My name is Libby and I'm an alcoholic.

I didn't think we'd get so intimate so fast, but anyone who knows me knows that I tend to jump into everything I do with both feet. Why would this be any different?

I was a pastor's kid for most of my formative years, which, for me, means I spent my first 20+ years playing the pastor's kid game. There were lots of eyes on my, which meant that I had an image to upkeep and a lot of rules to follow. I never resented this role I had to play, it was just the way things were, and I was quite adept at playing, without even knowing that my head was engaged in a pursuit that my heart cared very little for. I went to a Christian college and met and married a nice Christian boy.  Once married and out of college, I pretty much gave up any pretense of holiness or obedience. Understand that I never doubted that Jesus was the way, the truth, and the life, that He was my living savior, who died and lives again. I just ..got tired of following rules, I guess. Obedience, when not accompanied by a sincere desire for holiness and a fuller relationship with your Creator, is just plain miserable.

But the real problem, I found, was that I liked to drink. A lot. And often. Being a nice Christian kid my whole life, I hadn't really had the opportunity for much drunkenness, but once out on my own, I found I had a serious affinity and a boundless appetite for alcohol. I could drink anyone under the table, and while my friends were moaning and clutching their heads and bellies the next morning, declaring how they would never do THAT again, I was thinking about what pansies they were, and how lame it was that I needed to try and wait til at least 5 pm to start drinking again.

For a few years, it was just partying. And by 'just," I don't mean that it was no big deal, because disobedience is always a big deal. I mean that it wasn't apparent that I had a "problem" in the beginning. I just looked like your average 20-something young woman, sewing her wild oats and having a good time. But after a couple for years, it became very apparent, at least to me, that I had a very, very big problem. Partying on the weekends gradually turned into several nights a week, and then every single day. Every single day I drank until I threw up and passed out. By the time my husband caught on, I was mired in my alcoholism, drowning so completely that I could not possibly see a way out. I spent most of my time suffocated by a crushing depression that could only be alleviated by drunken oblivion. There was a gaping hole in my soul, and only way I could fill it was by pouring alcohol into it. Or so I told myself. And my husband when he would confront me.

Now, I've been a believer ever since I can remember; there's no time in my life when I don't remember knowing that Jesus loves me. But when I made up my mind to give up on even the tenuous connection I had to following Jesus, it threw open the door for the disease of alcoholism to take complete control of my life. And even though I knew ..my heart and soul KNEW ..that Jesus would fill that hole; if only I would turn to Him and ask it; if only I would surrender, repent, fall on my face in submission, He would fill me completely. But my heart was hard, and above all full of fear. If I surrendered to Jesus completely, He would ask me to let go of my only comfort, my only solace, the only thing that made living bearable. He would say, "Let it all go and follow Me."

I wasn't willing. I convinced myself that I couldn't live without alcohol, and so I spent the better part of a decade stuck in an unbelievably painful, demoralizing,  and dangerous spiral of shame, misery, and self-destruction, willfully destroying my body and soul, and almost every relationship in my life.

I honestly can't tell you what changed. There were hundreds of days when I woke up determined that I was done drinking, what made that one day any different? I really feel like it was the day that God said, "ok honey, I've been patient enough, we are done with this now." That was the day that He chose to convict my heart of my sin. Within a week He had almost entirely replaced my crippling need (physical addiction coupled with mental obsession) for alcohol with an all-consuming desire to know Him more. Every recovering alcoholic has their own experience, but mine, by the grace and mercy of Jesus, was complete deliverance. I never "slipped," (got drunk once), "went out," (resumed previous drinking behavior for a period of time), or was even really seriously tempted to take another drink. Now, there's a lot more to being an alcoholic than just drinking too much, and the mental, emotional, and behavioral aspects of my disease still take constant vigilance. But By His grace, He still makes the idea of taking a drink entirely unthinkable to me.  I celebrated 6 years of sobriety on October 5th.

