Mucked Up

By Lenora Rand. For September Recovery Worship Service, based on Matthew 19:16-26.


A couple years ago my husband Gary and our two daughters Zoe and Hannah and I were spending a beautiful summer day in Galena, IL, a lovely little tourist town near the border of Illinois, Wisconsin and Iowa, just a couple miles from the Mississippi River. Galena has its own river running through the town, in fact, that empties out into the Mississippi. And that day we decided we were up for a little adventure so we rented canoes and took off on a trip down the lazy Galena River. We even packed a lunch—I say that proudly because Gary and I have in the past gone on canoe trips without bringing any food or water because Gary had told me there’d be someplace to stop along the way and I’d believed him—I guess he was envisioning a canoe-through restaurant or something. And hey I bought into that vision. Clearly we’re not big outdoorsy types. But we did learn…so we packed a lunch for this trip.

After canoeing along, slowly for an hour or two we decided to pull off to the dry land to eat our lunch. It had actually been pretty hard going because there wasn’t much of a current and the river was kind of low, sometimes really low, and we’d been getting stuck in the muck on the bottom of the river a lot. Plus the girls were young and inexperienced canoers and we were old inexperienced canoers, so we really needed a break from all the fun we were having, as you can imagine.

Anyway, Gary and Hannah pulled over in their canoe and then Zoe and I managed to maneuver our canoe to the embankment. I was in the back of the canoe so I got the front end positioned up on the shore and Zoe hopped out the front onto land—muddy land, but land nonetheless. Then I attempted to get out. I however made the mistake of stepping out of the canoe not at the very front, but a little bit on the side. The water wasn’t deep there, so I thought it wouldn’t be a problem, but it was. It was a sucking mass of mud problem. I put one foot out of the canoe and immediately I was knee deep in quick sand like mud. One leg still in the canoe, one leg knee deep in the muck. My family rushed over to the bank yelling words of advice and encouragement, suggesting mostly that I pull that one leg back into the canoe and walk up to the front to get out, that sort of thing. But I couldn’t pull my leg out, I told them. Because I was afraid I’d lose my shoe. I was afraid my leg would come out but my shoe would stay down there deep in the mud and I didn’t have on a pair of $5 flip-flops unfortunately. I had on $100 Dansko sport sandals…OK, once again, not an experienced outdoorsy type. So I was worried that when I took my foot out, the mud would engulf the shoe and I’d never see it again. And I couldn’t let that happen. Those shoes were too important, too expensive, too irreplaceable—I think it was a discontinued model even. So I was stuck there. Knee deep in the muck. While my family waited on shore with an idyllic picnic lunch spread out and ready to eat.

The guy in our story from Matthew was also really stuck, knee deep in his own ideas about the right way to live his life. Knee deep in his own illusions about what was really important and valuable, about what would guarantee him the outcome he was looking for and give him a “good life.” He was born into a world that said wealth and power will save you. He was born into a world that said doing what is expected of you would save you too. And when you think about it that way, it doesn’t sound so different from our world.

But he comes to Jesus and basically says, I’ve been doing all this stuff I’m supposed to do, I’ve got all the stuff I could possibly have. But I still feel like I have nothing. Like I’m missing out on life. Like I’m not really living. Jesus gets right to the heart of things. He tells him to let go of all that stuff, let go of the illusion that he can save himself, let go of whatever he’s holding onto and afraid to step away from. He tells him to trust. To let go and surrender.

If you want to have real life, Jesus says, you need to let go of what you’re holding onto for dear life.

Letting go of what we think is holding us together isn’t easy. Like trying to gallop on a camel through the eye of a needle.

About 10 or 11 years ago now, I remember having a conversation with my therapist, a recovery specialist, about one of my many addiction issues--smoking—which happened to be the one I was ready to deal with at the time--and I was saying how much I wanted to quit smoking, but I was afraid that if I did I literally wouldn’t be able to function throughout my day. I couldn’t keep going on, I couldn’t hold it together. I knew it was crazy, but still it felt like having a smoke was the glue that was keeping me from falling apart at the seams. And my therapist told me I could always call someone if that started happening, if I started falling apart. I didn’t really like to call people that much, I told him. And with a little smile he added I could even call HIM. See, I never called him. I went to see him at our appointed times once a week, but I didn’t actually need him, you know? You only call people if you really need them. And I didn’t like needing anyone.

So finally, a few months later, armed with his phone number, a nicotine patch and the Zyban he prescribed for me, I quit smoking. And guess what, my worst nightmare? It turned out to be true. I stopped smoking and I started crying. I mean really crying. At the drop of a hat. For seemingly no good reason at all. AN EMBARASSING AMOUNT. I had at least one of what I now fondly refer to as the “blubbering idiot incidents” pretty much every day.

But I lived through it. I started calling my therapist and cried into his answering machine. I cried with my husband. I cried with my friends. I cried in church. I cried in recovery groups. I cried in the ladies room at work with whoever happened to be in there at the moment.

I stopped smoking and I started crying and I also started living. I starting having a real life. What I was holding onto, the cigarettes and the illusion that I didn’t need anyone and that I didn’t have any feelings, the illusion that I could take care of myself, I finally started to let go of that. And the result wasn’t pretty. But it was good.

The addictions I’ve dealt with in my life have all basically been about holding on to what I think will protect me. Or save me. Or make me feel better. Whether that addiction has been to food, or achievement or trying to control others, or to blaming or to hiding my real self or to smoking…it’s all the same thing.

For me, the simplest definition of an addiction I’ve ever heard (and I think this was from Barbara Brown Taylor) is anything we hold onto instead of God. Whatever it is that isn’t God that we think will make us whole, make us happy, make us feel safe, help us feel more alive, that’s an addiction. And we need to let go of it. And the longer I’m in recovery the more I realize I’m addicted to.

And just like the guy who comes to Jesus in our story, I’ve needed to take in what Jesus was saying, if you want to have real life, you need to let go of what you’re holding onto for dear life. I’ve needed to do what Jesus invited that rich young man to do…stop grasping at straws and start opening my hands and heart and life to the good things God might actually want to give me.

You’ve heard that expression haven’t you—grasping at straws? It comes from a proverb written in the 1500s. A DROWNING MAN WILL CATCH AT STRAWS – And it means “A desperate person will try anything to save himself, no matter how unlikely.”
I know what it’s like to feel desperate and like you’re drowning. Maybe you do too. So it’s not surprising that we’d try anything to save ourselves.

The problem is when you’re holding on desperately to one thing, you can’t hold on to something else. Something sturdier, and richer and stronger and more life-giving than a straw.

When you’re stuck knee deep in the mud holding on to your expensive shoe, you can’t have a feast with your family. When your fist is closed tightly around something, there isn’t room for anything else.

And yet we grasp at straws all the time, don’t we? I know I do, at least. Whether that straw is a cigarette or a donut or a drink or a big win at work or an expensive pair of shoes. Whether it’s our own sense of rightness or denial or shame…whatever it is for you and whatever it is for me, I’m coming to believe that it’s still always a flimsy piece of nothing to hold on to. And by holding on to that straw my hand isn’t able to reach out and hold someone else’s hand. My hand isn’t able to wait empty and hopeful and trusting and ready to receive what good gifts God might have in mind for me. Even gifts that might not seem so good when you first get them, like the gift of excessive crying.

But that’s where my recovery seems to be taking me. Step by step. And that’s what I pray to be able to do every day. Let go of what I’m holding onto for dear life.
Release my grip.
And have real life.