Sober Mercies How Love Caught Up with a Christian Drunk

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 Author’s Note

In some instances I changed minor details and identifying characteristics to

protect the privacy of people I’d rather not name. However, my family of
origin and immediate family are called by their real names, and they
graciously supported my decision to tell this story.
Most recovery programs have a tradition of anonymity, since no single
person can or should represent or speak for such a group. For that reason, I
don’t name the specific community that helps me stay sober, and I hope
you’ll refrain from publically associating my name or this story with any
particular organization.
Sober Mercies
Part One
 • Preface •

Waking Up in the Guest Room

I know where I am before I open my eyes. I can tell by the pillow, which is
too soft and mushy to be my normal pillow. It means I slept in the guest
room again last night. It’s a realization so awful that I quickly will myself to
stay asleep, to hurry back to oblivion. But it’s too late. I’m fully conscious
now. I roll over, my face in the pillow, and wish I had the courage to
smother myself.
This is the second time it’s happened this month. As usual, I don’t know
how I got here, but I can guess why. I search my brain for a scrap of
memory about the previous evening, but there is none. I can’t recall a single
thing after around seven p.m. My husband, Dave, and I had gone downtown
for dinner. I ordered a shrimp salad and Chardonnay. I probably drank a
couple mini wines in the ladies’ room.
I don’t remember us leaving the restaurant, much less getting into a huge
fight. But there’s no other explanation. I glance at the clock. He’s at work
already. I get up and stumble into the bathroom, where I pause to stare with
hate at my face in the mirror. My skin is so puffy that my eye sockets bulge
like lemons with small slits. Obviously, I was crying a lot last night. But
about what? What did Dave do?
Or rather, what horrible thing did I decide or imagine Dave did—after I
got drunk and irrational?
Twice, I have seen scratches on him in the morning. His face. His neck.
Dear God, let it not be that bad this time.
 Later, I sit down to write an e-mail to Dave to apologize. I can’t bear to
wait until he gets home from work to face him, my shame flaming. As usual,
I try to sound sincere in my note, to take the full blame, but I have to be
intentionally vague. I can’t let on that I have absolutely no idea what we
fought about last night, or how bad it was.
I will have to look for clues in his response.
 • one •

Crisis in Kmart

I never saw the end of my drinking days coming.

