Worshiping False Idols

As we approach the 2016 presidential election, I would like to tell a story about relying on false idols.

It is fairly well known that I quit drinking alcohol eight years ago.  What I don’t talk about is how hard it was for me, I wasn’t able to wake up and say “that’s it, I don’t drink.”  Unfortunately, I suffered from “too much” for most of my life; I was able after most bad stretches of drinking to get it under control and slow down for a while.  By 2008 I lost that ability.  I was a father of four, had lost my job due to my bizarre behavior and my smart wife deciding she had enough, she let me go from the family.  It was the best thing ever to happen to me, allowed me to realize what was important. 

I got help from the secret society who helps folks like me.  Several of the tenets of the program rely on God or your version of it.  I grew up in an Irish Catholic family, did ten years of Catholic school and my family was very involved in the church and sports league connected to the church.  I don’t have a negative thing to say about the experience butI have always had a fuzzy idea of the almighty.  What version of a higher power I do agree with,  tend to be Deist rather than Theist (click here for clarification),  to put it simply I don’t believe that God was responsible for sparing you from a tornado or certainly didn’t help you score your freaking touchdown.

So somebody said to me, you don’t have to use God as a higher power, just use something that is bigger than you and means something.  I chose our children as my “higher power. 

Within 18 months pretty much everything was turned around.  I got back the car, the family, the house and the job.  The job I had was great, but it was in Herndon VA.  On a good day, it would take 30 minutes to get there or home, on a Friday if it was raining it could be two hours.  At that time I romanticized coming home from a long day at work, walking through the door and having the kids scream Daaadddd and run to hug me. 

On the first week, I had driven home after a long day at work, it was raining lightly so the drive took an hour plus.   I walk into the door expecting the children to be running into my arms, but instead I walk into mayhem.  In the living room are the triplets sitting in separate corners screaming and crying at the top of their lungs.  As I stood there with a laptop bag in hand staring at the scene in front of me, Pam walks out from the kitchen doorway, pokes an angry head in and says, “Great, Daddy is here.  Now maybe you can explain to him why you don’t stick your finger in another person’s butt without permission” and just as abruptly turned around and went back.

As I stood there, I thought “Perhaps I should find another higher power!”