Bohemian Avenue (conclusion)

Gloomy white light filtered through the bedroom window onto the mattress. It was still occupied by the sleeper who had placed it on the floor for his bed.

John raised his head and saw that it was just daylight and no one stirred in the apartment. Stephen was asleep in his bed across the room.

It was Saturday morning, and he was glad he didn’t have to go to work today. Then he remembered the events of last night. All the thoughts that had been pushed aside for sleep now began to run through his brain. He was done with sleep; so he put on some clothes.

He opened the bedroom door and looked out into the living room. Jeanie was not sleeping on the couch anymore. She must have gone upstairs to Susan’s apartment.

John grabbed his coffee mug and made himself some instant coffee with the help of the microwave and sat on the couch where he had last seen Jeanie before going to bed. He looked at the TV. This was no time for television. The murky shadows of the unlit living room allowed his thoughts to become clearer in his mind.

He felt that he was partly to blame for Jeanie’s overindulgence last night. Maybe these kids looked to him more than he realized. He admired their way of stating their individuality and never thought about the possibility of underlying insecurities and even heartaches.

Why had he wanted to drink? Why with these kids? Couldn’t he have just had Coke as his brother had? It brought to mind the first time he had ever taken a drink.

John remembered from his high school days the misunderstandings between his parents and himself and the ache that he had carried from the rejection he perceived from them. When a relationship with a girl had not gone the way he had hoped, but in fact caused him to face more rejection, he had decided that drugs and alcohol couldn’t hurt him any worse and might be a temporary painkiller.

He knew in his head that numbing the pain didn’t solve anything, but he didn’t see any solution at all. If his preacher father and his mother made him feel unconditionally unworthy, couldn’t that have been true of God also? But that very church training and something else inside of him wrestled against that assumption.

He had left home to join the Army just to escape his parents. He had quit drugs because he didn’t like the side effects and the Army kept drug testing as a deterrent and a way to rid the ranks of drug abusers. Drinking was practically encouraged in some respects, and John had learned the hard lessons of drinking too much.

Now, he had tried to keep his drinking moderate and was successful, but here he was unintentionally leading others astray. It could have been worse, but he didn’t want to excuse himself that easily.

Why did he drink now? His parents had taught him not to drink at all.

The fact was he had turned to alcohol during a painful time in his life. The temporary numbing had actually scarred him to the point that when he felt God wasn’t acting quickly enough in his favor, he turned to drinking.

The drinking, he thought, wasn’t the whole picture. The drinking was a substitute for…?

The answer had to do with acceptance. It was feeling connected to other people in friendship, in intimacy, and of romantic love.

When he was married he hadn’t wanted to drink, and when he craved a drink, it was when he felt lonely and abandoned. He had managed to go for several years without having a drink by resisting with all his strength the urges and finding others to be with who did not drink.

Here in Minneapolis, he had given in and found that he had put so many things ahead of his dependence on God. He had put acceptance by others ahead of God. When he felt down, instead of turning to God, he drank.

The concept came back to him of how one views God as one views his own father. Somewhere deep down, he no longer trusted his dad, and that seemed to be applied to God, too.

In light of all he had seen in Minneapolis, the underlying issues of everyone’s life are not that many in number. The heartaches we all carry help to shape and form us to who we are and who we are going to be.

The girls from Loring Park may have equated the desire for love and intimacy solely with sexual intimacy. Those who are wounded by someone of the opposite sex, may even turn to a homosexual lifestyle to continue in their concept of intimacy.

There is some unknown heartache in the sisters upstairs that have lead them to this particular place in their lives. He had a suspicion he was about to find out Stephen’s heartache in time.

He didn’t know how to be healed of his own heartaches. All John knew was that God offered him more than he could find in drinking or finding his own way. It was time to quit drinking and come to that place that his dad had told him about when he was much younger.

He needed to go to God with everything. When he was much younger, his dad had told him he could cry and pour out all that he felt to God. He hadn’t tried that for a long time. In his mind, he looked up into the face of God, and immediately sobs wracked his body.

After a time, he heard stirrings in the bedrooms. He had recovered for the most part and had resolved to do two things. The first one was to quit drinking, and the second one was to find a life in this new place that was truer to his heart and God’s plan.