Is a zero-distraction moment even available to most of us these days? After all, every technical innovation that makes our lives more convenient, like phones and apps and streaming entertainment, are built for a multi-tasking lifestyle.
Listen to a podcast. Add to your grocery list. Press “buy” on an online shopping cart. Reserve a table for this weekend. All of these are things many of us do at the same time—and all too often while we’re doing something else, like working.
Newport described the drawbacks of this lifestyle in an interview with The New York Times: “Every time you switch your attention from one target to another and then back again, there’s a cost. This switching creates an effect that psychologists call attention residue, which can reduce your cognitive capacity for a non-trivial amount of time before it clears. If you constantly make ‘quick checks’ of various devices and inboxes, you essentially keep yourself in a state of persistent attention residue, which is a terrible idea if you’re someone who uses your brain to make a living.”
Instead of flitting from activity to activity, Newport urges us to actively make time for “deep work” every day, time when we are focused on a cognitively challenging task without interruption from anything else. This could be knitting or reading or learning a language or meeting a professional goal. The important part is that it needs to be an activity you can commit to investing your energy in wholeheartedly.
Getting in the habit of working deeply will, says Newport, lead you to the inevitable conclusion that “concentration is a super power.”
What in your life would you like to approach with a “deep work” mentality?
It was 1998. Dana was a 34-year-old methamphetamine and prescription pain medication addict. She’d been a nurse in Statesboro, Georgia, until she was fired for stealing medication from the hospital where she worked. She was divorced with two children, ages 12 and 13.
Getting fired was a wake-up call. Dana checked herself into a residential treatment center near Statesboro called John’s Place, part of a state-funded network of drug treatment and mental health-care facilities in eastern Georgia. She emerged sober and determined to stay that way.
“My kids were the only good thing in my life, and I was trying hard to be a good mom to them,” she says. Dana kicked out the boyfriend who’d introduced her to drugs (“he was smoking crack in the bathroom”), got a job at Pizza Hut and attended outpatient support group meetings.
Five months after leaving John’s Place, Dana began spending time with a man she met at a support group meeting. The two began using drugs together, including intravenous heroin. Dana lost her job, ran out of grocery money and stopped paying her power bill.
For a while, she and the kids were homeless. Eventually the kids went to live with her ex-husband’s mother while Dana detoxed again.
A cycle began: sobriety, regaining custody, relapse, homelessness, kids landing at a relative’s house.
Finally Dana stopped trying to stay sober. The kids ended up with her ex-husband. Dana drifted to Florida, where she engaged in sex work to buy heroin.
Dana Smith loved her children. She hated being an addict. “It was horrible,” she says. “It ate me up inside.”
So why couldn’t she stay sober?
That question—about addiction’s seemingly intractable power—lies at the heart of America’s epidemic of substance abuse, which over the past two decades has claimed more than 700,000 lives.
Some 40 percent to 60 percent of people treated for substance abuse relapse within a year of treatment, notes a 2014 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The reason, according to researchers: Drug dependence is a chronic illness, similar to Type 2 diabetes in its propensity for relapse and its need for careful lifelong management.
For the past two years, Guideposts has published stories from the front lines of this disease epidemic. Contributors to our Overcoming Addiction series have told of their own addictions, the struggles of loved ones and the damage done to families, communities, faith institutions and America’s economy and public health.
The series began in January 2018 and now concludes as a regular feature, though we will continue to run addiction-related stories on an occasional basis.
I was the lead editor for most of those stories. Our narrators universally expressed bafflement at the power of addiction. Not a single one told of an instance when they or a loved one recovered from substance abuse on the first try.
For this final story in our series, I wanted to give readers the best currently available answer to the questions raised by Dana Smith’s story and the stories of so many other people who have despaired in the face of addiction’s power.
Why is sobriety so hard to maintain? What gives people the best chance of recovery?
In the two years I talked to treatment professionals, researchers, advocates, public health leaders and addicts and their families, no one explained the issue to me more clearly than Tony Kennedy, an addiction counselor at the Harbour Light Salvation Army shelter and drug treatment center in the Downtown Eastside neighborhood of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Vancouver is home to one of North America’s worst drug problems. The city is also a living laboratory for experimental approaches to treatment.
The addicts who end up in one of Harbour Light’s 60 beds are the “toughest of the toughest to treat,” Tony says. “Some people go through detox up to 50 times. They go through treatment eight to 10 times.”
Many of Downtown Eastside’s roughly 18,000 residents are homeless or live in single-room-occupancy hotels. Their challenges—long-term unemployment and poverty, childhood abuse, addiction to multiple substances—might seem too extreme to serve as examples of barriers to recovery.
But research shows that trauma, both extreme and everyday, is key to understanding how addiction works and why it is best thought of as a chronic disease.
