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I've been mourning (at least the temporary) loss of a dream . . . of a place for myself in the world. And in that holy, sacred space of mourning -- just a simple sunrise prayer corner  where I lift my hands and my heart to God -- I have wondered in the waiting. So He has taught me to see . . . to come alive . . . in the sacred spaces of the seemingly ordinary . . .

A rocking chair at 3am. . . A simple farmhouse quietly disguised among untold riches . . . An airplane window seat over a St. Louis sunset . . . 

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​A meandering river with time to remember . . .

And the finest line between holy daring and lunatic crazy  . . . 

​That holy place just between dawn and daybreak . . . in thankful November . . . 



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​                           And a warm place to grow . . .

The sweetest dream that I've ever held in my heart is to have a home. Not just as a place to live . . . but as an anchor for my soul. It would come complete with memories, history, comforting familiarity . . . even long after the people were gone . . . and I would be the benevolent gatekeeper for new people. No matter how far away I went, it would be there waiting for me -- and everyone I loved -- with flaming sunsets and narrowed roads leading to it . . . with secure walls and painted doors to close behind us when the weight of the world became too heavy. 

​Isn't this the real American dream . . . the human dream . . . behind the square footage and the status address? Beyond the gated communities and the homeowner's associations? We all want a safe place to belong forever . . . It's such a completely normal thing, I think.

​But maybe I want it just a little bit more than the average person because it's been so particularly elusive for me . . .

​There's a scene in the iconic movie Forrest Gump that is a painful reminder that not all of us are born into that God breathed place of insulated love and protection. Forrest and his childhood friend are strolling through the congenial, southern countryside adjoining his own regal antebellum home when they come upon a sorry shack on the other side of an old cornfield. She seems to catch her breath for a moment before regaining her composure, and then in a fit of rage-filled resolve, she begins to hurl rocks at the house where she grew up until she falls to the ground emotionally and physically expended, at which point Forrest delivers the classic line, "I guess sometimes there just aren't enough rocks." 

​The truth is that some of us are haunted by houses rather than comforted . . . and the desire for a safe place becomes the most important thing  . . . For me, that desire . . . that dream bordering on a obsession . . . has been deferred by equally normal circumstances over the years . . . military life for ten years where houses were provided . . . followed by a church parsonage of sorts . . . and then some plain old poor financial decisions have delayed my dream of owning my own home . . . for over thirty years. 

​I've feel like I've been throwing rocks for a lifetime. To have my own home was a dream borne in childhood . . . one of hope and better things.

I've imagined it a thousand times . . . a house built over the slant of a hill . . . and tall windows with a view of a winter expanse (there is nothing like winter to call me home). There is soup on the stove and something baking in the oven. And as I move back and forth between the kitchen and my office to write, I can see my children playing with my grandchildren . . . hear their laughter as they sled down that hill. There is a blazing fire in a family room behind me to warm them when they come inside. It's not a huge house . . . but there's enough room to grow . . . and a safe place for everyone.

In my  profound disappointment in the waiting, the sweetness of my dream has turned somewhat toxic and misguided, and compounded by my desire to have provided something different for my children and my grandchildren . . . a "festering sore of resentment' for anyone or anything that gets in the way of this dream deferred (Hughes, 1951). The truth, I know, is that kind of  generational inheritance of a home is a rare thing, even for Americans anymore . . . childhood homes are sold . . .  grown children are moving farther away and are increasingly choosing something different . . . sometimes people  can't . . . or simply don't go home again . . . and must take the best parts of where they have been with them. In all this, there is a simple truth . . . 

​It's not about the walls and the roof or where we live that makes us who we are  . . . it's about what we make the place that we live . . . and more importantly, it's about the people . . . about the safe relationships we build . . . about the love and the memories we make along the way no matter where we lay our heads . . . 

​It's been a tumultuously painful and alternately joyful year for me . . . the best kind for growing. 

​My year began in a house on a mountain with the family I built. My oldest daughter, very pregnant with her third child in Denver, couldn't travel for the holidays, so my brother rented a rambling lodge in the Colorado Rockies, and we brought Christmas there from Michigan . . . from Chicago . . . and all of that safe love of family -- my husband and our two daughters, their husbands, my grandchildren, my brother . . . came together under one roof to celebrate the ultimate sacrifice of the world . . . the ultimate joy. I was home . . . high on that mountain all the way across the country.

​That same brother lives in a condo in a trendy Chicago neighborhood and he travels a lot for work . . . but several times over the course of the year, he and his partner have made time for me. Every other month or so I make the trip into the city and they celebrate my very presence. They invite all their friends through formal invitation: Jayson's sister is in town . . . We cook in the kitchen and linger over the island and wine into the midnight hours, go to breakfast the next morning, run the Lakefront Trail along Lake Michigan. Recently, they were out of town when I was attending a writing conference downtown, but they gave me a key, and I felt safe in their guestroom . . . but not really like a guest at all. 

