First Steps 7

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First Steps
Part Seven - Final
By Gary Schneeberger
TheSchnays@cs.com

LEGAL DISCLAIMER: We know the drill by now, don't we? Besides, I'm giving 'em back after this installment.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: The song included above is "I'll Lead You Home," by Michael W. Smith. I don't own that, either, but I sure do like it ... :)

“How you feeling?”

“For a guy who just passed out and banged his head on a tile floor, pretty damn good,” Carter said with a smile, the first smile he could remember smiling in months that he didn’t consciously have to affix to his face. “One of the benefits of fainting in front of a bunch of doctors, I guess.”

He wasn't sure if Chris had been the first one to him after he collapsed, but Chris' face was the first one he saw when he came to. And it was the only face that really stood out during the brief flurry that followed.

The three or four faces that belonged to the other patients at the center, the faces that asked all the questions doctors are supposed to ask someone who's just lost consciousness, those faces had furrowed brows and wore expressions of detached, clinical concern. But Chris' face, it was all serenity and satisfaction, even before the other faces pronounced him in need of only an icebag for the bump on the back of his head and some liquids to douse a minor case of dehydration.

“And inside? How do you feel inside?”

“Pretty damn good,” Carter replied, repeating not only the words, but the smile that punctuated them.

Man, it felt good to say that and not be lying.

“Don’t worry, it’ll pass.”

He searched Chris’ face again, across the table where they now sat, just to confirm he was joking. He was smiling, too, the arcs of his mouth evident on either side of the Styrofoam coffee cup he was sipping from, but it wasn’t really the smile of someone who’d just delivered a playful barb. It was a comforting smile, sure -- Chris didn’t seem capable of any other kind -- but it was more a bemused, knowing grin than a I’m-just-pulling-your-leg one.

“What do you mean?” Carter sensed the slightest bit of defensiveness in his question -- and that made him feel even more defensive.

“This isn’t the end, John. What happened to you today was a breakthrough, a miracle. There’s no question about that. But it’s not the end. This is only the beginning.”

Carter internalized his sigh of relief. OK, he's just quoting the NA party line, warning against overconfidence. No problem.

“Oh, I know that.” He pointed to the banner on the opposite wall, the one with NA’s 12 steps printed on it “It’s a program. A process.”

“And what you did tonight was take the first step -- to admit you were powerless over your addiction. But do you think that means you’re going to stop feeling powerless over it all of a sudden? Or powerless over the fears and the guilt that led you to develop it in the first place?”

Something in what Chris said made him want to be annoyed, but something in the way he said it made that impossible.

“I’m not trying to rain on your parade here -- you’ll remember this day for the rest of your life, and you should -- but I’m here to tell you you’re also going to have a whole lot of days you’d just as soon forget, too.”

Carter glanced down at his watch. 9:22.

“Don't worry. Your counselor said we had all the time we needed,” Chris said, answering the question apparently evident on Carter’s face before he could ask it. “Everybody always sits around and shoots the bull over coffee after these meetings. And besides, it gives the rest of your friends from the center the chance to find themselves a sponsor.”

Carter's eyes swept the room, noting the little enclaves of two or three bodies huddled at the tables throughout it. It was good to see Tony, a surgeon from Wyoming, talking to Ed. And Sandy, a GP from New York, crying with a couple of older ladies. Kara and Donna were hugging.

“Speaking of sponsors ... "

“No, John ... thanks, but I’m not the right guy. I’m not really connected to the program anymore.”

That's *right*. His full attention was back on Chris.

“Yeah, I caught what you said when you went up there, but I missed your explanation. What do you mean, you’re not an addict? You said you used, right?

“Oh, yeah. I used plenty -- cocaine, pot, speed. If you could snort it, drink it, inhale it, shoot it or swallow it, I was friends with it."

“So ... ?”

"So, as helpful as the program was, as helpful as working the steps and the fellowship of the meetings was, there was something missing for me. I stayed clean, even changed the way I lived, the way I treated people and the way I thought about myself and treated myself. But there was always this nagging feeling, this one thing I just couldn't figure out."

Carter took a small sip of coffee. He could feel his strength slowly creeping back.

"I couldn't understand why God was powerful enough to help me manage my addiction -- but not powerful enough to get rid of it for me."

Good question.

"I could never get comfortable with the idea that one of the requirements of me staying clean was to think of myself as an addict for the rest of my life. I used to lie, and I'd stopped, but I didn't have to call myself a liar anymore. I used to cheat on my wife, and I stopped, but I didn't have to call myself an adulterer anymore. But everytime I came to an NA meeting, I had to stand up and say that despite the fact that I'd stopped using drugs, I was still a drug addict."