Repeated exposure to stress, especially before birth and in childhood, can cause structural imbalances in the brain that prompt people to seek a chemical shortcut to emotional equilibrium.
If the shortcut is alcohol or other drugs, the chemicals in those substances cause further brain changes that erode judgment, long-term thinking and impulse control. Alcohol and drugs start out feeling like a remedy for internal distress. They end up undermining the parts of the brain that enable someone to stop using. The seeming cure becomes a self-perpetuating cause of disease as physical addiction takes hold.
Learning to cope with the everyday stresses of life without chemical support is one of the first goals of treatment. Counseling and 12-step programs teach people how to “be okay without having to avoid what’s going on inside and having to numb yourself out,” Tony says.
But maintaining emotional and spiritual equilibrium is not enough. People also need what Tony calls recovery capital: decent housing, job prospects, a community that supports recovery and practical life skills.
Without such capital, people can emerge from treatment with good intentions but relapse when confronted by all the problems they’d sought to escape with substances—now magnified by the destructive effects of addiction. “In a lot of ways, society doesn’t want you and you don’t know how to participate in that world,” Tony says.
Regaining emotional balance and amassing recovery capital take far longer than the standard 28 days of rehab depicted on television. Treatment at Harbour Light lasts as long as three years, with patients gradually progressing to greater independence.
Tony says the “miracles” (his word) he has seen at Harbour Light—hardcore addicts achieving recovery after years of relapse on the streets—are the product of time, diligent work and research-backed treatment standards.
Tony counts himself as one of the miracles. His father was an alcoholic who drove drunk, lost his job and walked out on his family when Tony was 10. Seeking relief, Tony started smoking marijuana at age 12 and had his first drink a few years later. For nearly a decade, he was an alcoholic and drug addict in Vancouver.
Desperate to change, he tried a 12-step support group and spent the next two years cycling between relapse and vows to sober up. At last he entered residential treatment.
Tony had managed to stay employed and in contact with his family during his years of addiction. He emerged from treatment with some recovery capital. But he needed ongoing help coping with stress without chemical support.
Graduating from residential treatment, he was told to attend daily 12-step meetings for 90 days.
A foundation of 12-step programs is committing oneself to a higher power. “I was an atheist,” Tony says. “I thought, This won’t work, but I’ll do what you say to show you it doesn’t work.”
It did work. “I started to get better and have a little bit of hope,” Tony says. “When I started making amends to family and friends, I felt the obsession with alcohol just lift.”
He trained as a counselor, worked for several years helping federal offenders reintegrate after they leave prison, then took a job at Harbour Light in 2010.
After 25 years of sobriety, Tony continues to attend 12-step meetings and practice the disciplines of prayer and service foundational to his recovery. He does not consider himself “cured.” Sobriety, he says, is a lifelong endeavor.
“The best evidence for the effectiveness of treatment is someone like me,” he says. “I was once in the darkness, and now I’m in the light.”
Comprehensive programs such as Harbour Light’s are far less common than they should be, especially in America, where a fragmented, privately run health-care system has not developed universal standards of treatment or ways to pay for vital care.
Advocates and public health professionals I spoke to say efforts are under way to strengthen treatment standards and broaden access to quality care. For now, a patchwork of state-by-state regulations and a lack of long-term federal initiatives have left addicts such as Dana Smith dependent on local resources that vary in quality and affordability.
Strung out and missing her kids, Dana made her way back to Georgia. Her good intentions were derailed by an abusive man she met in Statesboro, who supplied her with drugs in exchange for sex.
At last, in 2007, she was arrested while trying to buy drugs.
What broke her cycle of relapse? A comprehensive state-backed program, roughly equivalent to Tony Kennedy’s Harbour Light. Dana was routed into a court-ordered, two-year drug treatment program. She underwent mandatory detox and residential treatment, followed by supportive housing and long-term attendance at 12-step support group meetings.
Dana witnessed substance abuse in her family growing up, was bullied at school, then endured physical and emotional abuse in multiple relationships with men. Treatment helped her cope with that trauma and the further trauma caused by her years of addiction.
She gained more recovery capital through counseling and by living in a supportive housing facility for homeless women struggling with substance abuse.
After nearly a year of treatment, she gathered enough courage to apply for a waitressing job at a local café. The café’s lively crew of regulars welcomed her with open arms—more recovery capital. Several years later, Dana opened a café of her own, where she now hires people in recovery.
“Just wanted to say thank you again for doing my story in Guideposts,” Dana texted me after her story was published. “I’ve had several people contact me and say that it helped them.”
I suspect Dana’s story helped many more readers than just the ones who reached out to her. Recovering from addiction, as she and other contributors to our series showed, is a monumental challenge. A lifetime’s work.
Our series showed something else too. Despite the chronic nature of addiction, recovery is possible with the right treatment, support and resources.
