Whatever It Takes Putting God To the Test

What Kind Of Man?

[su_dropcap style=”flat” size=”5″]T[/su_dropcap]here’s a biblical phrase oft-quoted by advocates of prayer . . .

You have not because you ask not.

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When I first got sober, my sponsor said, “Greg, your self-esteem is so bad, you’re gonna have to jack yourself all the way up to LOW self-esteem just to get through the day.”

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And then there’s another saying, no doubt created by someone like me whose life was devastated by prayer. And that aphorism is . . .

Be careful what you wish for.

You see, some time ago, I started praying for God to make me into the kind of man that He wanted me to be. And what kind of man was that? I dunno. That’s one of the things that led me to kneel down at that moment and pray . . .

Who the hell am I? What am I supposed to be? A man? What kind of man?

Hating Myself In Public

All this started around my 40th birthday. I was three years into sobriety; long enough for my higher brain faculties to wonder what I was gonna do with the rest of my life, now that I was human again. I knew what I wanted. But I wasn’t sure what God wanted.

Like all drunks, I carried with me into sobriety the disorder that drove me to drink; which for me, amounted to hating myself in public. It’s one thing for a man to hate himself in private. It’s another thing altogether for him to carry that Pig-Pen cloud out of the house.

When I first got sober, my sponsor said, “Greg, your self-esteem is so bad, you’re gonna have to jack yourself all the way up to LOW self-esteem just to get through the day.” And thank God for low self-esteem! Because it meant that I finally had something worthwhile to give to the world. I was no longer a complete fuck-up. I was a partial fuck-up. And that meant being able to hold jobs and relationships with other partial fuck-ups for a few weeks at a time.

Vampires

And then I began to see that I didn’t have to be a fuck-up at all. Nor did I have to hangout with fuck-ups; though I was still attracting them and trying to help them.

By the way, I’m not talking about helping people who want to be helped. I’m talking about falling prey to vampires. Rescue projects. Wounded birds.

You know what those are, right? It’s when you date or befriend someone because, well . . . not only are they hot or cool, but they need you. And that gives you the illusion of power. It’s your fix; your payoff. It fills that dusty vacuum in your soul with a fragile sense of purpose.

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So when Donald Trump or one of his Evangelical supporters calls you a disgrace and declares that you should be ashamed of yourself . . . you can tell those judgmental bastards to go to hell; which is where they’re all gonna end up anyway.

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Judgmental Bastards

It wasn’t until I got rejected by a prostitute that I got down on my knees and asked God, “What kind of man falls in love with a prostitute? I can do better than that . . . can’t I?”

Hosea fell in love with Gomer, and wrote a book about it. Hosea who? Gomer Pyle? No. I’m talking about Hosea, the Old Testament prophet. Fell in love with a hooker named Gomer. I dunno . . . back then, Gomer was a girl’s name.

Anyway, I promise not to bore you with my own Operation Whore Rescue. Just that, if you’re getting rejected by hookers . . . it looks bad. To other guys.

Man, you got rejected by a hooker? How embarrassing!

Good thing I had no self-esteem. You see, when you got no self-esteem, shame has no power. Same thing when you got great self-esteem. It’s all the fuckers with lukewarm self-esteem that walk around with shame.

So when Donald Trump or one of his Evangelical supporters calls you a disgrace and declares that you should be ashamed of yourself, as long as you’re on either end of the self-esteem spectrum, you got nothing to worry about. You can tell those judgmental bastards to go to hell; which is where they’re all gonna end up anyway.

Enough About You

Anyway . . . back to me and my prayer life. “Dear God . . . whatever it takes . . . make me the kinda man . . . who attracts the kinda woman . . . who attracts the kinda man . . .”

Headshake!

Take Two!

Check out the actual Whatever-It-Takes Prayer that Myron the Street Poet came up with!