I measured any potential partner.

While I was still drinking, I lived by my own morals. Now, I wanted to live by God’s. I realized a “perfect” life isn’t necessary; a surrendered life is. I never went out with Greg. I now believe God allowed him to come into my life to help me realize my need for a moral compass—and, more importantly, for a Savior.

Several months later, on December 23, 1999, I told God I knew sobriety and abstinence weren’t enough to save me. I dedicated my life to him. I asked Jesus Christ to forgive me of my sins, to release me from the burdens of bitterness and fear, and to fill my heart with trust. I surrendered my will to the Lord that night, finding comfort in Matthew 11:28, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.”

As I read the Bible, the Lord continues to open my spiritual eyes. Jesus didn’t come to make bad people good; he came to make dead people alive! He says: “Whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (John 4:14).

Looking back, I see how God used my quest for goodness as a way to the Truth. Just as God used the Ten Commandments to show the Israelites their sins, he used my attempts to save myself to show me mine. I tried to apply moral principles to my life and failed. I’d been self-righteous and bold in telling others to live up to my standards instead of God’s. Now I want to be bold for Christ.

Since my conversion, I’ve found fellowship with other believers in church and Bible study groups. While I’m not involved in a support group for alcoholics, one of my current goals is to speak to those battling addiction—Christians and non-Christians—and to share my story of hope. Our works are futile; in a thousand lifetimes, we never can be good enough to save ourselves. Only God’s grace frees us from the bondage of sin and addiction. Even sobriety can become a form of bondage when it’s worshiped as a god. Its “saving grace” is deceptive.

Today I struggle with a different issue: my singleness. I want to marry and have children, but remaining single might be God’s will for my life. As with any problem or concern, I turn these desires over to God. According to the Bible, he has plans to prosper me and not to harm me (Jeremiah 29:11). He gives me hope and a future, and if that future requires my singleness, I’ll glorify him as a single woman.

That long-ago fortuneteller was right in ways she couldn’t imagine. I did have a curse hanging over my head. But the curse wasn’t alcohol; it was my separation from God. That curse has been lifted. The Living Water that eluded me is now mine in abundance. I’ve been sober for six years, and thanks to Christ, I no longer thirst.

Originally published in the May/June 2003 issue of Today’s Christian Woman.