The one closest to the struggle

+ why inspiration comes from the newcomer

I’d met Alma when she lived in a recovery home for women, where members of our church visited, brought personal care items, and planned social events and activities.

Her long black hair, piercing black eyes, thick black eyeliner, and red lips portrayed a soft look when you’d expect the opposite.

Alma had seen some things. She’d been a part of some things. And when I say “some things,” I mean the excruciating kind of trauma that follows childhood sexual abuse, drug addiction, and years of sex work and damaging relationships with men and women. Alma’s life was a mosaic of shattered hope.

Despite this, like other women I’d met along this journey, Alma’s faith was iridescent.

Alma had been around the church and recovery for a while and then strayed again, being allured by the familiar life of pain and crisis. After a couple years of back and forth, she found herself again sober, carrying her Bible and wanting more for her life and her future with her son. I noticed how she had been posting on social media about an upcoming challenge, about how she knew she needed to trust God and how she felt entirely surrendered to God’s will for her.

It isn’t the faith of the “old timer” that inspires me most, it is the faith of the newcomer.

Photo by Olivia Snow on Unsplash

The one closest to the struggle who is able to yet say, “I believe.” And “I am more.”

I reached out and asked how she was doing, and a couple of texts later I found out that she was waiting for her trial. Some things had happened during her last recurrence of use, and they had finally caught up with her. She refused to lay the blame on anyone else, so she was likely facing jail, if not prison time, for a string of charges.

We met for a meeting and as I hugged her, the smell of ocean mist body spray and cigarettes took me back to when I’d faced something similar, familiar.

For me, it wasn’t incarceration, but it was like waiting over an abyss, a trust fall that led to freedom. For Alma, she knew she had to surrender to the consequences she was facing because in facing them, there existed the possibility of a new life, an honest life.

Alma reminded me of the beauty of surrender and the statement: “Not my will, but yours be done.”

Surrender is saying yes to this truth and no to the darkness. Taking our trauma lens off, we can see this clearly. Surrender opens up a new way to turn toward what is cleared by healing and love.

What’s even more beautiful and what many of us learn through the recovery process is that shared surrender and being radically honest to the very core of our souls can free these sacred places too.

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Thank you, Alma, for showing me what recovery looks like. Rest in peace.