But then again, maybe most alcoholics don’t. By the time the end comes,
we’re so attached to our addiction that if we knew what person, event, or
twist of fate was going to eventually result in our deliverance, like a
drowning person who fights her rescuer, we’d do everything in our power
to make sure it never happened.
So instead, God comes to us disguised as our life, wooing us through our
misery toward surrender.
At least, that was how it was for me.
When I trace my story back to find the beginning of the end of my
drinking, I arrive at a wedding. It was September 2006, and Dave’s best
friend, Larry, was getting married to an actress and writer from Los
Angeles.
I met Susan for the first time at her rehearsal dinner, the night before her
wedding. She struck me as bright, funny, and down to earth. I liked her
zany, irreverent style. She and Larry exchanged vows the following day,
and as they shimmied back down the aisle to James Brown’s “I Feel Good,”
I had high hopes for a friendship with her.
Soon after, Susan and Larry came to visit us for a weekend. They arrived
on a brisk but sunny fall afternoon. We all sat in the living room and chatted
about how amazing it was that Larry at fifty, and Susan, in her forties, had
finally found one another (it was a first marriage for both)—and through an
online dating site, no less.
After a while, the four of us bundled up in coats and hats and took a walk
through the tiny Central Oregon town where Dave and I were living at the
time. As we strolled past gift shops and tourist boutiques, Susan regaled us
with funny stories about acting auditions gone wrong. I particularly loved
the one where she tried out for a diaper commercial by crawling around on
the floor like a baby.
We got back to the house around five o’clock. Since our dinner
reservations at a nearby restaurant weren’t until seven p.m., I did what any
good hostess would do: I opened up a nice bottle of white wine and put out
a cheese plate for my guests to snack on. That was when it happened.
Susan said, “Do you have any tea?”
I stared at her blankly, willing her to take it back.
“Actually,” she added, “if you have hot water, I brought my own loose
leaf.”
Her request instantly brought to mind another couple Dave and I had
visited in their home in Ashland, Oregon. Upon our arrival, this husband
and wife cheerily explained that after developing bad martini habits, they
had both quit drinking. “We have tea for happy hour now!” they exclaimed.
They said this as if it were good news. As if they had no idea (which they
didn’t) that I could never subsist for several days on the limited amount of
alcohol that was hidden in my suitcase. The extra four-packs of mini wine
I’d brought were meant to supplement the generous amount of alcohol I had
expected to be served by our hosts.
I don’t know how I made it through. I think we left a day early. And now,
here was Susan, saying it again: Tea!
Later at the restaurant, my worst fears about Susan were confirmed when
she ordered tea with her dinner, and casually confided, “I don’t drink.”
My heart sank. And she had seemed so hip, so funny, and likable…
Throughout dinner, and for the rest of Susan’s stay, I felt sad about the
friendship with her that would never be. But I felt even sorrier for Susan.
What would it be like to drink tea with dinner? To wake up every day
knowing you were going to feel the same way at seven p.m. as you did at
seven a.m.?
It was a life of such vast meaninglessness I couldn’t wrap my head
around it.
 * * *
By the time I met Susan, I knew I was an alcoholic. It was something I’d
been feverishly working to hide for almost twelve years. Of course, Dave
knew I had a serious drinking problem. But even he still had no idea that in
addition to the three or four glasses of wine he saw me drink each evening,
I was covertly consuming several times that amount from a secret stash in
my closet.
Lately, however, the constant effort it took just to keep this stash stocked
at all times had come to seem like a part-time job. The covert shopping
trips, the rounding up of the hidden empties, and the weekly unpacking and
repacking of the garbage can on pick-up days had left me demoralized and
exhausted.
Worse, I was starting to get sloppy. I felt like bottles were literally
spilling out of my life. One morning, I was getting breakfast in the kitchen
with Dave when he noticed a lump in the pocket of my robe. “What’s that?”
he asked, gesturing at it.
I pulled out an empty mini wine bottle, acting as if I was as surprised by
its presence as he was. “Oh, wow,” I said with a chuckle. “It’s just an old
bottle from way back when. Guess I need to wash my robe more often…”
He let that go. But lately, things like this had been happening a lot. I’d
stumble upon a bottle I’d stashed somewhere stupid or obvious, aghast but
grateful I was lucky enough to find it first. How much longer could I hope
to keep this up?
Soon after Susan and Larry’s “tea,” the small publishing company where
Dave had worked for many years was sold. The new owners planned to
relocate it from Oregon to Colorado Springs. Eager to keep Dave on staff,
they invited us to fly there for an exploratory visit.
The day after we flew into town, Dave was scheduled to be in meetings
all afternoon with company executives. Later, we were slated to have dinner
at a fancy restaurant with the president, the vice president of editorial, and
their wives. Not wanting to hang around the hotel, I asked Dave to drop me
off at a shopping mall so I could buy a new outfit for the evening.
I’d been wandering stores, casually shopping for several hours before I
realized my mistake. How could I be so stupid? We were planning to follow
the publisher and his wife straight to the restaurant after Dave picked me up
at the mall, but I had failed to transfer some of the mini wines hidden in my
suitcase into the center pocket of my large purse.
How was I going to drink?
At this stage of my alcoholism, my tolerance was so high I required at
least several glasses of wine in the late afternoon just to feel normal. Which
meant that by the time we got to the restaurant, I’d be ready to crawl out of
