Spectrum of Experience

and August's hidden gifts

August is a special month to me for a couple of reasons, all of which fall on different ends of the spectrum of experience.

August 15^th is the day my sweet babies were born (boy-girl fraternal twins) in 2018 after nearly twenty years of hoping and praying for them. In recovery, God came through and answered several prayers of mine in quick succession: marriage, children, being of service, and meaning.

Each August is a reminder of how possible all impossibilities are in recovery.

Since becoming a recovery advocate and author, and wearer of many hats within this rag-tag community (including coffee maker and cigarette butt picker-upper and unpaid driver), I’ve also learned about the importance of this month to the recovery community.

August is the night before the dawn: the month when overdose awareness day occurs (August 31^st) before September (nationally recognized as Recovery Month). This month is a time when we can share and grieve and hope with one another that the lives we’ve lost to the struggle of addiction live on through our stories and advocacy and hearts.

All across baseball fields, town halls, and city centers, people will march, hold up pictures, light candles, and sing songs of remembrance. In my own life, I remember the folks whose lives I’ve lost, women whose lives have imprinted my own (women I share about in my book Downstairs Church) and think about my own experience of overdose at seventeen years old long before people were living recovery out loud. I’ll think about the mothers and fathers who have lost babies, a parent’s worst nightmare breathing into each waking day, each sleepless night.

I will also think about the upside down gift of grace that brings so many of us from darkness to light, from experiencing overdose to recovery and life.

There are so many incredible organizations like one in my own backyard (ASAP of Anderson) that does trainings on how to administer the life-saving opioid overdose reversal medication or SAFE Project whose mission is to dispel the stigma of overdose and work to get evidence-based strategies for saving lives into all communities.

In my own life and work and recovery, I lived the need first-hand to grieve and then allow God to heal me through that grief. There is something beautiful that can grow out of the struggle. Henri Nouwen writes:

It is the voice of the One who says: “Blessed are those who mourn; they shall be comforted.” That's the unexpected news: there is a blessing hidden in our grief. Not those who comfort are blessed, but those who mourn! Somehow, in the midst of our tears, a gift is hidden.

Last week, I had the opportunity to be filmed for an opioid awareness campaign in Eastern Tennessee with ASAP of Anderson. In this picture below, you may be able to see a large banner is behind me with pictures and messages about people who’ve been killed by overdose. It was a humbling and hard experience to share my own story of overdose – and recovery – in front of these pictures and words and lives.

If I’m honest, a part of me wonders sometimes why some of us make it out alive and why some people become pictures and words and names on a banner. There are many mysteries in life that I may never understand on this side of things, but one thing is for certain:

Those of us who live to another August have a responsibility to live our lives in such a way that is honoring and worthy of the loved ones we grieve and the calling we have received.

One day, may we dance together, but until then, let us live.

Have you experienced overdose loss?

I’d be honored to hear your story. Send me a message.

Learn more about International Overdose Awarness Day and get information about how you can get trained to administer life saving opioid overdose reversal medication.