"Right, but isn't that ... you know ... so you don't think you're cured? So you don't start using again"

"But I found out I could be cured."

The confusion he felt on his face probably asked the question for him again, but he set it out there, anyway.

"How?"

"Jesus Christ."

Carter had heard those two words thousands, tens of thousands of times before, half of them courtesy of his own lips. But they were almost always spat out seethingly, dripping with exasperation and anger. They'd never entered his ears as softly and as lovingly as Chris had said them.

"See, the NA/AA God wasn't enough for me. He was a *higher power* that could be anything I wanted him to be. I got to make him up, I got to rely on him *as I understood him*."

Carter remembered how -- who was it? Nancy? -- had stressed that phrase in her reading at the start of the meeting.

"And our minds, my mind, isn't capable of creating a God powerful enough to handle what we struggle with. If we're relying on a God that we create, how are we really relying on anybody other than ourselves? And wasn't it relying on ourselves that got us into trouble?"

Carter took another sip of his coffee. It must be decaf, he thought. He was feeling way too relaxed for it to be anything but.

"We can't create God, because he created us. The key isn't finding *a* God we can understand, it's finding *the* God who understands us. Who created us."

"So, what, you just decided one day to stop calling yourself an addict?"

"No. I decided one day to give my life to Jesus."

Carter felt woozy again, but not physically. It was the perfect warmth. It was back, roiling through him, carrying calm everywhere it rushed.

"Do you believe in God, John?"

He hadn't expected that question, any question. He'd expected Chris to go on with his story.

"Yeah ... uh ... sure, I guess. You know, I never ... never really gave it much thought before. But, yeah, there's got to be something in charge of all this. I don't really know much about it, though, the Bible and theology and all that, because ... well, my family wasn't very religious."

Why was he so embarrassed to admit that?

"It's not about being religious, John." Chris was smiling that knowing smile again. "It's about belief. Faith. Relationship. About trusting God to be who he says he is and to do what he promised he'd do. God isn't a concept. He isn't a doctrine. He isn't a something, He's a someone. Jesus is a someone. He lived. He died. He died for me. He died for you."

Carter closed his eyes. Why wasn't this conversation making him uncomfortable, the way he was uncomfortable when he saw those people on the street shouting about God and waving their Bibles at passersby?

Was it Chris, or the words he was saying?

"Do you remember when I was talking about forgiveness? About the absolute necessity for it? Well, forgiveness begins with Jesus. He died, endured torture and humiliation on the cross, so that we could have a way to be forgiven for our sins. That's his gift, God's gift, to us."

Carter's insides were on fire.

"It's a gift because we can't earn it. Like a child can't earn a birthday present from his parents. They just give it to him because they love him. God just gives us that forgiveness for the same reason, because he's our father and he loves us."

Questions were bouncing around Carter's head like the balls in one of those machines they use on TV to pick the evening’s lottery numbers. He opened his mouth to speak, not sure which ball would pop up.

"So, you don't need the program anymore then?"

That wasn't the one he would have picked if he'd had a choice.

"Well, yes and no. I don't need it in the sense that I have to come here every day and follow the steps on the wall. But I do need it in the sense that the principles behind those steps are godly principles, principles that are key to my walk as a Christian."

Chris turned and pointed to the wall behind him.

"See Step 5 -- Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs? That's confession. Acknowledging our sins. Steps 8 and 9 -- Made a list of all persons we had harmed and made amends to them where we could. That's repentance. Turning away from those sins. That's what the program says it takes to get sober because that's what God says it takes to be saved."

"So, you're cured now?"

He'd already asked that question, hadn't he?

"I'm delivered. The Bible says that when I accepted Jesus into my heart, when I confessed my sins and repented of them, that I was washed clean. That I became a new creation. That I was no longer a slave to the things I was a slave to before."

"So the urge to use, that's gone?"

"Not always, no. I'm not a slave to that urge anymore, but I am tempted sometimes. We all are. The difference is I have the power now to resist that temptation -- and all sorts of other temptations -- and it's not a power that I get from a book or a banner or a meeting. Those things can help me apply the power, but they aren't the source of the power. Jesus is the source of the power."

Carter's fingers fidgeted with the single cigarette on the table in front of him, the one he was saving for his morning break at the center. Maybe all this explained why Chris seemed to be the only person in the room who didn't smoke.

"So why did you come here tonight?"

"Because God asked me to."

There was something in the way he said *asked* -- not *told* -- that made the perfect warmth inside Carter just a little more perfect.

