Beauty on the Backroads

Stories of grace for life's unexpected turns

The Weekly Read

For the addict in all of us: Review of Coming Clean by Seth Haines

Addiction of any kind is not an easy topic for conversation, but Seth Haines draws us into one anyway with courage, vulnerability and grace.

coming cleanComing Clean is a journal of Seth’s first 90 days of sobriety from alcohol. But it’s also an outstretched hand of invitation to learn the way of inner sobriety from whatever dulls the pains of life’s hurts. (Disclaimer: I received a free copy of the book from the publisher through the Booklook Bloggers program in exchange for my review.)

I wouldn’t identify myself as an addict, but Seth’s premise is that we’re all drunk on something. We’re all looking for something to numb the pains and realities of life. And after reading through his journey, I’m convinced that I have some work to do in my life. What do I use to numb the pain? What is my escape? And who do I need to forgive?

This is a hard book to read. It’s readable. That’s not what I mean. But it’s challenging and I found myself susceptible to tears for almost no reason after I finished the book. Without forcing it, Seth issues challenges through his own journey for all who want to live a life free and full of love.

I’m not sure I’ve read anything more vulnerable, and I’m not sure five stars is enough.

Having an addiction is one thing. Admitting it is another. Fighting through it yet another. And seeking the source, what’s underneath the addiction, is hard but gratifying work.

You don’t have to be an addict or love one to appreciate this book. But you just might find yourself identifying. Maybe there’s an addict in all of us. Maybe we’re all just covering up the pain.

There are too many coping mechanisms to list. You know this. Right?

The bottle is not the thing. The addiction is not the thing. The pain is the thing.

The jig is up. My cover-up  is threadbare. I can hide no longer. Not even from myself. (p. 71)

Approach with caution. Yet have no fear.

A guide through the messy work of discovering: Review of Out of Sorts by Sarah Bessey

“Sorting” is not a word we the people of the United States use very often and certainly not in the British way. But it’s a perfectly apt description of the process of discovering and re-discovering what I believe and why. And Sarah Bessey guides us through this messy work in her new book Out of Sorts.

It is a record of her own faith journey and a guidebook, in a way, of the path through a process that can be disorienting.

Like all good stories, it begins with a familiar phrase:

beautifully sorted out

And while there’s no tidy ending (because all of our journeys are unique), it’s not a story devoid of “happily ever after.”

The sorting of a person’s beliefs can be a beautiful thing. But it’s not necessarily easy.Out of Sorts cover

Out of Sorts doesn’t offer a how-to approach to finding your once-and-for-all set of beliefs. But it offers encouragement to question, to remember, to grieve losses and hurts, to look back on your life and church experiences and theology and determine what stays and what goes. Bessey’s book is like a friend who sits with us as we sort, but who can’t make the decisions for us. Those are for us alone. She offers her own experiences, her own work of finding a fresh look at Jesus in the Gospels, of discovering ancient practices she’d not been exposed to in her charismatic upbringing.

“Lean into your questions and your doubts until you find that God is out here in the wilderness too. I have good news for you, brokenhearted one: God is here in the wandering.”

It’s the kind of book I want to re-read to soak up the richness. Like a guidebook to a favorite vacation destination, I want to consult it again and again until the landscape is as familiar to me as my own neighborhood.

“You may sit by the trail and cry over the poisonous, lovely things being left behind. You’ll wonder why you’re still holding on this thing or that thing. You’ll find that some things you were ready to toss have become dear, so precious, that you’ll carry them in your lap to keep them safe.”

Encouraging, prophetic and challenging. A must-read if the faith tradition in which you were raised seems in conflict with the faith tradition you have now.