Flipping the script

​Because of the work I do, people reach out to me looking for ways to help someone they love who is struggling. More often than not, the struggle is drugs or alcohol.

When they reach out, I can feel how concerned they are. How much they are hurting for and with the family member or friend they are wanting to help. So it always pains me when I have to tell them, if you are feeling more darkness over the struggle than the person you are trying to help, there is little you can do.

Those aren't words I read somewhere. They are words I have lived. In some ways, they are words I continue to live.

I think we all have scripts in our life we want to flip. We have these lives we want to live, new scripts, that we imagine are better - healthier - more beautiful - less painful than the lives we are currently living.

We read books that we hope will help us figure out the secret to writing a new story. We listen to podcasts and watch YouTube self-help videos. But in the end, if writing that new story in our lives seems more painful than the story we are currently living. Oh, we'll stay living right smack dab in the middle of the story we're already in.

We'll keep waiting for out turn in life instead of writing our turn into it.

When I was in my teens and 20s, I smoked cigarettes. Sometimes a lot of them. I knew it was bad for me. I believed it when people said "those things are going to kill you." I always wanted to quit.

But I never could.

Then one day I woke up with a horrible pain in my chest. I was coughing uncontrollably. I had to fight to find each next breath. I truly thought I was going to die right then and right there.

I didn't die. I survived whatever attack that was. And - I was never a smoker again.

In that moment, the pain of the story I was living suddenly became greater than the pain of change.

On one hand, that was a good thing. On the other hand, I think it set up a destructive pattern in my life. This pattern of always having to feel my script get unbearably painful before I'd rewrite the story in my life. A story I'd known needed rewritten for a long time.

I'm grateful when people reach out wanting to help a loved one. But the people I like talking to most, ARE the loved ones. Those people struggling - feeling like someone stole the pen they were going to use to write a new script in life - write a story that would end in their turn in life.

I like telling them your life is a mess - oh how I recognize your mess. Many days I AM your mess.

But I also like being the one who can tell them - cleaning up that mess is messy, but it's not as messy as you think. Cleaning it up is painful, but not as painful as the pain you're living in. Because before any podcast or self-help video or counseling or anything is going to flip the script, they have to believe the pain of change isn't as painful as staying where they are.

Sometimes, believing in a new script requires someone coming along and helping that someone see and believe in their new script. Sometimes it requires you or me saying to someone, I know life feels like someone stole your pen, but here - borrow mine.

I'll help you write. Because believe me, you don't always have to wait for the pain to get unbearable to start writing.

You can start flipping the script today, but you have to start writing.