"God talks to you?"

"Every day. And this morning, while I was praying, he asked me to come here tonight because there was going to be someone here who needed to know him ...”

Carter's eyes were closed again, involuntarily this time.

“... someone he wanted to offer his gift to ...”

The room wasn't spinning this time. He was.

" ... someone named ... "

Chris didn't even need to bother saying it.

"... Johnny."

Carter anticipated the tears this time -- how could he not after all the experience he had with them tonight? -- bringing his hands to his eyes before the first one fell. He caught them as they came, his sniffling amplified by the proximity of his palm to his breath.

The voice. That voice he heard 45 minutes, an hour ago. The voice that said, "No, you're not, Johnny" when he told Chris he was fine. He wasn't hearing things. He hadn't imagined it. Unless he was imagining this, too, and the warmth inside him told him he wasn't.

Even that. Even the warmth. No wonder he couldn't explain it, no wonder he couldn't isolate it. No wonder it was perfect. It wasn't a physical sensation at all.

He felt Chris' hand on his arm, feather-light, as light as the tears he cupped in his hands, the tears that didn't feel like they were coming from the same traumatized place the others tears had come from.

"Would you like to take another first step, John?"

Chris asked it in a whisper, but the words reverberated loudly inside him, inside the perfect warmth, inside what Carter imagined must be his spirit. That's what the warmth was, what it had to be. His spirit. He had a spirit.

He'd been asked so many questions over the last 29 years. Girlfriends who wanted to know, "Do you love me?" Professors who wanted to know, "What are the symptoms of acute appendicitis?" A father who wanted to know, "Why do you think I've worked so hard all these years?" He'd answered a lot of them right, and a lot of them wrong, and he'd always figured when it came time to add up the ledger, the percentages would favor the positives and he'd be all right.

But he knew, somehow, there was no room for error on this one.

He'd never heard the song before, but there it was, playing softly in his head.

>Wandering the road of desperate life
>Aimlessly beneath a barren sky
>Leave it to me
>I'll lead you home

Was he ready for this?

>So afraid that you will not be found
>It won't be long before your sun goes down
>Just leave it to me
>I'll lead you home

Could he ever be ready for this?

>Hear me calling
>Hear me calling
>Just leave it to me
>I'll lead you home

A kid who'd never had to go to church?

>A troubled mind and a doubter's heart
>You wonder how you ever got this far
>Leave it to me
>I'll lead you home

An adult who'd never wanted to?

>Vultures of darkness ate the crumbs you left
>You got no way to retrace your steps
>Just leave it to me
>I'll lead you home

How would they treat him after he got back to County?

>Hear me calling
>Hear me calling
>You're lost and alone
>Leave it to me
>I'll lead you home

Was this the kind of decision he could make just like that, without really weighing the pros and cons, without really studying the ramifications?

>So let it go and turn it over to
>The one who chose to give his life for you
>Leave it to me
>I'll lead you home

And then he remembered it. Something Carol said, when she and Doug came back to Chicago last weekend to pick up their girls and say their good-byes. Somebody -- Malik? -- asked her how she could just up and leave one day in the middle of her shift, after years of see-sawing back and forth about Doug and her career and her future and their future and if they even had a future. And she just looked at him and said, "When you *know*, it doesn’t matter what you *think*."

Carter didn’t understand it at the time. But he did now.

Now, he *knew*, too.

He opened his eyes, looked into Chris' and said, with the kind of calm confidence he’d usually faked through the years, "Yes."

"Then just say this prayer with me, John. Lord Jesus ...”

"Lord Jesus ...”

"I need you ... "

"I need you in my life ..."

"I need you in my life ... "

"And I need you in my heart ..."

"Please forgive me, father ..."

"For my sins ... "

"For my sins ..."

"For my lack of faith ... "

"For my lack of faith ...

"For trying to live my life without you ... "

"For trying to live my life without you ..."

"For hurting others ... "

"For hurting others ..."

"And for hurting myself ..."

"Free me, Lord ... "

"From my bondage ... "

"You are the son of God ... "

"And it's a freedom only you can grant me ... "

"Give me strength, Father ..."

"To face the trials in my life ..."

"To face the trials in my life ... "

"And to overcome them in your name ... "

"Thank you for loving me, Lord ..."

"Even when I didn't love myself ..."

"I love you, Jesus ..."

"I love you, Jesus ... "

"And I will serve you ..."

"And I will serve you ...

"From this day forward ...

"Amen."

John Carter was laughing.

And it felt like everyone in the room noticed it.

And he'd never been happier in his life.

The End