A history of God and Me part 6

As was the normal pattern of things in the past, so was the present. As I drew closer to God I became more acutely aware of the utter frustrations and painful plight of our marriage. This period of time in my life, the late eighties was a time when I was close to God. It was rewarding. Teaching or co-teaching Bible classes was fulfilling. Studying the Bible with prisoners at Huntsville was both exhausting and exhilarating. My heart went out to some of the inmates there who had nothing left in life but to turn to God. For some God was real. For me too God was real. But in parallel running with God was the perpetual and always hanging over my head cloud of darkness from continual marital conflict. Oh, we did not fight much. It was really a cold war. What went unsaid was killing me. What went undone was killing me. Our life together, hers and mine, was killing me. What life together? The one where two people lived together acting as if everything was OK when actually it was hellish? The dead life, that one? Gradually I started feeling the deadness inside of me grow larger and larger. Same ole same ole. I became spiritually distraught one more time.

  In May of 1990 I went to a star party out in west Texas with my best friend, Doug. Astronomy was a hobby I loved and amateurs from all over the country would be there with all sorts of telescopes of various types and sizes. It was an amazing experience! Looking at gassy nebulae or glistening spiral bands of distant galaxies, the stand out brilliance of globular star clusters, all made me feel close to God. God and the stars. The heavens and its heavenly bodies. God. Surreal and sublime, there was nothing like looking upward at distant places in the universe at four in the morning while drinking coffee. Nothing like it. Doug did his first ever observing through a telescope on this trip and fell instantly in love. I will never forget what he said to the nice stranger who allowed us to look at the Sun and its spots that first afternoon. Doug said, "thanks man , that is the first time I looked through a telescope and I cannot imagine a more beautiful baptismal experience, seeing the sun." We spent several days and nights there(one of which is more than blog worthy and will be blogged later)and then on to Big Bend national park. My second and last visit to the park. Stunning place! The vastness of it, the ominousness of it, the beauty of it. It was Gods country I felt. Hiking spectacular mountain trails there not to mention being in that environment made me feel truly close to God. Such transcending beauty and being able to witness it. Thank you God. 

  Drove back home on a spiritual high, grateful for all the magical experiences and thankful to have shared them with Doug. Doug was on fire about astronomy and I was on fire about God. Two days after I got back we were at church one Sunday morning. When the service ended with a final song I turned around to pick up my Bible from the seat. As I did so I felt a sharp pain in my hip. I jumped, yelping out loudly. I limped out to the car and we drove home. Monday it only worsened to the point of excruciating pain. Left work, headed up to the emergency room . Thus began six months of intense physical pain accompanied by doctors of all sorts attempting to diagnose me. Finally I went to a rheumatologist(only because of research I did on my own and an eye infection which ended up being related). Finally a diagnosis. But I was already addicted to pain pills. Codeine, Darvon among others but those were the two main choices to escape with. 

 A few months into the addiction and chronic pain I was asked to be a Deacon another two years. I declined. I was not spiritually fit. I was out of it most of the time with sciatic nerve pain, lower back pain or knee pain. The iritis in my left eye would not let up for over a year. Lots of meds in those days. I was a mess. I was now an addict too. The pain pill addiction would last two years. Two years until things got slightly better. Two years of physical therapy accompanied by a denied addiction. I was scared of what I had become on pain pills. I wasn't even sure. I was just a blur. All of life was one big blur. Our marriage was beyond a blur. It was dead. a dead blur. Another blur. Here a blur, there a blur, everywhere a blur blur. Oh McMe had a blur... I quit taking pain pills in December of 1992. The thought occurred to me during the nightmarish void of pain pill withdrawal that a drink would help take the edge off. A drink would help calm me down. After all it had been three years and it really wasn't so bad before when I drank was it? It really wasn't that bad. And hell my life was hell anyway so why not!? I deserved a drink. Yes sir I did. I deserved a drink with all the pain in my poor pitiful life. So I drank.