​One of my dearest friends is between homes, having a condo renovated in west Michigan and alternately staying in a camper on a lake in the little farming community where she grew up. Several times over this summer, she has honored me with an invitation into the rustic beauty of her charming little -- and alternately expansive -- world. We've paddle boarded a misty lake, run back country roads, traversed ancient cemeteries, rowed a boat at twilight, and watched the stars falling down around us by the light of a fire. I can close my eyes right now and be there. It feels like home under that open dome of her sky, and in the very shadow of that little camper that sits between an overgrown garden and sun-spattered water.

​Most recently, my daughter asked me to come to Colorado again . . . this time to help settle her -- my --  growing family into a new house. In their lovely new tri-level home, they gave me a slant-ceilinged suite at the top of the stairs. A desk near a window looked out over the neighborhood into the mountains. As I wrote at that desk and gazed over the shadowy peaks, I listened to the sounds of the house . . . the children playing and the baby waking from her nap . . . the dog barking in the backyard and the clicking of my keyboard . . . My daughter between in the kitchen . . . We were a family and I was home. 

​There are a half dozen more people . . . friends I can think of who would not and do not hesitate to welcome me into their homes. I have open invitations, codes to garages, and access to pools, guest rooms, and breakfast tables. These relationships -- not so much the spaces -- have built us over the years. Even so, I'm looking forward to sharing my own space . . . giving back. Until then, I am learning to be at home in the world . . . when I am running through the woods . . . along a lake . . . the trees are mine . . . the water is mine . . . God put the clouds, the setting sun, and the rising moon out there just for me. ​

​When I think of my brother and me in that little house that broke us when we were children . . . We couldn't save ourselves, or each other then . . . but we're doing it now . . . Life doesn't begin and end with fulfilled or crushed dreams . . . it's the journey in getting there . . . or maybe the letting go . . . that will either break us or build us . . . or both. 

​This past year has taught me that until I get to where I'm going . . . wherever I go . . . wherever I am, I am home.

For over ten years now, two or three evenings a week -- sometimes more, sometimes less -- I've had a glass of wine or two. Once a month, if it's been one of those days, I might exchange the wine for vodka with a splash of cranberry and a pretty green lime wedge. I call it a "vodka kind of night" and usually refill my glass . . . once . . . or twice if it's not a work night. Okay, sometimes it is. And sometimes it's more than once a month.

You know the kind of day . . . You splash coffee on the perfect shirt as you're running out the door late. You trip over the dog who has thrown up on the rug . . . and you step in it. Your highway entrance is closed, your technology fails during THE presentation, and you find out your debit card has been compromised . . . but not before you're standing at the grocery check-out with a full cart and a gum-popping cashier with a nose ring announces "declined" without an ounce of adolescent compassion for your grown-up dilemmas. 

​Right about now, if you're still reading, you can probably relate on some level. And based on the title of this blog, you might be rolling your eyes in mock terror of the lecture that is sure to come. I promise I'm not going in that direction. I'm not the alcohol police. Hell, I'll even sit and share a bottle of wine with you and listen to your story if we're still friends after this. Or we can just laugh at the absurdities of life, because . . .  let's be honest . . . the scenarios above are just a day in the life. I didn't even touch on the real heartache, the tragedy, the true broken-ness . . . the things we  try to hide that keep us standing in the wine aisle every other night perusing and pretending it's the quirky labels that we love . . . the things that can drive us to the bottom of that rose colored bottle. So I'm also going to be painfully honest with you about my own story . . .

I've had countless days that fit that description . . . and none of that is why I drink.

A little over a decade ago . . . I didn't drink at all. It wasn't that I had any strong convictions against it. As a matter of fact, I interpret the Bible, which is my guidebook for life, to offer up wine as a balm for the spirit . . . to lighten the heart when it's heavy (Ps.104:14-15). But all those years ago, alcohol wasn't even on my radar. I was chasing babies, chasing a career, chasing an unmerciful clock. I was working and raising children, putting them through private schools even as I was still cracking my own textbooks and cranking out theses into the midnight hours. I was exhausted, and sleep was my only respite, my only vice. I had no time, nor the inclination or money to drink at the end of a day. And I certainly had no time for sorrow. 

​So when all of a sudden I felt the crush of a life betrayal so deeply that, when the fortress I had built around that single trust broke, the colossal tide of emotion that swept over me was frightening . . . especially frightening because I did something I rarely ever do in my pragmatic existence.

I cried.

In the middle of one summer, I went off the clock, and I cried . . . like all the demons of Hell had been loosed on my soul. Under a July moon, something  just surged up into my throat out of my belly and I began to howl like a wounded animal.  It was like someone else had taken over my body and my soul and it was beyond my control. My husband tried to stop it. He frantically tried to hush me by waving his arms and beseeching me: the neighbors would hear . . . I would scare our daughters . . . I was scaring HIM. But it kept coming over me. That gut-wrenching wail followed me driving to the grocery store . . . took me over in hotel rooms and church parking lots. I cried in the shower and I wept over dinner in the kitchen. One evening, as I lay in bed, my body began to tremble again with that haunted, moaning wail, and my youngest daughter heard. She came to me and held me until I could finally manage to stifle that strange, foreign emotion . . . that ululating, keening wail that I could not recognize as grief. But I remember thinking that I. Must. Stop. This. I can't do this to my child, my daughter. She was a compassionate young adult in college, but that reversal of roles just felt wrong and imposing to me. That was the last time I cried that summer.

