What Are You Pursuing?

To the Editor:
I was riding my Harley to work and God gave me a word for a person who is brand new in recovery. The word came in the form of a question, “What are you pursuing?”
I knew this question was intended for a 28-year-old girl that confided in me that she is three months sober of drugs and alcohol. She just started working at my restaurant. She overheard me say that I bought my first Harley Davidson as a present to myself for sobriety. So she came to me and told me her secret and made me promise to keep her anonymity. This girl has tons of energy and nothing to do with it. I recognized her state of existence. I see it regularly in people who are new to sobriety. It looks like a person running a race, but have no idea where the finish line is. My heart goes out to each of these people that I see in this state. It’s such a crucial stage of sobriety. This is the stage that determines whether or not they will stay sober.
I was addicted to drugs and alcohol for 20 years, from the age 13–33. In that time I became quite good at my addiction. I was what you could call a “professional drug addict/drunk.” By the time I was 17, I can honestly say that I was never without the means of satisfying my addiction of either drugs or alcohol.
Without glamorizing this dark time of my life, I had followed the Grateful Dead for three years and Phish for two. I saw every show on both coasts and everything in between. I had connections in every state and nearly every city in the country. It didn’t matter where I was, I could get what I needed or wanted. I look back now and see that it was a passionate pursuit of drugs and alcohol. It took all my energy and my attention. I had to practice it as though it was my career. So if I was asked “what are you pursuing?” my answer would have been drugs and alcohol.
Now 9.5 years later, and 9.5 years clean and sober, I notice that every single person alive pursues something. Things that I see people pursuing the most are money, relationships, power, comfort, security, addictions (of course), identity, self worth, etc. The list is endless. If you think about it, you are pursuing something or many things right now. We can all look back in our lives and see all the many different things that we’ve pursued. In the 9.5 years I’ve been sober I’ve pursued much different things then I did in my 20 years of addiction.
I can recall early in my sobriety that I was fairly lost on what to pursue. Fortunately enough for me, I really wanted to know how to live sober. I remember clearly how my passionate pursuit at that time was exactly where it needed to be. When you spend 20 out of 33 years stumbling around high and drunk, you really have no clue how to live sober. To learn how to live sober I had to be around sober people. So I spent a lot of time in AA meetings and church. Once I figured that out enough to survive, I pursued a relationship, or more specifically, a wife. A professional job was mixed in there as well. It’s amazing how quickly these things came. I’ve been an Executive Chef for most of my sobriety. All that stuff pales in comparison to what I find myself pursuing today.
About three years ago my lovely wife asked me if I love God. I said “of course I do.” Then she asked me if I tell Him. I didn’t answer “of course I do.” These questions catapulted us both into a reckless, crazy, and passionate pursuit of God; more specifically a relationship with God. An intimate relationship with Him. Like any other relationship I needed to get to know Him. So, we started reading the Bible and praying together every morning. It was horrible at first. We came up with every excuse in the world not to do it. Over time it got better and now we miss only a handful of times a year. God recognized our pursuit of Him and made Himself extraordinarily available and known to us.
So what does this all mean to the 28-year-old girl who is three months sober. Well, in my commitment to be obedient to God’s voice and leading, I will ask her “what are you pursuing?” I will then share with her how pursuing God has changed my life. More than my life, it has changed my mind. I will tell her that God can give her and be all the direction she’ll need forever. I’ll tell her that God will show her where the finish line is to the race that we’re all in. I’ll tell her that if she commits to pursuing God at this stage of her sobriety she will have the best chance of maintaining her sobriety forever. Out of the countless amount of things we can pursue in our lives, I’ll tell her that there is not one that is even remotely close to being as beneficial, peaceful, pure, or awesome as pursuing God. I will try to live my life and conduct myself as one of her bosses in a way that she can see the lure of being a follower of Jesus. Jesus freed me of the captivity of addiction and He keeps me free. I love being free.