“I wasn’t a bad person. I was just a sick person,” Dana told me. “I thought I was bad. I didn’t think I had my heart anymore. But it came back.”
The goal of our series, and our ongoing coverage, is to bring that message of hope everywhere it’s needed. It’s a lifetime’s work.
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Have you ever been betrayed by someone close to you and sworn that you would never forgive them? No matter your religious traditions, family upbringing or profession, forgiving others can be one of the hardest things to do.
Why is that? When others hurt us, the pain can drive our decisions and actions. Our self-esteem is wounded, and our defensive walls rise to protect us from more pain. The last thing we want to do is forgive the person who caused our spiritual and emotional ache.
The memory of betrayal stirs up pain, shame and anger and often causes us to seek revenge or show indifference. But dwelling in the past stops us from living in the present and planning for the future. We keep looking at the rearview mirror, seeing the person hurting us.
We may feel as if forgiving others makes us look weak, that we are letting the person who hurt us off the hook, that they should also suffer and be humiliated. We tell ourselves that strong people don’t forgive those who hurt or offend them. “You got me once, but never again.” We may feel we let our guard down and as a result, we were taken advantage of. Or we may fear that if we do forgive, they will hurt us again or that others will think less of us for doing so.
But forgiving others is a courageous act; it’s for the strong. It means we take the higher moral road. When we allow ourselves to forgive others, we free ourselves from the pain, anger and bitterness that only make matters worse.
And though it is hard to achieve, we must remember that we are only human and so are those who have hurt us. When we are on other side of the equation and have hurt others, we will need their empathy and grace. Finally, we should forgive because God forgives us, no questions asked.
I’ve long believed that positive living isn’t about being upbeat every minute of every day. That kind of permanently happy state can’t be the goal, for the simple reason that it’s impossible to achieve. Who among us is so stalwart in our optimism that we never have a blip or a stumble?
It turns out, a growing body of psychological research is building around the idea that true happiness comes from authentic positivity—and authentic positivity comes from emotional flexibility.
Being flexible emotionally means being open to the full range of emotional experiences, including the challenging ones like frustration, anger, disappointment and sadness. As discussed in this scientific paper, and others, emotional flexibility means being able to shift behaviors and mindsets to meet different situational needs, adapting when circumstances change and appropriately prioritizing different aspects of life.
It’s important to note that emotionally flexible people are not chameleons whose outlook changes based on which way the wind is blowing. Instead, emotional flexibility is a skill that help people navigate the complexities of daily life, firmly anchored in their deeply-held values but available to the honest experience of unpredictable and ever-changing life.
Reading about this, I’ve learned a new word that I’d like to share with you: eudaimonia. Eudaimonia is the opposite of hedonism, the idea that happiness comes from the constant pursuit of pleasure and avoidance of pain. Eudamonia, by contrast, encourages us to pursue meaning and authenticity, growth and honest joy. Both are philosophical approaches to happiness, and recent psychological thought is leaning toward eudaimonia as a more sustainable, satisfying model.
Eudaimonia was first articulated by Aristotle, who derived the term from the Greek word “daimon,” which means “true nature.” To me, walking a positive path means accepting that we each have a positive true nature, inherent goodness and a capacity for happiness. What we learn from the concept of eudaimonia is that we are best equipped to realize this nature when we are emotionally honest and flexible.
As one review of literature on resilience puts it, “realistic optimism” is a key to a meaningful, genuinely happy life. After all, if we are resolute in our commitment to live realistically but positively, don’t we have more to offer others—especially those who are struggling?
My dear friend, filmmaker Kenny Saylors, does a Sunday post each week on Facebook. This one was awesome and I asked him if I could share it with you. Anger, hurt and bitterness are all things that can eat away at our lives and hearts—but we don’t have to allow them to do that. I think you’ll be inspired by Kenny’s wise words…
Have you been treated wrongly? Has someone done something to you that stirs up anger, hurt or emotional trauma in your life?
If you look around, it’s easy to see people who are trapped in their past, hanging on to the bitterness or anger toward someone or a situation that hurt them, which only causes the unchangeable past to dictate their changeable future. I don’t know about you, but I’ve been there far too many times myself. It’s not a pleasant place to reside.
Sometimes life is only understood when looking backwards, but it can only be lived looking forward. Yet I have to stand guard over my own heart to see that I don’t fall into bitterness or a vengeful spirit…
I tell you, friends, the past may have made us who we are, but it does not define us in the present unless we allow it. The Bible instructs us to forgive those who have sinned against us or despitefully used us. If we hold on to this unforgiveness, this anger, this bitterness, we have isolated ourselves from our Lord.