my skin. Worse, this was exactly the kind of social situation I found
excruciating in any state. Plus, these were Christians. Even if they drank, a
polite glass or two of wine would hardly suffice.
I told myself not to panic. I would simply have to find some alcohol
between now and when Dave picked me up at the appointed time in front of
Sears. I had less than forty-five minutes.
I began to walk the mall with great purpose. Surely, I could find one of
those specialty gift shops that feature local, high-end products, including
wine. I was also prepared to buy a bottle opener if I had to. After wasting
about ten minutes looking for such a place, I finally found a mall directory.
I quickly scanned it. None of the stores listed resembled what I had in mind.
What kind of mall is this? I thought.
And then I saw it. A listing for Kmart. Kmart sells wine! Back in Oregon,
more than once, I had ducked into a Kmart to purchase my little four-packs
of mini wine.
I walked toward the pretty red K. I smiled as I entered, remembering
when I used to bring my boys here. My first husband and I had been so
desperately poor that visiting a discount store had constituted a big outing.
Sometimes I’d buy the boys those horrible nachos with fake cheese to keep
them happy while I explored the blue-light specials.
Now, for some reason, I couldn’t find the wine section. Where were they
hiding it? Still unworried, I flagged down an employee, a bald man with a
kind face. “Can you point me to your wine aisle?” I asked, all friendliness
and optimism.
“What do you mean?”
“Wine,” I said, clearly enunciating. “As in wine you drink.”
“Gee, ma’am,” he said. (And my heart plummeted right there.) “We
don’t sell wine. In fact, no regular stores in Colorado sell wine. Or liquor.
You gotta go to the liquor store for that.”
“What?” I said, feeling a little dizzy. “Are you serious?”
 He nodded.
What kind of a crazy town was this? Bad enough that it was crawling
with the kinds of Christians I once was and now often avoided—but no
wine in the grocery store? Were they serious?
Stay calm, I told myself. “Okay,” I said with a big breath. “So where is
the nearest liquor store?”
“Hmmm,” he said, absently twirling the pencil tucked above his ear. “I
don’t think there’s one too near here. But maybe a mile up the road—”
“That’s okay,” I said, stopping him. “I don’t have a car.”
He must have noticed the look of distress on my face. “Oh, but wait!” he
said, brightening. “You can get that weak kinda beer—the stuff with less
alcohol in it, you know—at the grocery store.” He smiled like he’d given
me a gift.
Did I look that desperate?
I probably did.
“Then again,” he added, obviously still thinking, “it’s probably a ways to
the grocery store, too. But I guess you could walk.” He glanced at my feet,
in case I was wearing running shoes. I wasn’t.
I checked my watch. I didn’t have time to walk anywhere. And the
Springs is not like New York—taxis don’t just pass by. By the time one
came…
By now, I was trembling. I thanked the man and rushed to the nearest
mall exit to see what I could see outside. In the near distance—a big
parking lot and a couple of long blocks away—there appeared to be a gas
station with one of those little markets in it. If the grocery stores sold weak
beer, maybe the little markets did, too. I set off walking in that direction,
readjusting my heavy shopping bags on my shoulder.
I would have to be wearing a sweater. And it would have to be an
unusually hot day for late September. By the time I reached the gas station,
I was sweating like a pig. But inside the little grocery, it was blessedly cool.
I rushed to the back wall where I could see a cold case. And glory! Praise
God from whom all blessings flow! I was in luck.
They had no wine. But at least they had beers. I remembered what the
guy at Kmart had said. Sure enough, these were weak beers. Only 3.2
percent alcohol. I would need a lot of them in order to make a dent big
enough to help me get through the evening. Thank God they carried the
jumbo 24-ounce size! I cradled five of the cold cans into my arms (beers
that big don’t come in six-packs) and hurried to the counter.
The cashier, a young guy, looked at me funny. He even asked me for ID
and gazed at my Oregon license like I was suspicious. I made up my mind
that there was no way we were moving to this stupid town.
The store door dinged as I left the little market and began huffing toward
the mall. After half a block, I stopped to cram the big plastic bag of beers
into one of my other shopping bags, in case Dave drove by. How would I
explain what I was doing out here on the sidewalk with a bag of beer?
Then, I checked my watch. I was almost out of time. I was supposed to
meet Dave in ten minutes. I tried to run, but the shopping bags were now
agonizingly heavy, the plastic cutting into my palms and shoulders. I could
feel perspiration dripping down my back. I cursed the high altitude. I cursed
Colorado Springs and their stupid, weak beer.
Then, as Sears came into view, it hit me like a thunderbolt: how was I
going to get all these beers into my purse so I could bring them into the
restaurant and into the ladies’ room so I could drink them? My large three-
chambered purse with its center-zip pocket was perfect for hiding four or
five mini wines. But it would never in a million years hold all these jumbo
beers.
My panic reached a crescendo. I realized that in the few minutes I had
left, I would have to find and buy a new, elephant-sized purse. And then be
careful to keep it close to me—and away from Dave—all night.
I’ll spare you the details of my mad dash to Sears and my frantic speed-
shopping. Suffice it to say that when Dave picked me up at the appointed
spot, I felt like Wonder Woman. Not only had I managed to buy a
humongous purse, I’d accomplished the purse switch in the ladies’ room,
changed into my new outfit, and guzzled one of the beers in a toilet stall.
I greeted my husband about five minutes late, exhausted, shiny with
sweat, chewing hard on two sticks of spearmint gum, and thinking, How on
earth did my life come to this?
 • two •

