Rebirth and Resurrections
On going through it, and the healing power of God.
I.
It was Friday and so I was drinking. The functional alcoholic lives by a regular cycle — work hard all week at stressful job, well, now you’ve earned a drink or two or dozen. If Friday is for drinking, then Saturday is for wallowing, although sometimes Saturday is for drinking and it is on Sunday that one wallows. Sometimes both Friday and Saturday are for drinking and those Sundays are especially wallowsome.
Work. Drink. Wallow. Repeat.
The thing about drinking, as any true drinker knows, is that there is a sweet spot, a heavenly and blessed moment of pure weightlessness. It is as potent a euphoria as a man can find, at least without a woman in the picture. And as a true drinker, I lived for those moments of weightlessness, when every chord of my favorite songs sent powerful reverberations throughout my soul. This is what heaven must be like, I think to myself. This is how God wants us to feel.
But those moments are ephemeral and fleeting. It’s like those planes that take astronauts up into the atmosphere and then dive down to simulate zero gravity for 60 seconds. 15 drinks and a joint or two? That’s good for 15, maybe 30 minutes of perfect weightlessness, followed by 5 hours of low-quality sleep and a day of unholy wallowing.
But back to the story. It was Friday and so I was drinking. On Saturday I wallowed. But there was a federal holiday on Monday, you see, so Sunday became for drinking as well. I passed out Sunday night - a little unfulfilled because I hadn’t gotten as much hangtime on my euphoria as I wanted - and woke up Monday morning, still with a faint remnant of drunkness, when the unwelcome pang of impending hangover struck my head. The Devil whispered into my ear, Doesn’t feel good, does it? Maybe drink your way through this one, yeh?
The bottle of tequila on the counter caught my eye and with both too much willpower and far too little, I poured, made myself a margarita.
Atta way, kid.
I drank and I kept drinking, a plane running out of fuel with nothing but open ocean on the horizon. I crashed and don’t remember what happened besides that my local baseball team had lost.
I barely remember waking up, cursing myself, trying to force myself to make some kind of magical dinner that would cure my now monumental hangover. If such a meal exists, it is not spicy chicken instant ramen and undercooked freezer fries. I staggered into my bedroom and collapsed.
II.
I woke again at 3am, in agony. But at this point, it was not a mere hangover. My brain was on fire, I couldn’t control my own thoughts, all I could realize was that something is happening. Something terrible.
I am a sinful person. It would be self-flattering to say that my sins are too many to list, but in reality I am a painfully average man of my generation. Alcohol-drugs-porn-video games. Lust, sloth, gluttony. I confess. In the sinfulness of my life, Satan had grown fond of me, and now he had come to reap the fruits of his labor.
When I opened my eyes, my heart felt like it would beat out of my chest. When I closed them, Satan tormented me with visions, dark visions, visions from the bleak basement of humanity. As I thrashed back and forth in my bed, I couldn’t help but wonder if I was psychic or psychotic. I saw things I had never seen before, thoughts I had never thought could be thought. My mind was possessed.
I saw a shadow of a glimpse of Satan himself. Teeth in the darkness.
My spirit was dying before my own eyes. My body was barely under my own control, my hands and arms tingling, numb. I have had bad nights, I have had hard nights, but this was the worst and the hardest night in my life. I have never thought seriously about suicide, but in this moment I understood perfectly the sheer helplessness, the desperation, the I am ten miles past the end of the road and my feet are fucking bleeding and if it’s okay I’d just like to lie down for a little and maybe never get back up of it.
And in this moment, this moment when all was lost, when my spirit was dying, I prayed to God like I have never prayed before.
I heard Satan laughing. Too late, Sinner boy.
But God answered my prayers, my feverish calls to be delivered from evil and safeguarded against temptation. God did not speak to me, not with words, but there was a thought, a thought that He had already planted a seed for earlier in my mind which He now brought into focus:
Do not fear the death of your Spirit! For there can be no rebirth without first death, no resurrections without great pain. It must be earned.
I almost cried in relief, for it was the most beautiful thought I have ever imagined and it was delivered to me in my darkest hour. I held unto it like a drowning man to a life raft.
Do not fear the death of your Spirit!
Satan flung his visions at me as I clung to mine. As my spirit was dying, I placed all of my heart, all of my faith, in God.
For there can be no rebirth without first death…
Satan continued to torment me. I continued to pray.
No resurrections without great pain…
But it was too late for Satan. The morning sun rose and with it I could feel my ordeal coming to close. Satan’s presence faded. I realized with dread that what I had just gone through, what had broken me, was but a glimpse of his true terrible power. Satan had not even gazed directly at me that night. I was a bug in periphery.
It must be earned.
My spirit died, and was then reborn by the grace of God. I had been Saved.
III.
The next day was not an easy day. I could not go to work. Lying in bed, it took nearly an hour for me to form a text to my boss calling in sick that morning.
When I arose, I moved through the world of my apartment in a trance-like state. I cleaned, for cleanliness is good. I prayed, for praying is good. I read from the Bible, for that is good too. I told the world I could use a prayer, and a beautiful and kind soul prayed for me. Satan came again that night, and I once again was sleepless and once again was tormented, but it was not as hard this time and I was protected once more by the grace of God.
The day after that, I worked hard and worked honestly, pushing my body, mind, and new spirit. I had dinner with my father, who I love dearly, and it was a good day. That night, I slept well, and God was looking over me.
In my cleaning, I found a note, written during my blacked-out stupor, a feeble and desperate expression from a tortured soul going through it:
It is not the worst thing I have ever written. But I will write many better things yet.
IV.
Even after this, I would not presume to know much of God and Satan. But I think that one of the differences is how they use Fear. God uses Fear out of Love, a way to scare someone straight, to help weak-wills become stronger, to set one back on the right path. Satan uses Fear out of Hate, as a tool to deceive and to ruin and to cause chaos and misery and turn human souls into ash.
I am grateful to God for the way he used fear, the way he showed me my future if I do not change. God is good.
And I have learned a thing or two about Satan and his tricks, and may better recognize his ways in the future. But I know it won’t be so simple.
The thing about Satan that’s a real bitch is, he’s not like one of those movie villains you can face once and defeat forever, roll credits. No, I have to battle against Satan for the rest of my life. Every day, again and again. He will always be searching for the seams in my soul, vulnerabilities to exploit, the chance to strike when I am low.
So be it. I have chosen God.
V.
A society which does not believe in God is a society which does not believe in Satan.
Sin has flourished in America under just these circumstances.
It is not too late for her. She can be saved. But we must fight the decline, fight the nihilism, fight the cynicism, fight the godlessness with each breath in ragged chest.
America is God’s country.
It is a good country.
VI.
These are the waning dog days of summer. For me, I shall remember them as the end of my demon days. And the last day I ever drank, September 4th, 2023. Labor Day. The irony of what I went through and the holiday’s namesake is not lost on me.
I do not know what the future will hold, for me or this achingly beautiful and troubled world we live in. But I know that a new season is upon us as summer ends.
In the fall, black shall turn to gold, and although not all that glitters is, I know this fall will be truly golden — for I have been reborn and I will be seeing it for the first time.