In Matthew 6:15, Jesus tells us that if we do not forgive others, our Father in Heaven will not forgive us. And we wonder why forgiveness is such a powerful thing…because it re-opens our connection to our Creator!! It doesn’t mean the hurt will stop or the memory will escape immediately, but the unbearable weight of unforgiveness will be lifted and true healing can begin.
So, have you been beating your head against a wall in confusion? Feeling like God is a million miles away? Soaking your pillow in tears at night or walking around with the weight of the world upon your shoulders?
Today is the day to let it all go. Forgive those who have wounded you, no matter how deeply or piercing it was, and accept the love and forgiveness of your Savior. Be still and listen for God’s direction daily. You can’t erase the past, but He can separate you from it and lead you into a new future—but you have to be willing to let it go, forgive those who have hurt you and forgive yourself. And then God will forgive you, and you will experience true freedom.
Well, Memorial Day has come and gone and June has officially begun. In my mind, that means summer is here—even if the calendar says it doesn’t arrive for another few weeks.
While reading how June changes his lifestyle—and mindset—I began to think about how I feel about this lovely month and felt inspired to share my five reasons with you.
5 Reasons I Love June
1. I can breathe easier when I run. There’s something about the June air here in the New York area that makes me happy. Yes, we get the occasional muggy summer day when all you can do is sit still and hope to feel cool, but for the most part, the sun and wind work together to give my lungs a healthy charge while I’m running along the river. It doesn’t have that winter bite that causes me to cough and I actually enjoy exercising as a result.
2. There are flowers everywhere. When June rolls around I seem to notice the colorful blooms around me a lot more. Maybe it’s because I’ve just started walking outside for longer periods of time as the weather allows it, or maybe it’s because I’ve started wearing brighter colors as I pull outfits from my summer wardrobe, but the fuschia, lavendar, yellow and red florals that blanket the parks and gardens I pass seem more vibrant than ever.
3. My toes feel perfect nestled in the sand. Anyone who knows me well knows I’m a beach lover. I’ve been sticking my toes in the grainy sands of beaches along the East coast since I was born, and it will always be a place that I associate with family, friends, happiness—and Grandma’s blueberry pie (a great way to end a long beach day). I usually kick off my beach weekends in late May, but June is when I embrace the salty smell and rolling waves as I close my eyes and let the sun pour down on my shoulders.
4. I eat healthier. Sure, Grandma’s pie is on my summer menu, but for the most part, I tend to mind my meals a bit more when summer rolls around. The fruits are juicier, watermelon is all that more appealing and I’m more apt to choose things like salad, veggies and smoothies at the grocery store.
5. I feel happier. It seems silly that the start of a certain month can change my mood, but when the sun is shining through my cracked office window and my sandals remind me that my winter boots are hiding in the back of my closet, I feel a sense of calm. I guess you could say the start of summer is like a mini new year for me. It sheds light on new possibilities, brings life to plans and ideas that I may have been avoiding for awhile and gets me out and about, breathing in the reality that seasons really can change more than just the weather.
On cold, dark days, are you tempted to curl up for a long winter’s nap? Some animals do, but for them, it’s critical. Here’s what you need to know about hibernation and the creatures that do it.
What Happens? Wild animals have developed a variety of strategies to help them survive adverse winter conditions such as frigid temperatures, snow and ice, and a scarcity of food. Some hide food stashes in preparation for the cold months. Some migrate to warmer climates. And others hibernate—a means of lowering their metabolism in order to conserve energy and store fat.
Hibernating is not the same as sleeping. These animals enter an extended state of torpor (decreased physiological activity). Their body temperature drops, and their breathing and heart rate slow, often dramatically. An Arctic ground squirrel’s temperature can fall to –2.9 degrees Celsius, and a bat’s heart rate can slow from hundreds of beats per minute to just 11. The heart of a hibernating wood frog actually stops beating.
Which Animals Do It and How?
Bears are probably the first animals you think of when it comes to hibernation. Because they are easily roused, though, some scientists don’t consider them true hibernators. Skunks fall into this category too.
Small mammals, such as dormice, are the most typical hibernators. This is because their little bodies make it more difficult for them to stay warm in cold weather. Other mammals that lie dormant are chipmunks, hedgehogs and groundhogs.
Bumblebees hibernate—but only the queen bee, who digs a hole in the ground and stays there until spring arrives.
Some snakes sleep through the winter, with hundreds together to share body heat. Bats huddle together in caves. Box turtles hibernate in underground burrows, and wood frogs cozy up in hollow logs or leaf piles. Hibernating animals are usually well hidden. If you come upon one in your yard or while you’re hiking, it’s important not to disturb it. Waking up from hibernation requires a lot of energy. Don’t deplete hibernating animals of that energy, which is essential for their survival.
What Can We Learn?
