Cash and Conscience

Walk the Line
(An unassuming commentary on the movie by a woman who hardly expected to be this moved by it)

Had a friend not suggested this movie to me and lent me his DVD, I would have missed this blessing. Walk the Line touched me profoundly. It’s a rarity for movies to have this effect on me and I reckon it has a lot to do with where you’re at in your life, like Fight Club did with me during my “rebellion years”.

Johnny Cash’s name was distantly familiar to me and since I’m not a country music fan (although Cash did dabble with various music genres), I would hardly have paid much attention to his music. Ironically, I frequently heard Nine Inch Nails'"Hurt" with no idea that he'd covered this song. It’s not as much his work that’s stirred me as his complex character and melancholic moods, his faith, his battle with addiction and his absolute adoration of someone he couldn’t have for many years.

In many ways, Cash reminds me of my biological father. Someone I never knew and,in retrospect, am glad I never met. An alcoholic, drug-addicted adulterer, my father strayed back and forth between God and the devil, much like Johnny Cash was described as having done. My father broke my mother’s heart and his death is still hardly discussed in my family. Apparently as a result of a heart attack, but there were definitely alcoholic and drug influences in that mix. He passed away the night before he was to be committed to a facility that dealt with mental instability issues, according to my mother.

That’s just one level where I relate to Cash and the people in his life. His addiction is another. I watched Joaquin Phoenix portray the emotional instability and frustration Cash experienced regarding June Carter, the woman he was smitten with from the moment he met her. I was drawn to him immediately because I’ve been there. I fell in love with a drug addict the moment I met him and spent almost a decade of my life fluctuating between varying conditions of a shattered heart, sheer frustration with his bad choices and my own drug addiction, with an overriding state of longing for him to commit to me. Years later I thank God he never did. I would have been divorced without a doubt. Friends tell me to this day I was nothing short of obsessed with him. The truth was I felt weak and alone and he felt like my rock. Now I look at him and wonder at the power of God that stopped me going completely off the rails with that man. People we know still describe us as having been inseparable back then. When he was drunk enough he called me his “picket fences” girl. I believed him.

Although June Carter was no drug addict, I get what Johnny felt. He couldn’t have her. She pushed him away. Then she drew him back. And had to reject him again. The man I was convinced I would marry and whose children I would bear did the same to me. His own pending issues poisoned his decisions and distanced his affections. He missed it. I lost it. And had to leave. June Carter was trying to be sensible, but Cash couldn’t deal with it, either. He resorted to his “painkillers”. So did I. Watching Phoenix sweat through withdrawal and the misery and panic associated with your anguish numbing substance suddenly being absent dredged up some dark memories for me.

Then there were Johnny’s black times. He seems to me the ultimate melancholic. The proverbial poster boy for the lingering dark night of the soul. He was described as being haunted. Mixed up. Anti-authority. Mostly typical of the creative soul. Functional and focused, yet disquieted and brooding. His musical outlet for his battle with rejection, frustrations, hurts, haunts, faith, maddening thoughts, conflicts and pain moved me as I reflected on my own erstwhile creative outpourings. Mostly graphic, sometimes in the form of disturbing tattoos and dark designs, which softened over the years as I did.

Lastly, his faith. Torn between the darkness and the delight. Publicly. As my previous article would indicate, I can absolutely empathize with Johnny on the continued conflict between flesh and faith. It had a radical influence on his music and his relationships and he battled the riots of his flesh while clutching at the steadfastness he had been familiar with since boyhood. Christ. Though not always apparent and seemingly disguised by his dark clothing and unstable conduct, his covenant with God couldn't be broken and is, without question, the reason he remained on this earth for the time he did, despite his attempts to embrace death before his time was up.

I watched with tears in my eyes as his sister described his reply to her question to him a week before his death. She asked him if he were walking along the shore of the Sea of Galilee and Jesus approached him, what did he think He would say to him? And Johnny answered immediately, eyes swelling with tears, “Oh, that’s easy, baby. He would say to me, “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” That's what He would say to me." (Matthew 11v28-30)
One of my favourite verses of God’s Word.

I love that generation of men who were called “men of God” even though they failed dismally, often, as we all do. They are dying out now, actually, those icons of faith born in the 30’s and 40’s. My stepfather seems to be one of the last who I can still speak to where integrity and conviction of faith, hope, honour and truth are still apparent in his voice when he talks to me and others about Jesus Christ. Like Billy Graham does. And David Wilkerson. I had no idea that Johnny Cash performed at some of Billy Graham’s gatherings. What an unexpectedly pleasant testimony as to where his heart was.

A profound man with surprising facets and influences whose life has touched my own in a remarkable and almost serendipitous fashion through this movie, I look forward to meeting Mr Cash someday.

Bad Choices and the People Who Forgive Them

God help you when you botch it…because a surprising amount of your friends won’t. I remember when my mother, a battling alcoholic, would phone me drunk sometimes and I’d cut her off and tell her to phone me back when she was sober. And then I’d put the phone down in her ear. I imagine that hurt her deeply, but I was determined not to tolerate her bad behavior and add to her delinquency by allegedly condoning it.

