Many months ago in a small town in Peru, my team and I were sitting around a table discussing life with our new friend Fernando, an amateur filmmaker from LA. The topic of discussion was thought provoking but something specific he said especially peaked my interest.
“I make films” he said, eyes glowing behind hipster glasses, “to raise awareness of our need for sobriety”. He went on to explain our dependency as a society on many intangible things and as he spoke, wheels started turning in my mind. Somewhere deep down, something stirred within me as his words seemed to ricochet soundlessly in the chambers of my heart.
Sobriety. Interesting.
As I’ve thought about his words over the past couple months, I came to the conclusion that the pursuit of sobriety is truthfully a big reason I came on a year of mission. While I am lucky to not be bound to the more traditional drugs of alcohol and stimulants, I’m certainly bound to other more illusively insidious dependancies. When I was home, I was living an intoxicated, dependent lifestyle- one centered around the quick fixes of basic desires that I wrongly assumed were needs. I had everything accessible to me and more. I was comfortable, and as logically follows any addiction- becoming completely numb.
So what was my drug of choice? Luxuries. They can be their own kind of drug when given the room to take up space and make demands. They cushion our lives, shielding us from the pains of the uncomfortable growing and feeling of human existence. Not unlike the excessive use of alcohol or drugs, they give us more time to box away our problems and potential and shelves them- sometimes indefinitely. They also, even more tragically, can blind us from the value of those people around us.
Luxuries love to tell us that “we deserve it” because of some kind of earned or born merit. Luxuries tell us they make us different than those without. They also tell us that we cannot live without them too, kind of like a toxic relationship. But in the end, just like a high or drinking binge, it’s all an illusion.
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This month, I’m working at a rehab facility for young girls in the impoverished district of El Alto, the city nestled on the mountain ridge overlooking the capital city La Paz. Way up here at 14,000 ft, young people are suffering immensely because of abuse, poverty, and drug addiction. Some girls in the home we serve at self harm while others still experience withdrawals. The common thread is pain and a desire to escape and I wonder as I eat, do chores, and dance Zumba alongside these Bolivian girls, if I’m really so different. My pain may be more “1st world”, but I escape it too from time to time. If I’m really going to be a refuge for these girls, the refuge I run to has to look more like Jesus and less like good coffee and a new pair of boots.
The truth is, these girls do have a significant mountain to climb. They have the inevitable reality of withdrawals. They’ll have to fight for their spiritual, emotional, and physical independence and freedom. They’ll have to find better ways to cope and they might never completely get away from temptations and phantom pains. They’ll have to make devastating breaks from toxic family members and pave their own way once they leave the rehabilitation home. It’ll be uphill but I’m certain that freedom still has a narrow but accessible way for every one of them.
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We all have our own mountains to climb and our temptations to lean on worldly things will be just as real. The ugly truth about all of our dependencies is this: the world they create around us, even if its only temporary, isn’t real. Plain and simple- the highs produced by our dependencies are fake. Counterfeit and cheap. And just like monopoly money, they’ll get us nowhere we actually want to go. We’ll just keep circling the same board wondering why we’re unsatisfied. To break into the abundance God has waiting for us, we’ll have to brave the wild, real, painful, and beautiful world. Because God Himself isn’t safe and numb either- He’s far, far, better.
So I want to be sober this year. I want clear eyes and no safety nets because I’m starting to see that when all of my safe places fade away I find something more raw and stunning when the reality of life comes into focus. Without my distractions and false identities wrapped up in my ability to escape into luxuries, I find instead of comfort- joy. Instead of pleasantries- beauty. Instead of distractions- focus. Instead of numbness- the ability to stay fully awake.
2017 will be an incredible year. I’ve already gotten the privilege to walk beside the young people and volunteers of Bolivia who no longer have the luxury of numbing their lives with comfort when confronted with unimaginable pain. They’ll probably be teaching me a thing or two in the process over the rest of my time here too, lessons I fully intend on taking with me for the rest of my life. My choice this year in 2017 is to be a beacon and example of vibrant and sometimes painful sobriety, not the hypocrisy born from another 1st world dependency. There will be no pictures posted this month of the young people of El Alto for their safety and discretion, but they will need partners in prayer during their battle to overcome addiction. I hope you choose to walk with them in prayer and in turn, brave the beautiful, real world and all it has to offer. It is certainly less safe than the luxuries and comforts we all cling to- but it has a much greater promise in store. Lastly, I’ll leave you with a quote that I’ve learned to love during my time in South America:
“Safe?…Of course He isn’t safe. But He’s good. He’s the King I tell you.” -The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, C.S. Lewis
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Cheers to living a radically sober, awake, and beautifully unsafe 2017.
