by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Honesty, Integrity, Recovery, Weekly Devotional
Saturday at Riverbend Church here in Austin, TX, a large number of people gathered to say a formal “Goodbye,” and “We love you, Hank!” to our dear remarkable, unpretentious friend, Francis Leo “Hank” McNamara.
It was a strange mix: some 50 or 60 family members; many Austinites who had known Hank since grade school; at least as many who had known him in recovery programs—some only for a few days or months. The atmosphere seemed to be permeated by…love, at least that’s what I kept thinking as I met dozens of them.
The day after he died, his wife, Trish, asked me to speak at his funeral. I nodded my thanks, went home and cried.
Ten months earlier, Hank had broken his neck. It would not heal, which meant that if he tripped or bumped into a wall wrong the second vertebra would shift and he’d be dead—or paralyzed. Since he already had a bad heart and several other serious physical issues, his prognosis did not look good.
One day several months ago I asked Hank if he would like to tell his family who he really was and what he thought of them (he had a very large family). He said he really would. Shortly after that, using a tape recorder, we started on a joint trip through his whole life that for me was a life-changing journey. I swore to him that I would never reveal what he said on tape until he had edited it and given me permission to reveal it.
After only a couple of sessions, I realized that he had raised or co-raised thirteen children who lived in various places around the country. After we had finishing a taping session, I asked him if he would like to say something specifically to them. If he would, we could structure that into our sessions together. Hank said he would. He told me (not on tape) that although he’d been married three times before he wanted each of his children to know that he had loved their mother, that he loved each one of them and his grandchildren especially, and he was glad he’d gotten to be their old man. And he wanted to tell them before it was too late. Unfortunately Hank died before we had any more recording sessions. But because he had told that to me in a personal conversation when the tape machine was off, I could pass that part of our conversations on to them at the funeral. Also I could tell Trish that she was the love of his life—even though I’m sure she already knew that.
Although I never can type and share the information on those tapes now, I learned a lot about Hank McNamara in the last few weeks before his death that I could and did pass on to those who are his friends and family members at the funeral.
Hank was a remarkable man. I can still see him coming up the sidewalk. He had to wear a kind of neck support made up of four rods (two at either side of his face and two at the back corners of his head) going up several inches over his head and connected by wires—like some sort of futuristic scaffolding. He had oxygen tubes in his nostrils, was pulling an oxygen tank, and as I recall, carrying an aluminum cane. And yet he was smiling and gracious to everyone he met. He was going through some of the most scary and painful things a human being can experience, and yet he was filled with gratitude—gratitude for his beloved Trish (he was very much in love), but also I never saw him when he wasn’t grateful “for another day.”
The “magic” Hank brought with him everywhere he went was amazing. The day he died I heard a young woman say that she had come for help to a meeting Hank had started, feeling shame and worthlessness. But the way Hank shook her hand, smiled and greeted her—as if she were a fine worthwhile person—awakened a belief in her that maybe she could become those things someday. I heard many similar stories during the next few days.
As I thought about Hank’s life over the twenty years I’ve known him, I realized that he had changed the focus of his approach to helping people in trouble. For the last several years he had begun to “stand by the door” of the places where people in trouble were frantically searching for God. He had begun to spend more and more of his time helping “newcomers” to get started on a spiritual journey that could lead them to become the people they had lost hope of ever becoming—or becoming again after a life of failure and running from reality and God.
That night before Hank’s funeral, I remembered a poem I had read years before. It had been written by a man who I consider to have been one of the most outstanding men in the 20th century regarding helping people into a life of faith. The man had sent it to me in October of 1961. I decided to read a couple of stanzas of this poem at his funeral because I recognized Hank within in the lines (although I am almost certain that He did not know about the poem).
SO I STAY NEAR THE DOOR—An Apologia for My Life.
I stay near the door.
I neither go too far in, nor stay too far out,
The door is the most important door in the world—
It is the door through which men walk when they find God.
There’s no use my going way inside, and staying there,
When so many are still outside, and they, as much as I,
Crave to know where the door is.
And all that so many ever find
Is only the wall where a door ought to be.
They creep along the wall like blind men,
With outstretched, groping hands,
Feeling for a door, knowing there must be a door,
Yet they never find it…
So I stay near the door.