Hibernation is an amazing adaptation, allowing animals to survive without damage to their body systems. Understanding how that’s possible can give scientists insight into human conditions. We can learn how cells survive very cold temperatures, enabling doctors to better preserve human tissues for transplants. We can get clues for treating muscle disorders and degenerative bone diseases since hibernators don’t experience muscle and bone deterioration.
Studying hibernation may also help us better understand neurodegenerative diseases. Research shows that a particular protein associated with Alzheimer’s disease is renewed in the brain cells of some hibernating animals, such as squirrels, during their deep sleep.
That leads to the question: Could people hibernate? Most scientists say no, but ever since lemurs were discovered to do so, some experts have wondered if a human hibernation-like state is possible, because lemurs are primates that are genetically similar to us. For now, though, if you need to conserve some energy this winter, a nap will do.
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Many of us want to start the new year with a fresh energy to be focused, productive and successful. It’s reductive to say it so plainly, but it’s also accurate to consider a lot of New Year’s resolutions are about trying to get smarter.
Neuroscientists distinguish between types of intelligence. “Crystallized intelligence” is concrete, measurable learning, like a child who’s learned their times tables or the capital cities of every state in America. Crystallized intelligence is cumulative, and it builds as we deepen our learning and understanding of facts, figures and concepts.
For a productive, positive New Year, though, we might be—ahem—wise to focus on “fluid intelligence.” Like the name implies, fluid intelligence is the ability to apply information to a wide range of situations. When we use our fluid intelligence, we draw on our memories and use what we’ve learned in the past to help us solve a problem in the present. This is the type of intelligence that enables us to think flexibly, change our perspective in light of new understandings and apply our past experiences and knowledge to new challenges and situations.
So how can we “train” ourselves to improve fluid intelligence? Kuszewski outlines principles that, when practiced regularly, encourage our brains to remain lithe. Among these are to seek out novelty, challenging our brains to navigate new-to-us situations (as opposed to doing the same “brain training” activities every day) and thinking creatively, both by taking on explicitly creative projects like artwork and also by opening our minds to new ways to take on old tasks.
But my favorite suggestion of Kuszewski’s is to increase fluid intelligence by “doing things the hard way.” She writes, “Efficiency is not your friend if you are trying to increase your intelligence.” Tools like using a GPS to guide us on every driving trip are helpful and even sanity-saving when we’re in new places. But it’s also the kind of “efficiency” that lets our brains off the hook when we need to get ourselves from A to B.
On a regular basis, try switching off the GPS and navigate to a new destination using your memory or consultation of a map before you leave. Give yourself plenty of time and embrace the opportunity to course-correct when you make a wrong turn. And know that even if you feel frustrated, you are investing your energy in fluid intelligence—a strength you will be able to draw on throughout the year.
What other opportunities do you see to “do things the hard way” to keep your brain sharp?
Thanksgiving is a time to celebrate and give thanks for the many blessings in life. But what about being grateful for the difficult times? I don’t know one person who enjoys adversity. But what it can offer us is a chance for personal and spiritual growth.
If we’re honest about it, most of us become stronger from facing challenges. We discover just how resilient we are when dealing with emotional pain, illness, job loss, grief, divorce, financial setbacks and more. Our faith increases even in the midst of doubt and fear. We find that with God’s strength, we also gain strength.
Past troubles can teach us to develop a positive mindset for future battles. We are now better equipped to get through the rough and rocky roads of life because we’ve traveled them before. Even in the middle of a tough time, we know that God will not leave us there. When we change our perspective and become grateful for our difficult times, we can find the good even when sorrow overwhelms us.
Let us remember what Apostle Paul declared, “We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.”
Try to pause and give thanks for the lessons learned, spiritual growth gained and the people who stood by you during challenging times. Otherwise, you might miss an opportunity to recognize God’s presence. Tough times don’t last, but gratitude does.
New York Times best-selling author Rachel Held Evans knows a thing or two about millennials leaving the Church. A decade ago, the Christian blogger was one of them.
Born to a deeply evangelical Christian family in Dayton, Tennessee, the buckle of the Bible Belt, Evans had professed her belief in Christ at age 13 and quickly became known in her community for being what church folks call, “on fire for God.” Facilitating the conversions to Christianity of her atheist high school classmates, Evans was confident in who Christ was, who God was, and who she was because of Them.
As an English major at Bryan College, Evans started asking questions about things she didn’t understand in the Bible or in doctrine. Her questions were often met with concern for her salvation, with deflection, with insults about her lack of faith—but no answers. The message Evans received was that there was no room for doubt or even questions in the Church. So, eventually, she excused herself and quietly slipped out of the backdoor of church life.
During this time, Evans became a well-known blogger who often wrote about her struggles with faith. She’s now written 3 books, the latest of which is Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving and Finding the Church, where she poetically recounts her faith journey and how she was able to find her way back to church.
