This is all about the years when my husband hated me.
My mother and dad were not drinkers. Oh, they would occasionally have one when they had someone over to play cards, but that was it. When I grew up and tried it out I hated the taste, so that did it for me with hard liquor. When we got married we might have a drink when we went out (fruit-juicy for me) but never bothered at home. Champagne was tolerable.
But after my father-in-law died, things started being not so good with us. Rich really mourned his dad, and it seemed to get worse; nothing I did was right, and I heard about all my faults regularly, and it got pretty awful. And it went on and on. He was under a lot of pressure at work, and I really thought he was losing his mind.
One of our friends saw something I clearly was not able to see, and told me about Robert Johnson. We lived near Minneapolis then, and Johnson was an Episcopal priest who had literally fallen out of his pulpit drunk in his church in Edina, Minnesota! Anyway, after he had gone through rehab and everything he started a project. Across Lake Minnetonka from us was the town of Mound, and they had in Minnesota the highest divorce rate and the highest alcoholism rate in the state, and he was studying it; my friend suggested I go to him for counseling. So eventually, I did.
He was very kind, and asked questions, and listened to me for an hour and more. And then he asked me how much my husband drank. I was so surprised. I told him that we hardly drank at all, and in my mind I was terribly disappointed. I was thinking, they’re studying alcoholics so everybody has to be an alcoholic!
But he persevered. He discovered that in our wing of the house (no children allowed!) we had a study, and Rich spent most of his time in there at his desk. And that when I joined him in the evening he usually now was so unpleasant that I soon left. And he assured me that Rich was drinking, and likely had a bottle hidden there somewhere; that I was to find it, mark the level of liquid in it, and the next night look at it again, and then call him and tell him how much was missing.
So home I went, very disappointed and feeling very disloyal about my assignment. And the next day, expecting no luck, I searched for a bottle. You know what happened. There, in a file cabinet, I found it. Blown away would be an understatement! And even worse, the next day it was obviously a new bottle, because the level was about an eighth of an inch higher than the day before! He was drinking a fifth a day!
New assignment. Johnson explained to me an approach with which he was being pretty successful: intervention. It terrified me. In complete secrecy I was to enlist several men from different areas of my husband’s life, and explain the situation to them and have them all appear at my house together and wake my husband and tell him they were here, and why.
It was the hardest thing I have ever done. But I was so glad that it was something that could be FIXED, so I did it.
My brother flew in from Philadelphia. The company psychologist came in from town … his best friend and tennis partner … a doc who was his fishing buddy … a couple more. And he was furious. He said all the things you’d expect; no he wasn’t, this was ridiculous, what in God’s name was I thinking, etc. etc. But finally my brother said the best thing; he said, “Rich, you may not be an alcoholic, but I have too much respect for your intelligence to believe that you won’t try to find out.”
And that did it. The next morning he went in to work to tell them what he was doing, and took himself north to Hazelton, a famous rehab facility, and stayed a month, and never took another drink. And started to hate me for involving his office.
But this is the worst thing. Alcohol really damages your brain. It changes things in you. And for at least two whole years you are just as nasty, just as mean as you were when you were drinking. It takes that long for your brain to heal. Many, many partners of non-drinking alcoholics find that period of time just too hard. They are already wearied by everything that went before, and they thought things would be better. They leave. And who can blame them.
But guys, this is the REAL wonder! All this happened before we found the real Jesus. And yet it is so obvious that God choreographed the whole thing!!! He led me to just the right Christian counselor; He gave me courage when I had none; He kept me from leaving; He gave me understanding; He was my loving Father when I desperately needed one.
God gave us a happy ending. We had both grown up pretty much the same, he in the Methodist church in Fort Worth and me in the Baptist church in Philadelphia, where we both considered ourselves Christians but really weren’t. And after we found Jesus, God used Rich greatly. AA was very meaningful to him, and he wanted to find a Christian AA, so to speak. So we went to Rick Warren’s church in California and brought Celebrate Recovery back to our church in Manahawkin, and he used his own story to minister to so many men there. When he died, man after man spoke at his memorial service about what Rich had meant to him.
And of course he had long since told me that I had saved his life.
This is a long story, and it covered a long time in my life. But God was so faithful. And I learned to see and depend upon God’s never-failing love and guidance, assured that He had the answers when I had none. We sometimes failed Him, but He never failed us, never. I surely pray that a time like this is never yours, but there are many, many circumstances that I never knew, and our God, our Creator, who designed our minds and knows our lives, is more than big enough for all of them. It is so true that we learn and grow in the valleys, and the most important things we learn are about God. He is with us. He is FOR us. He is able. He loves us beyond our understanding. And when He delivers us through our valleys, He enables us to love others with HIS love, and comfort them with HIS comfort, which is what Celebrate Recovery is all about. Remember that. Remember that you are never alone.
God’s faithful love never, never fails. Never.
Norma Stockton