The most tremendous thing in the world
Is for men to find that door—the door to God.
The most important thing any man can do
Is to take hold of one of those blind, groping hands,
And put it on the latch–the latch that only clicks
And opens to the man’s own touch.
Men die outside that door, as starving beggars die
On cold nights in cruel cities in the dead of winter–
Die for want of what is within their grasp.
They live, on the other side of it–because they have found it.
Nothing else matters compared to helping them find it,
And open it, and walk in, and find Him – – –
So I stay near the door.
…
There is another reason why I stay there.
Some people get part way in and become afraid
Lest God and the zeal of His house devour them;
For God is so very great, and asks all of us.
And these people feel a cosmic claustrophobia.
And want to get out. Let me out! they cry.
And the people way inside only terrify them more.
Somebody must be by the door to tell them that they are spoiled
For the old life, they have seen too much;
Once taste God, and nothing but God will do any more.
Somebody must be watching for the frightened
Who seek to sneak out just where they came in,
To tell them how much better it is inside.
The people too far in do not see how near these are
To leaving—preoccupied with the wonder of it all.
Somebody must watch for those who have entered the door,
But would run away. So for them, too,
I stay near the door.
The startling thing about this poem is that it was written by the man who was “standing near the door” when Bill Wilson’s friend Eby brought Bill to Calvary Church in New York. That man, The Rev. Sam Shoemaker, put Bill Wilson’s hand on the latch of the door. Sam showed him how to commit his whole life to God. And then, at Bill’s request, Sam helped Bill to frame Alcoholics Anonymous and to put the spirituality into the “Big Book”, and The Twelve Steps and the Twelve Tradition’s. And this anonymous movement became the fastest growing spiritual movement in the 20th century during a time when many organized religious organizations were shrinking or floundering.
It was this incredible realization about Hank that made me realize the deep significance of his life: Our friend Hank McNamara (who did not consider himself to be “religious”) had realized—as Sam Shoemaker had half a century before him—that the future of the movement that saved Hank’s life and the lives of so many of us, might be continued only by loving persons willing to stand near the door—wherever they live—to guide the hands of a few lost people onto the latch of the door through which they may find Life—and God.
I am very grateful that I got a chance to know Hank McNamara, a real man of God.
“If you hear me call and open the door, I’ll come right in and sit down to supper with you.”
-Revelations 3:20, The Message
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Recovery, Weekly Devotional
I was thinking I’ve had my shot. I’m an old man and all I can do is help a few people find hope and meaning by helping them find sobriety and/or a new life of faith in God.
But helping some pretty negative and defiant people in these ways didn’t seem to me to be related to having lived a meaningful life. Besides, lots of the young men I meet with are proud and in denial about their addictions and control issues and very rebellious about the idea of really trusting God with their lives. Although I understand this since I have been the same way most of my life, it’s discouraging sometimes how many have to hit an iron wall before they are ready to surrender enough to get to the wonder of God’s adventure.
Recently a group of us were reading about Bill Wilson, who co-founded the multinational movement of Alcoholics Anonymous. We read that when Wilson had just gotten out of the hospital for the last time because of his drinking problem, one of his old drinking buddies came to see him. This friend, Ebby, had sobered up as a result of going to a soup kitchen manned by parishioners from Calvary Episcopal church in New York City.
Bill Wilson’s doctor had told him that he had to quit drinking or he might not make it. And further his doctor believed that Wilson could never quit drinking, except for one possible chance—that of having a spiritual experience of some kind. At first Bill thought Ebby had just “gotten religion.” But somehow the meeting with Ebby struck a chord in Wilson’s life. He went with Ebby to Calvary church and met the rector, Sam Shoemaker. As a result, Bill Wilson got converted to Christianity, sobered up and with Sam Shoemaker’s help, wrote the Big Book that described and inaugurated Alcoholics Anonymous as a movement—arguably the fastest growing spiritual movement in the world during the last sixty percent of the twentieth century.
As I sat there listening to the story unfold in the pages of the book, Alcoholics Anonymous, I thought about Ebby, a newly sober alcoholic, working his program by telling his friend, Bill, about what had happened to him.