Just a few days after Evans gave birth to her and her husband’s first child, Guideposts.org caught up with the new mom to talk about why millennials are leaving the Church and what can be done about it.
GUIDEPOSTS: What are the main misconceptions churches have about millennials and why they’re leaving?
RHE: I think there is a bit of a misconception that millennials are leaving the Church “because it’s not hip and cool, so let’s bring in a cool band and worship leader that wears skinny jeans.” That alone is not going to bring us all back. I don’t speak for all of them, but a lot of them are leaving and disengaging because they are asking big questions about life and faith and the Church is not really helping them work through those and it’s not a safe place for them to do that. I think sometimes people assume millennials are just really shallow, but it kind of oversimplifies what this generation is about. Frankly, when I go to a church that is giving away an iPad at Easter and has fog machines, I feel like they are just trying to peddle a product to me; they are trying to sell me Jesus. We millennials have been advertised to our entire lives. I don’t think we are going to church looking to be entertained or sold a product. We are eager to be connected to other people and eager to have a place to hash out some of the big questions of “why”.
GUIDEPOSTS: How can the Church become a place that is safe for people to question and to doubt?
RHE: We can go back through tradition and Scripture to find support for having that environment where doubts and questions are safe. If you read through the stories of the Bible, from Abraham all the way to the apostle Paul, you see people of faith asking a ton of questions. You have Jacob wrestling with this angel that is God, saying, “I refuse to leave without a blessing.” The Jewish community has really adopted that faith is meant to be wrestled with. So we have a precedent for it. I think it helps when a pastor or church leader is willing to admit their own doubts and questions and are willing to say, “I don’t know,” or “I’m not sure what this text means.” It creates a tone like, “Oh, this is a place where you can say that.” It frees up everybody else in a community to be honest and to feel like it’s safe to talk about their doubts.
GUIDEPOSTS: What do you say to those who would push back on that and say ‘Moses wasn’t able to see the Promised Land for his doubts; Jacob forever walked with a limp after wrestling with the angel’?
RHE: Well, you can even look at Jesus on the cross. I mean you don’t get a better example of what God intends for this world than Jesus on the cross. Even Jesus on the cross is quoting from David, in the Psalm, “My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?” To me, that is such a profound moment, where God incarnate is questioning God. It doesn’t always end well, but in the end, there’s resurrection, so ultimately it does [end well]. It doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy but I think ultimately there has to be a death of some kind, a struggle for there to be new life.
GUIDEPOSTS: In Searching for Sunday, you describe your husband Dan as someone who’d already had his faith shaken in high school when his parents divorced, so he wasn’t thrown when you started expressing your doubts about faith. What’s that like for you when your faith is in a different place from your husband’s? How are you able to support each other through that?
RHE: I think the main thing is to not try to force anything. You can’t change a person. I think you know sometimes when people have a friend or family that has a crisis of faith, they freak out and then they want to try and fix it. That’s really the last thing you want is someone coming along and trying to make you stop doubting or make you stop questioning. What you really want is someone to come alongside you and be there for you and not judge you through that experience. People often say, “Why can’t you just believe?” That’s a lot easier said than done for me, and there are times it just doesn’t seem possible. I think the trick is just let the other person be. Let them go a little bit and let them work through their own questions and doubts without getting scared by them.
GUIDEPOSTS: You talk about the death of the church as possibly a good and necessary thing. What do you mean by that?
RHE: Well I think every so often we have to reassess things. I think a lot of people are stressing out because they see the numbers, particularly in the U.S., for church attendance going down. There is a lot of pandering about, “Oh, this is the end; the church is over,” which is, also as an aside, kind of a very American-centered way of looking at it. I would encourage people to think of it differently. The Church is going through major changes. It always has and it’s always survived. Jesus says the gates of Hell will not prevail against the Church, so it’s going to survive the Internet Age.
The death and resurrection ideas are that maybe it’s time to die to these old ways of doing things and see if God is going to do something new with the Church. I think there are some things the Church in the U.S. needs to let go of. This kind of constant fighting over politics and looking to politicians to solve issues for the Church, or looking to politicians to bring the Kingdom to the U.S. That’s a fool’s errand. So there are certain things that need to be reassessed and we need to die to be raised up to something new.
GUIDEPOSTS: Do you think one can be a Christian and not go to church?
RHE: Yeah, I think you can absolutely be Christian and not go to church. There are some of my readers that have been really hurt by their churches, I mean devastated. I’ll often talk with families that have been torn apart because their kid is gay and they supported their kid and they got kicked out of their church. Horrible stories come into my inbox every single day and because of that I am unwilling to say, “Oh, well, you can’t be a Christian because you don’t go to church.” I think a lot of people need some major recovery time because of the abuse and hurt that they suffered from the Church. I want to acknowledge that and honor it.
