Living with the Complicated Glass

“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. - Reinhold Niebuhr

How to live 100 days without alcohol?

I don’t know the answer. I only made it to day 53.

The 53rd day was last Wednesday, June 25, the day after my father-in-law’s funeral. Mary Beth and I went to her father’s beach house to spend the day with her brothers and sisters before heading back to Kansas.

We wanted to use this day to begin healing. The beach has a distinct calmness about it. The repetitive sound of the waves brushing up on the shore before retreating back into the ocean is a reminder there is still some measure of certainty and predictability left in this world. While we can never be sure what each day may hold for us, we can be comforted by certain rules of Nature which will always remain true. It just happens another rule of Nature’s is one day we will all return to the sea. So, we gathered to comfort each other and to be comforted.

Late in the afternoon, and completely exhausted by the emotional and physically toil the last five days had on my mind, body and spirit, I craved a beer. A cooler was brought down a few hours earlier that further exacerbated my temptation. Read more