I thought how grateful Ebby must have felt at the end of his life to have had such a significant role in founding one of the most significant and transformational healing movements in the world. If Ebby never did anything else, that was meaningful, being responsible for the religious conversion and recovery from addiction of the man who founded this great healing community of A.A. would be meaning enough for a lifetime.
But as the story continued, I realized that Ebby probably never even knew what happened because of his simply doing what he was taught to do to stay sober himself—telling another alcoholic how he (Ebby) had found sobriety by surrendering his life to God.
I remembered that Ebby probably didn’t know the amazing effect of his walking a few days with his old friend, because I’d heard that Ebby went back out and drank himself to death. Ebby’s life did have great significance because of working a simple program for a short time. But I also realized that whether Ebby knew it or not, those few days eventually gave meaning to lives of probably millions of men and women around the world.
And after that meeting in which we were reading about Bill Wilson’s beginning with Ebby, a man I’d mentored years ago, who had moved away from Austin, and whom I hadn’t seen in several years, walked up, and we had lunch. I learned that the young man was not only still in recovery but had gone to seminary and was now being ordained as a minister. I was struck after lunch by the transformation in the man’s life. His deep faith and enthusiasm about his work touched me profoundly. And as he left after lunch, I realized that if I never do any of the exciting things I once did, that my life would have great meaning because I encouraged this one young man and helped him get sober by working the same simple program Ebby was working when he had lunch with Bill Wilson over seventy-five years ago. And I was very grateful that the Rev. Sam Shoemaker taught Bill Wilson the kind of spirituality that is at the heart of the life Jesus taught his disciples.
Lord, thank you for a life in which each person we love and help along the way gives our lives significance and meaning to you and sometimes to other people we may never know. In Jesus’ name, amen.
“Put yourself aside, and help others get ahead. Don’t be obsessed with getting your own advantage. Forget yourselves long enough to lend a helping hand.” Philippians 2:1, The Message
“Don’t begin by traveling to some far off place to convert unbelievers. And don’t try to be dramatic by tackling some public concern. Go to the lost confused people right here in the neighborhood. … Don’t think you have to put on a fund-raising campaign before you start. You don’t need any equipment. You are the equipment.” Matthew 10:6-10, The Message
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
Dear Keith, I made a decision to give my life to Christ over ten years ago. It felt so freeing—to be able to trust God with the struggles in my life. But periodically I go through times of not being able to sleep, of going over my situation with a magnifying glass to see what I am doing wrong that is keeping my problems from clearing up. And as an only child and single mom, I worry what will happen to my boy and my girl if I should get killed or get sick and die! What happened to that freeing experience I had back at the beginning? Sometimes (I’m ashamed to say) I wonder if God is even real!
Your question brings up something I have experienced at several points in my life since I surrendered my life to Christ by a roadside in Texas. One occasion that comes to mind is a morning when I woke up restless and vaguely afraid…of what I wasn’t sure. Then I remembered: in the mail the day before I had received a letter from a good friend. He had just learned from his doctor that he had between two weeks and three months to live—a malignancy had reached his liver. I was deeply shaken and grieved. The vague anxieties I had felt earlier blossomed into concrete fears, and I began to imagine all kinds of bad things happening.
Over a year before I had decided to devote my time to writing professionally, without the support of a regular job. But I had been doing so much public speaking and traveling that I worried about not getting any writing done and not being able to make a living for my family. As the specters danced out of the shadowy corners into my conscious mind, I imagined my wife’s death and my great loneliness at her dying… the children had grown up and left home… I was a lonely old man. Then, like a jack-in-the-box, out jumped the specter of my own death, and I was afraid. I did not know in that instant whether I believed in Christ or even in God the Father. I experienced the great emptiness of death, was horrified… and desperately wanted proof and certainty.
But as I saw these things and faced the panic they brought, I also understood again with razor-sharp clarity the deep human meaning of the gospel of Jesus Christ for me:
- “Let not your hearts be troubled…” (John 14:1)
- “I go to prepare a place for you…” (John 14:3)
- “…be of good cheer, I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).