So why do I share this most vulnerable, shameful, painful part of my past with anyone willing to take the time to read a little blog post? For a couple of reasons, really. First, because I am so hardcore Bible, because I take the teachings of Paul and Peter and John very seriously (ALL of them, not just the nice parts about peace and kindness), because I very keenly feel the call to speak out about the need for obedience and holiness in His Church, I am often considered legalistic, or unloving, or judgmental, or self-righteous. And you know what? I'm certainly guilty of all of those on many occasions. But I want people to know that I know; maybe better than most, I know what it is to be a hideous, broken, shame-filled failure. I have no high horse, I have failed at following my Jesus more bitterly than I can tell, and so I don't spend all my time sitting in the pew and looking around for wicked sinners to correct. I just want to help people understand that, when we see fellow believers stuck in sin, they need us. Not to just hold their hands and "love" them! They need us to help them get free! It is not out of a need judge people or to force them to obey, it's out of deep desire to see His followers truly transformed into new creatures.

And second, because my life is a testament to the fact that JESUS CHANGES PEOPLE'S HEARTS, and I wanted to give you a little insight into who I am, and how my relationship with Jesus changed my heart and my life. So you can decide if I seem like the kind of person you might like to go on this Christ-seeking journey with.

 There is pure joy and ultimate freedom in submitting to the leadership of Jesus and in living in obedience to Him. I spent almost 30 years fighting it, and when I was through fighting, the transformation was almost instantaneous. He changed my very heart, and when my heart changed, so did my behavior. He made me into a new creature that very day, and He continues to shape me and mold me ..as long as my heart remains willing to be molded. I remember this one day, not long after I got sober. My dad and I were working together, building a little rock wall along the edge of his property, and I confided in him that, since I had stopped "self-medicating" with alcohol (often chemical addictions are covers for other underlying issues), I kept having these experiences of kind of mind-boggling bliss that just came out of nowhere, and I was afraid that I might be bipolar, as we have history of it in my family. He looked at me and chuckled, and said, "Libby, what you're experiencing is joy." Joy! For the first time in my life, while finally living in compete submission to the will of God, I was experiencing joy! How amazing!

I feel like this post has been a little disjointed, I know I touched on so many ideas today (exhortation, accountability, submission, love, community, willingness, holiness, obedience, transformation).  You'll have to bear with me as I get my blog-groove on, I've never done this before :) But these are all ideas that, I feel, are of paramount importance in truly experiencing the fullness of Jesus Christ in our lives, and I hope to better study, examine and flesh them out in later blog posts. I hope you'll keep walking with me on this journey to a better understanding of what it mean to truly follow Jesus.




Said AW Tozer:

"The act of accepting Christ, if it is a true act, has an instant effect upon our entire moral life, and it changes the man from being a bad man to being a good man. God will not, by some trick of grace, take evil, foul minded, self-righteous and vile people into His heaven. When He saves a man, He saved him from sin. If he is not saved from sin, he is not saved at all! There is no act of grace and no trick of mercy and no justification that can take an unholy man into the presence of God or an evil man into God's holy heaven. He came not to call the righteous but sinners to repentance. He came not to call people who thought they were righteous but people who knew they were sinful. When He calls us to Himself and saves us, He saves us out of our past and out of our own iniquity; and by a threefold act of justification, regeneration and sanctification, He makes people fit for heaven.

It is an erroneous idea that justification is an imparted robe of righteousness put over a dirty, filthy fellow who terribly needs a bath and is filled with cooties and the accumulation of the dirt of a lifetime, who stands boldly in God Almighty's holy heaven, among seraphim and cherubim and arch Angels and the spirit of just men made perfect, and blithely and flippantly says, "I belong in hell. I am a filthy man but what are you going to do about it? I have on me the robe of Christ's righteousness and that is enough."

God saves only sinners, and He saves only sinners who know they are sinners. He saves only sinners who admit they are sinners; but He saves sinners and turns them from being sinners to being good men and full of the Holy Spirit. When we teach anything else we are teaching heresy".