​And then I began to drink.

​A lot at first, admittedly. It was summer break and the days were long. I could stave of the sadness by pretending to be busy in the garden, running, cleaning . . . but every night as the sun began to set and the first shadows were cast, a shadow cast over my spirit, too . . . and I poured myself into a sweet melancholy. The number of days and the amount tapered off, but it had become routine. I mostly settled into a rich, burgundy Merlot or a bubbly amber Riesling. It was the prettiest lie I could find to hide my grown-up problems.

​I've been drinking for over ten years now, and I will tell you I'm not an alcoholic. I don't drink before 5:00pm. I don't get drunk. I've never lost a job. Indeed, I've earned a few more degrees and a few more promotions over these years. I've never driven under the influence of alcohol. Too many glasses of wine have never driven me to bad decisions or regrets or words I can't take back. I mostly drink alone. I will tell you . . . I would have told you . . . up until three weeks ago . . . that alcohol is not a problem for me. I would have told you there is a window of time in the evenings when the business of the day . . . the busyness . . . is done. Dinner is over and it's too early for bed . . . and a glass or two of wine "takes the edge off." I can feel it coming and I want to catch it before it can surface . . . that edge of hurt or sorrow or loneliness . . . an often undefined sadness that wells up in the quiet of the night. Something compels me to catch it and subdue it before it overtakes me. And for all this I  have justified just one more glass of wine . . . 

​But truth has a way of catching up with you. It won't leave you alone. And there is truth in pain that you can't ignore. Conversely, alcohol numbs and it paralyzes. When truth is saying "move away from the pain" or "transcend it to something better or even beautiful" or "find your purpose in this pain" alcohol is saying "No worries . . . I've got this. I can stop the pain. Don't move" or "If today's a little rough for you, I'll be here when you get home." Truth is steadfast, though . . . always waiting in the haze . . . ready to do battle . . . 

​July, historically, is always unpredictable for me . . . full of ironies and paradoxes . . . rolling hills of angst and alternate, sudden joy. This summer has been no exception. Pain came calling again, and I met it with my typical stoicism and a bottle of Merlot at sunset. And then, at the beginning of August, I was smack in the middle of deep, beseeching prayer -- it was well before 5:00pm -- on my knees with hands raised to Heaven when God and pain said, "Remember this?" And I began to cry again . . . over ten years later. . . like I'd picked up right where I left off. Deep, shuddering sobs bubbled from beneath my heart that was breaking all over again . . . had never really stopped breaking . . . I had just stopped feeling it. A few days later it happened again during prayer. And I let it. There was no one around to stop me . . . no one around to care or scare. I let it go. I wailed like  a banshee. And it began to feel different . . . like little pieces of tar black sadness were breaking loose from my soul and rising to the surface. It felt good and cleansing. It felt like healing.

Little by little this summer, I've been healing, giving my pain up to God instead of shutting it down, giving myself up to the hard work and courage of accepting my sorrows instead of trying to drown them.  This means looking with clear eyes at some sad realities. It means a brutally honest backtrack of wrong turns and dead ends. It means embracing rock-bottom, personal responsibility, and renewed faith as a starting point for change. 

​Taking the edge off of an honest work-hard week on a Friday night with a friend or two is one thing. . . It might even qualify as a healthy decision, along with sleeping in on Saturday, lingering over coffee, and then lacing up your running shoes. Sitting in the dark alone, clutching a wine glass of regret three nights a week and ticking off the minutes until bedtime is something altogether different.

And I wonder now what would have happened if I had felt every bit of it then . . . what I might  have done with the sadness and the sorrow . . .  Isn't the reason for pain to let you know there's something wrong? And what if taking off the edge too many time equated to losing my edge . . . sacrificing parts of myself and who I might have been  . . . could still be? What if all those suppressed tears . . . all those missed opportunities to cry out to God . . . . to seek His will in my pain . . . cost me some quicker answers . . . some firm convictions  that might have sliced through my fears and uncertainties . . . through the inertia that would have propelled me forward?

​And here is some beauty for a quick answer . . . that God promises to give us beauty for ashes (Isaiah 61:3), that He can restore lost years (Joel 2:25) . . . and that when we place our trust in Him, He can leave us with "immeasurably more than we could ever ask or imagine (Ephesians 3:20).

​I've cried a lot over these last few weeks, but between tears I've experienced more joy and beauty than I could have ever imagined in the place that I'm in. So I'm hanging on to these promises for a summer that's not yet over. I'm not vowing to put down my glass . . . but I'll put it firmly in its place behind my tears and my raised hands . . . and look for answers somewhere else. And I won't be drinking alone anymore . . . I'll raise my glass to another only to celebrate the joy and yes, soften the sorrow . . . both gifts from God.