I saw that I could not capture faith once and for all time and put it in a box for safekeeping. In the face of death and possible failure in my own life or in the lives of those I love, I could not even know for sure that “God is.”
“What am I going to do?” I thought, trying not to give in to the wave of desperation I felt was about to break over me. I had lived with faith for years, and it seemed to be crumbling all around me. Then I knew. All I could do to come to terms with my own death was to bet my life that Jesus Christ is “for real” and give Him my whole future.
I wish I could say that has been the only time in my life that I have gone through that cycle of doubt, panic, fear and re-commitment. But the cycle has occurred in various ways again and again, until it has become evident to me that this Christian Way is not often entered through the lofty door of philosophical reasoning, but through a wager, a bet with fantastic stakes. Because of what I have seen and heard in my own experience and in the lives of many others across the years, I have bet my life that God is, and that He is the kind of love that walked around in the life and actions of Jesus Christ. I have wagered that He even loves me and wants me to be related as a child to Him. And when out of great need, I have made this bet, I have stepped into a new dimension of life—life in which there is hope in history because God is at the end of the road for me and for all of us.
Now, although I still cannot know that God is real, I somehow do know. Even though I cannot prove it to you or even make the bet for you, I can say this: for me, these seem to be the only two alternatives—to live a worry-filled life of frantic hiding from myself and of psychological repression of thoughts about death and meaning, or to face death and life and make this strange gamble of faith that turns me outward toward other people and makes me want to be a loving person. I can see no other way for me than following Christ.
“We all want to be certain, we all want proof, but the kind of proof that we tend to want—scientifically or philosophically demonstrable proof that would silence all doubts once and for all—would not in the long run, I think, answer the fearful depths of our need at all. For what we need to know, of course, is not just that God exists, not just that beyond the steely brightness of the stars there is a cosmic intelligence of some kind that keeps the whole show going, but that there is a God right here in the thick of our day-by-day lives who may not be writing messages about Himself in the stars but who in one way or another is trying to get messages through our blindness as we move around down here knee-deep in the fragrant muck and misery and marvel of the world. It is not objective proof of God’s existence that we want but, whether we use religious language for it or not, the experience of God’s presence. That is the miracle that we are really after. And that is also, I think, the miracle that we really get.” Frederick Buechner, The Magnificent Defeat
Lord, I do love You. And I am very grateful that this relationship with You has been so often one of hope and a sense of expansion into a larger and more interesting journey. But occasionally there are these times of dread and doubt which bring me to my knees in awe. I see again that faith is a gift of grace, and that all the figuring and reasoning in the world cannot transport me across the void between us and You. Thank You that in Christ You have provided the leap of faith, the fantastic wager of life. In Jesus’ name, amen.
“I sought the Lord, and he answered me, and delivered me from all my fears.” Psalm 34:4
by Keith Miller | Christian Living, Weekly Devotional
I have been disloyal to my wife and she found out. I’ve confessed, and have also confessed to God. I feel like God has forgiven me, and I’ve forgiven myself. But my spouse says “It’s not that easy—that something’s broken—that ‘being sorry’ won’t fix it.” She said she feels betrayed and that is (so far) not possible to get over. We both still love each other, but don’t know what to do to get really close again. Can you help us any?
Oh boy, this is a question that many people have asked—including me. From my counseling and my own experience, I have found that for some people (who are the “betrayers,”) it is difficult to grasp all of the domino-cascading consequences resulting from the betrayal. One of these consequences is related to the nature of trust. In fact, many people equate “forgiveness” with “trust.” But there is a difference between the grace that allows someone to forgive us, and the difficulty that person has with trusting the betrayer again. Personal betrayal is about as deep a wound as can be inflicted.
Recently I heard a sermon by Rick Shurtz, teaching pastor at Gateway Church, that helped me see this whole problem more clearly. Rick talked about the impact a personal betrayal had on him. One of his elementary school teachers was, he felt, the best teacher he had ever had—even through graduate school. The teacher was especially friendly toward Rick, and Rick especially remembers the period set aside each day during which each student read silently something of his or her choice. Rick noticed that the teacher did his own silent reading, and he always had his Bible open in front of him. This made a very strong positive impression on Rick.
