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now, at least), who I often thought wasn’t equipped to be in this world. Little did I know that I was fighting the same deficiencies in my own life. The only difference was that I could mimic what I saw in others really well and, chameleonlike, I used this ability to mask my inadequacies. Eventually, it took increased usage of substances to engage any inner strength, this time to pick up my bed after a second divorce—and second set of children—and move forward in life.
    Although I had been raised in a religious home and attended church frequently, I was never taught to rely upon the Divine Spirit or God that lived and dwelled within me, and to ask it to guide my way. Instead, I relied on that liquid courage to see me through the death of my father, whom I dearly loved, and help me hold on to my anger toward him for abandoning me. I harbored feelings of deep sadness, rage and lethargy, only to juxtapose them with hostility toward my mother. I’d ask, “Why hadn’t she died instead of my beloved Daddy?” It would be years before I made amends to her and myself for thinking about my mother in that way. It took moving out of the country by way of military duty to journey back to self-forgiveness.
    Liquid courage became my parent and I obeyed it for many years—through the last two years of senior high school, through college graduation and graduate school, into the military and into my profession as a hospital administrator. However, through the fog of the late 1960s and entire 1970s, I caught glimpses of my call to service as a religious-science spiritual therapist. I would eventually accept that call to my ministry. In the interim, I embarked on my journey to recovery.
    Upon entering these programs, I detested having people tell me what to do, and my feelings were often hurt when I was told that I was unable to function properly due to my spiritual, emotional and physical debility from intoxicants. I took it to mean that they did not approve of me or my behaviors, or perhaps that they were jealous because I’d traveled around the world, was earning a high salary, and outwardly appeared to be doing quite well in life. Paranoia set in, as I reasoned that people were conspiring against me. With time and growing willingness, I began listening to people who talked of knowing where I came from and the feelings that accompanied that state. I slowly began to recognize a sense of well-being through prayer. Was that a speck of light beginning to pierce through my dark journey?
    Still unable to find any inner faith, a spiritual guide taught me how to sit and contemplate what God is to me, at least as much as I could understand about this new exercise called meditation. And what emerged was my vision of God as my very best friend, with no restrictions in that friendship. With continued seeking, through transcendental meditation and other practices that found me baptized, dunked, splashed, having hands laid upon me, and God knows what else, my course led me to recognize Infinite Spirit within. Today, there is a peaceful, spiritual satisfaction that resides in me, and with every step I bounce with the joy of knowing “I got over” to this side of belief. I’m now able to call upon it when darkness seeks me out from time to time. It delicately urges me to communicate with Divine Spirit and gratefully surrender to deeper clarity in my life. I practice being completely open to Divine Spirit by giving up that little egotistical part of myself that wants to hold on to patterns of negative thoughts and deeds. By retreating into meditation, I begin the process of complete abandonment to God’s will, releasing my excessive imagination and selfish yearnings, and clearing the page of my mind for right and proper visioning.
    While the universe conspires to give me just what I seek, from time to time inability overtakes me, sneaking in through a family trauma, hurtful words, through my adult