Christmas in the Light of Recovery

We’ve all heard it said that addicts suffer from “a hole in the soul.” Something deep inside us is experienced as missing. Something that we know ought to be in us and readily accessible to us; something that sustains us, gives meaning and purpose to our lives, something that tells us who we are, why we’re here and where we’re going. And yet, that vital something can’t easily be found. And so we begin our individual, lifelong quests in search of that mysterious, missing ingredient to our lives and we attempt to fill up the hole as best we can.

For some of us, relief came in the form of booze; for others, we found it in drugs or in food, in sex or in money, in religion or in work - whatever helped us feel in control of the chaos around us - whatever way worked best. And the truth is, they all do – they all work for a time – if they didn’t work, if they didn’t partially fill the hole, at least for a while, we wouldn’t have turned to them in the first place. But the thing about having a hole in our souls is that whatever we put in there that is false has a way of leaking out – a way that, all of us who’ve been addicted know, leaves us feeling even emptier than when we began.

Some of us who land in recovery are fortunate enough to meet men and women who’ve traveled that same lonely, self-destructive road. Fellow pilgrims who’ve searched, and leaked, and come up empty; but now they have a smile on their face and a glow in their hearts. They freely tell us about their own long, hard search – what it was like, what happened, what it’s like for them now. They talk to us not from their heads, but from their hearts. They speak to us not from theory but from the reality of their own experience. Our souls begin to stir; we start to come alive and begin to listen; after all, this is a program of attraction. Almost to man, they talk to us about finding the one they call “God” and they invite us to come “find him now” as well.

But some of us pilgrims have a hard time with all of this God business. Some of us ask: Why is finding God so damn hard? Why can’t the Creator and Sustainer and Giver of Life that you tell us about be seen and touched? If God really exists, why does he hide? If God is real, why is he so elusive? Why is he, or she, or it perceived by so many of us as a God who’s missing in action?

Not too long ago, I stumbled across a quote that helped me make a little more sense of that hole in the soul feeling that so many of us addicts have come to know. Its source was a fellow searcher, Simone Weil, a radical mystic who knew the feeling well and spent her short life seeking to fill it. Weil succeeded. She had her own spiritual awakening and what she says about life, and about her search, and about the missing God who created it was this: “Creation was that moment when God ceased to be everything – so we humans could become something.” I hope you’ll read that sentence again and again. Meditate on it for a few mornings and see if it doesn’t explain or at least help you identify the hole we feel inside and the gentle ways of the God for whom we were made.

According to Weil, God had to step aside. God had to back off and move away so that his most beloved creation, you and me, his very own children, could become who he so hoped for us to be: perfectly free – free to choose him. Free to choose him, not out of fear because we could see how big and powerful and awesome he truly is – but free to choose him because deep inside we feel the hole and we know we aren’t complete without him and without his great love alive and burning inside our own hearts.

At Christmas, we celebrate the birth of a man who responded to that love. A man who loved as God loved. When men and women met him, if they had holes, they felt them filled. If they felt lost and alone, broken or afraid, somehow, in his presence, they suddenly felt secure and at peace. The holy people of his day by and large rejected him; but the people full of holes found in him what they had been searching for all of their lives. That’s how it was 2,000 years ago, how it is today and how it has always been. When we couldn’t find him, he came and found us. May you, and I, and all who are in need find him now and have a blessed and hole-filled Christmas.