Eventually this teacher moved to another city and became the Principal of another elementary school. One day, when Rick was around fourteen, his parents told him that they had just learned that this former teacher—the man who had befriended him, inspired him to learn, and who showed him that it was not shameful to be a Christian—had been arrested for child molestation.
Later that evening, as Rick watched the story reported on the local nightly news, he felt numb with shock. This teacher’s behavior felt like a personal betrayal to Rick—and it hurt and confused him in many ways. For example he couldn’t help wondering if, when he went to class the next day, the other students (who knew Rick was one of the teacher’s favorites) would think that Rick had been one of the students this teacher had molested, although he hadn’t been. He questioned everything that he learned from his teacher—particularly concerning his Christian witness.
In his sermon Rick pointed out that many people who have been betrayed (though not all) have found God’s grace and been able to forgive the person who betrayed them. And although grace, and forgiveness are a free gift, the trust of the people who had been betrayed had to be earned, and restoring trust might take a lot of time. After a betrayal, the person betrayed experiences many painful feelings, and must also grapple with the heart-breaking knowledge that the trusted one had the ability and the will to deceive her or him.
This statement said a lot to me about the struggle that a person who has been betrayed goes through, especially after deciding to continue in a relationship after a betrayal. It is difficult to regain that original freely given trust that had existed.
So it may be that what your wife says is “broken,”—that saying, “I’m sorry” won’t fix— is trust. Trust is one of the most essential ingredients of a close relationship. So if getting close again is what you and your spouse want to experience, perhaps your focusing on restoring trust between you can help you make progress.
So how do people restore trust when it has been broken? I don’t know. But for the one who has been the betrayer, as you have, I think practicing patience and learning to do what you can to behave in a trustworthy manner toward the one you have betrayed would be important.
For the one who has been betrayed, here is something I learned from Pat Mellody.[1]
“Relationships require trust. The problems come when we do not recognize that trust is not a decision, but the result of certain actions. Trust is the result of taking risks over time and not getting hurt.”
Somehow the one betrayed has the idea that he or she must be vigilant and smart to somehow avoid being betrayed again. But keeping up a constant vigilance to protect oneself from the pain of being betrayed can close the door on current and future intimacy. So making the decision to take some risks with the relationship is a step of courage that—if one doesn’t get hurt—can allow trust to grow.
While the original, unblemished, freely given trust you each had for the other may never return, I believe it is possible for a new kind of trust to grow, perhaps stronger because of what you have both learned in this painful but maturing process.
And for both parties, I would add—pray for yourselves and each other as you go through the coming months and years.
This sermon clarified for me why some people close to me (not my wife, Andrea) have difficulty being around me, even almost forty years after I had a moral failure and betrayed their trust. I have been forgiven (by God and by these people), and I have tried to conduct myself in a trustworthy way toward them. But the relationships with some of them are not close (at least not as close as I would like them to be). And the tenuous contacts I do have with them feel very delicate and touchy to me. I am very sad about that, but understand and accept it as one of the many consequences of my unwise choices almost forty years ago. I am grateful for the insight I got from Rick’s talking about how being betrayed impacted him. So I want to say “thank you” to any of you reading this for questions like this. Sometimes in trying to help you sort these issues out, God helps me to deal with them in my own life.
Dear Lord, thank you for your grace and forgiveness when we confess. Help me to hear and try to understand with patience the reactions of those whom I have hurt. Teach me what you would have me to learn from the painful reality of the pain I have caused in others.
And please help me to learn how to be trustworthy in all my relationships—particularly with you. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Are you hurting? Pray. … Believing-prayer will heal you, and Jesus will put you on your feet. And if you’ve sinned, you’ll be forgiven—healed inside and out.
Make this your common practice: Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you can live together whole and healed. The prayer of a person living right with God is something powerful to be reckoned with. (James 5:13, 15-17)
It is impossible to go through life without trust: That is to be imprisoned in the worst cell of all, oneself. Graham Greene, The Ministry of Fear
How do you learn to be trustworthy, when you can’t undo a betrayal or have hurt someone in other ways and they can’t trust you? We welcome your comments below.
[1] Mellody, Pia, with Andrea Wells Miller and J. Keith Miller, Facing Love Addiction. p. 157