My ex, that heroin addict I mentioned last article, used to come home from three-day drug binges and clutch at me to help him through the repercussions of seventy-two hours of mainlining and drinking. I’d lie on the bed and read a book and shove him off my ankles and treat him like he wasn’t there.
When my friends would insist they were going to give up drinking, I’d be delighted with their decision. Being an ex-alcoholic who stayed sober for six years, I encouraged them heartily to pursue their choice and offered my support if they were struggling.
And when my friends messed up and made bad choices, I was disappointed with them. I couldn’t believe they’d let that happen. I’d be horrified at such pathetic decisions on their part.

But when I botched it myself recently, I guess I was hardly surprised at the anger that boiled up from a couple of my friends. Not that I’ve told that many people, but I’m amazed at how the fact that I slid off the proverbial wagon has made people who I could phone at 3am with a broken heart or toothache suddenly so angry at me. I got the bitter taste of what I have no right to give.

I have a friend who gets really angry whenever I’m ill. I don’t take it personally. It’s just his way of dealing with the fact that I’m sick. Maybe that’s it regarding my slide back into addiction. Worry about me manifesting itself as anger at me. I’d like to believe that.

My theory from experience in a ministry with addicts still stands…the people you want to talk to when you’re trying to scratch your way back up the slope to sobriety beyond the hideous withdrawal that keeps clawing at you to come back down? They are the ones who’ve been there. The ones who get it. The ones who don’t judge you. The people with the patience to talk you through it, make you laugh, tough love you, make you think about something else, whatever it takes. Those are the people you can still pick up the phone to. Granted, being one of those people myself, that tolerance count has its limits. But you can discern the people who mean business. The ones who’ll come right, who might mess up again in the future, but their hearts are in it. It’s a battle of the flesh and no one wins. Only with Jesus Christ can we overcome. He gets it. He knows we are fragile dust.

Who listened to me this time?
My “spiritual” dad, a man who has battled weakness with pornography. He gets it.
My “spiritual” mom, a woman who has overcome her own battles with drinking and smoking and people issues.
A good friend of mine who, the moment I fessed up, begged me to stop. And kept at me until I did.
And a childhood friend, one of my oldest friends in the world. A deeply analytical, sometimes suicidal melancholic just like me. We grew up together and watched each other struggle through the drug and alcohol years, which most times overlapped. He’s the guy who talked me through last night’s battle through withdrawal, using up his last airtime to do it. Because he’s been there. And with a few words of knowledge from his own experience, I felt better already. He even had me laughing my way out of the foetal position. No judgement. No sarcasm. No awkward silence.

The hard thing about people being angry with you times like these is that lead weight feeling you bear that you have no right to be angry back at them. Like a disobedient animal, you feel obligated to keep a low profile and give them the time they need to trust you again. And you have to trust them to take you back and remember you might do it again.

Otherwise, I can only surmise that every time I slip up, I’m going to have less and less friends. I’ve got some work cut out for me there in that case. Because it’s not the first time I lost it. And as sure as God brings addicts out of the pit, it won’t be the last time I probably try and crawl back into it.

A Courtin'

Have I missed something here? I know things have changed. I was brought up with the good old verse that said that if you trained a child in the right way, he would come back to it. I wandered off that track, sure. I ventured into the forbidden fruit zone. I moved in with a heroin addict not even a month after I met him. And I thought I loved him unconditionally for eight years, even through rehab. Repetitively. Despite the sex, drugs and clichéd rock ‘n roll, I did come back. It took me twelve long years. All twelve of which I know my parents prayed fervently for the return of their prodigal daughter.
And one of the things I returned to? Being treated like a princess. Because the King (that’s Jesus Christ I’m talking about) is enthralled with my beauty. No matter what plumb line the modeling agencies and tabloids set for me, no matter whether I should break the 70kg plateau or not, wear red on my lips or dye my hair black, adopt the Goth or au natural façade, it’s just me. I guess, in my late 30’s, I couldn’t really care less.
But something confuses me. That blurred line between boys and girls called friendship these days. See…here’s what I was brought up to believe. If a man took you out to a movie, just the two of you, he was keen on you. If he invited you to coffee or dinner, he was a little of what you’d call in the ol’ days “sweet on you”. And none of that happened the way it does now. A man met your father before he took you out. There was no pressure to “put out” if he paid for dinner. There was no question of who was paying for the meal.
I fell for it recently. I blurred the lines. I liked someone and he took me out to movies and dinner and coffee and somewhere along those fuzzy boundaries (some of which, admittedly, I fuzzed), I thought I might have been his princess.
But I was wrong. Turns out he had lots of princesses already. Some of whose tiaras he’d already taken.
Thank God the King warned me. Before I gave up my crown to someone who could never have seen the sparkle on it the way a Godly man would have.