At the same time, I don’t think you can be a Christian alone. I think you need some kind of community of other Christians around you. So I think a great place to find that is a local church body. I would encourage more millennials to go to church and participate in church. But at the same time I realize that not everybody will find that community of Christians in a local church. They might find it elsewhere. Being connected to the Church is a great gift and even though it’s the most dysfunctional family in the world, it’s a beautiful, beautiful family. The Church has this incredible capacity to wound but it also has an incredible capacity to heal. I have seen both in my own experience and life and so I still believe in the Church’s ability to heal, even the people it has wounded.
GUIDEPOSTS: What advice do you have for those who have left the Church and are still trying to find their way through faith?
RHE: I think one thing I had to do myself when I was away from church for a while was work on letting go of the cynicism. Because cynicism is the worst and it keeps you from really engaging the people around you and it really was the biggest hurdle I had to get over in getting back to church. Every church I sat in I found something wrong with it and it took me a really long time to sort of soften and be vulnerable. The hardest thing when you get out of a relationship is to go on and be vulnerable in another relationship. So it really was hard for me to go back to church and be vulnerable. I really wanted to protect myself. But there’s nothing meaningful to get out of life if we try to play it safe like that.
Go into [your church search] knowing where you’re willing to compromise and where you’re not. My friend Nadia Bolz-Weber is a Lutheran priest and the first thing she says to new members is, “We’re going to disappoint you. This community is going to let you down.” You have to go into any sort of church search with that in mind.
I was celebrating with friends in our apartment complex on New Year’s Eve, 1986, when the turn in my life took place. It had been a good year. Only 26 years old and selling photographic equipment, I was doing just what I wanted with my life. Or so I thought. I was also doing a lot of drugs. I had started smoking marijuana at age 12. Later, in the Navy, I used hard narcotics. By New Year’s Eve, 1986, I was a serious drug user.
That night at the party I was freebasing cocaine. As usual, the drugs made me feel invincible. But suddenly, amid the music and raucous laughter, I felt strange. My heart raced, my body became numb; I was panicky. Desperately trying to maintain composure, I got up from my seat and waved to the others, calling, “I’ll see you guys tomorrow.” I staggered down to my apartment. I didn’t understand what was happening to me. Was I dying?
Gasping, I stumbled in the door and lurched into the shower. I turned on the cold water, ripped open my shirt under the splashing spray and, for the first time in years, I started to pray. “God, take me to heaven,” I pleaded. “I’m not a bad person.” Then I vowed that if he let me live I would never do drugs again. Please, God, help me.
Immediately I felt a warm sensation in my feet. A whirling rose around me, like a miniature tornado. It was then that I saw them, seven of them, twirling around me faster and faster. I thought they were taking me to heaven. They did not have wings or halos; I could see only forms. They put their arms around me. I felt wonderful, relaxed, at ease. So this is death.
I awoke in a hospital, early on New Year’s Day. Anxiously leaning over me was my party host. He said that for some reason he had decided to leave the party and go down to my apartment. He found the door ajar and me unconscious on the tile floor. “We rushed you here,” he said. “Your heart was barely beating.”
A week passed before I was able to return to work. By then I felt totally different. The urge to get stoned was gone. What had replaced it was an irresistible compulsion, a burning need to draw what I had seen in the shower on New Year’s Eve. For several years I worked hard at my job all day and drew my angels at night. Though I couldn’t explain it—I wasn’t an artist and I didn’t have any training in the field—the effort consumed me.
Andy Lakey circa 1995.
By 1989 I had drawn 227 sketches of the beings I had seen. I had saved enough money to buy a town house. Meanwhile I prayed for direction in my life. The answer I got was startling and always the same: Be an artist.
Acquaintances laughed when I said I had decided to become an artist. But one new friend, a Christian, told me, “Go for it, Andy.” I did. One day in the fall of 1989, I went to my boss to give notice. When I told him my plans, he leaned back in his chair and studied me quizzically.
“Are you on drugs?” he asked.
No, I told him, not since that New Year’s Eve. He said he wanted me to see a psychiatrist. That’s when I showed him my sketches. “They do look pretty good, Andy. Good luck.”
I bought some professional artists’ magazines to see what a real studio looked like. Then I went to an art store and loaded up on an assortment of items—airbrush equipment, projector, scopes—to transform my garage into a studio. I installed track lighting, plus a cassette player for musical inspiration. By mid-December it was completed and I sat down to paint. But when I tried to portray one of my angels in color, all I could manage was a crude outline. Frustrated, I gave up. Have I made a mistake quitting my job? I worried.