Praise God for Grapes

Once upon a time, I assumed my Christian faith would make me immune

to the kind of gross moral lapse I considered alcoholism to be. The way I
saw it, if you were a sincere believer, you would rarely, if ever, drink. And
if you did drink, you would be careful not to drink too much. And if you
never drank too much, you couldn’t become an alcoholic.
It was sound logic, and my experience in my twenties seemed to bear
that out. During my first marriage and while my two sons, Noah and
Nathan, were little, I rarely drank. Not because I didn’t like wine or beer,
but because my first husband and I associated drinking with the wild parties
of our high school years. Plus, none of our church friends drank.
I’ve never been able to pinpoint exactly when my thinking on alcohol
changed, except to note that it preceded the breakup of my twelve-year
marriage. The story of our mostly amicable divorce is too long to tell here,
and not all that interesting. Let’s just say that he and I were young (we
married at seventeen), we came from broken families, and we managed to
lose our way.
Headed for divorce, I found myself on the wrong side of a Christian
taboo that had guided me for many years. In the past, I had judged plenty of
people for taking the “easy way out” by getting divorced. Now, in order to
assuage my own guilty conscience, I began to distance myself from the
strict ideals and convictions of a Christian community that seemed to be
distancing itself from me.
 At the time, I would have told you I was tired of being the kind of
Christian who was only against things. Now, the idea of total abstinence
from alcohol struck me as silly and legalistic. I wanted to be a different kind
of Christian. The kind who didn’t put God in a box. The kind who wasn’t
sheltered from the real world. And, probably most important, the kind who
drank without apology.
Meanwhile, I discovered that wine coolers helped to ease the pain of a
failed marriage. What possible harm could a Seagram’s Peach Fuzzy Navel
do?
In retrospect, it was a perfect spiritual storm: a growing cynicism about
my faith, guilt about my divorce, and a new affinity for alcohol.
* * *
When I began to date Dave, he wooed me with flowers, poems—and wine.
He introduced me to buttery Chardonnays and rich Merlots, which we
sipped while kissing in his kitchen. Drinking was part of the romantic
whirlwind of our courtship.
But while we were falling hard for each other, we missed the fact that I
was falling hard for alcohol, too.
After we married, Dave and I bought a house large enough for our new
blended family. Dave’s three kids (Neil, Taylor, and Jana) and my two
(Noah and Nathan) were all between the ages of nine and fourteen.
Jana and Nathan—our youngest—were happy, optimistic types who
adored each other from the start. Taylor and Noah—the middle two—could
spend days locked in a room watching sports or playing video games
together. Neil, the oldest, brought a helpful, calming presence, despite his
aspirations to grow up to be a mobster.
To my surprise, their interactions with us and with each other were
almost entirely without the kind of rancor you might expect in a blended
family. But still, a combined family is a challenge. In our case, both sets of
kids now had two homes and two sets of parents (my first husband
remarried six months after I did). Almost every weekend Dave or I or both
of us had to drive over a mountain pass to transport our kids to or from our
exes’ homes.
For all the good we shared, it was a stressful time of life.