The next day I returned to the studio. I flipped on the music—and it happened. A bright light came through the wall and surrounded me with glowing intensity. Within the light stood three bearded men with long hair. I felt no fear. I communicated with them not in words, but in thoughts. Incredibly, I was told to paint 2000 angels by the year 2000. I sensed the beings would not only teach me to paint, but would arrange circumstances so the Lord would be honored. They said we would meet again in 10 years. Then the light faded and they were gone.
The music was still playing and everything looked normal. But the path before me was clear. I sat down at a canvas and let myself be guided by my angels. I lined up the tubes of acrylic paint and squeezed color after color onto my palette—vermilion, cerulean blue, chrome yellow. I laid out my brushes and began brushing on colors, each in different layers. It was impossible to portray the exact form of the celestial messengers who had embraced me that night in the shower. Still, I was capturing something of their benevolence, their essence. In a kaleidoscope of shimmering color and texture an angel came to life on my canvas.
By the end of January 1990, I had finished eight paintings. I wanted others to see them and asked a friend who managed a bank if he could display some there. He chose three and hung them in the bank’s customer area. A woman phoned later that day. She introduced herself as Pierrette Van Cleve, a Canadian art critic and owner of Art Cellar Exchange, an international fine art brokerage. She said she had been contacted by a man from Canada who had seen my paintings in the bank. He wanted to commission some large canvases for his home. “May I come to your studio and see your work?” she asked.
By then I had completed more paintings. Pierrette walked back and forth looking at them. When I told her I had been painting only a short time, she didn’t believe me. Finally, she turned to me and extended her hand. “I’m filled with wonder,” she said. Pierrette ran her fingers over the layers of color of one of my paintings. “I used to work with the blind,” she said, “and I’m intrigued by your relief work. Have you thought about sharing your creations with the visually impaired?” I hadn’t. Was this another circumstance fashioned by my three visitors?
One of my first showings was arranged by Pierrette at a San Diego gallery, and she invited some blind acquaintances. I took a lady’s hand and guided her fingertips over the painting’s surface, explaining the colors. “This is black … and over here is a peach tone. Whenever you feel this particular level and texture above the others, that is the same peach color. Can you see?”
The woman’s face lit up. “I can see the angels … and the colors!” TV newsman Peter Jennings donated one piece to the Lighthouse for the Blind in New York City. An art gallery asked to put one of my paintings on display; the first person who stepped into the gallery bought it. Today my paintings are in collections of museums, the Vatican, royal families, U.S. presidents and celebrities, “touching hearts,” as one critic said, “with the joy, love and wonder of heaven itself.”
I have completed 1350 angel paintings. On December 31, 1999, Painting Number 2000 will receive its finishing touches at midnight at a ceremony in New York City. I know the angels will come, as they did at the end of another year, when they changed the direction of my life.
What will happen to me then? I leave that to God.
Update: In 1998, Andy completed the 2000 angel paintings and signed the final Angel at a public event in San Francisco, California, on New Year’s Eve.
This story first appeared in the November 1995 issue of Angels on Earthmagazine.
William James, the late 19th century Harvard psychologist who is regarded as the architect of modern behavioral science, was a pioneer in his idea that behavior can determine emotion as much as feelings can determine behavior.
In other words, when we feel happy, we smile. What James added to the conversation is the notion that when we smile, we feel happy.
For those of us who endeavor to walk a positive path through life, the idea could be posed as a question: Should we prioritize positive action over positive thinking?
Few would argue the two are an either/or proposition. Thinking positively about our value in society, for example, certainly makes us more likely to take action to help those whose lives we can support.
But what about this idea that our behaviors can dictate our emotions? Decades of scientific studies have connected the two, creating a body of research that supports the idea that if we “act as if,” a positive, healthy emotional life will follow.
This morning, an opportunity presented itself for me to try a little (unscientific) experiment on myself. I was finally sitting down to organize a ream of paper in my office. The task required examining each sheet, deciding where it went, and putting it in a pile, in a folder or in a recycle bin. Just a few minutes into the dreaded task, I noticed my brow furrowing, my posture hunching over the papers and my breathing going shallow. My behavior accurately reflected my feelings about the project.
Remembering James, I decided to add a behavioral shift to the process. Each time I picked up a new piece of paper, I took a deep inhale, and made a little “yay!” sound (working at a home office comes in handy for such experiments), as if to celebrate the milestone of being one step closer to completing the project.
After a few minutes, I noticed two things. First, the action of picking up a paper and letting out a little “yay!” had become a rhythm; I didn’t have to consciously decide to do it anymore. And second, while the project hardly became a joy-fest, I truly did feel more calmly engaged in it. I even started to believe my own message—each paper sorted was a step toward the finish line. The pile got smaller and smaller.
Next time I’m feeling glum, I’m going to take a moment to notice what my body is doing to express that emotion—then ask it to do something different, to see how it feels. Chances are, it will feel better.
