Rehab

They tried to make me go to rehab, I said, “No, no, no”.

-Amy Winehouse

My songwriter friend Chad is taking a sabbatical next month. He says he hates music so he needs some time away from it to recapture the love of his art. (I hate exercise so I’ve been on sabbatical from it for about a year now) Every time Chad and I get together recently we end up talking about his impending hiatus and our song goes unfinished. Chad’s a thinker-talker-sharer. He’s good at opening up his insides, which is what probably makes him a good songwriter and a good hang. Chad’s worried about wasting away his sabbatical watching Sportscenter so yesterday we made a long list of things he could do to stay focused and renew his mind. The items included walking, riding bike, taking cooking lessons, taking Communion, reading, working a soup kitchen, horseback riding, and planting a garden. All of it, we agreed, would keep him busy and help him get in touch with the ancient paths spoken on in Jeremiah 6:16. That verse goes on to promise that if we walk that ancient road we will find rest of our souls. But we have to walk, sometimes a long way.

Resting is not a vacation. Like the weekend Jennifer and I spent at the Ritz-Carlton several years ago. Somebody gave us a coupon for a room there so we flew to Florida and pretended to be rich people for a couple of days. We read by the pool under an umbrella and ordered ice waters and stole the plastic cups to take home. That’s fun but it’s usually not what spiritual rest looks like. Many times it’s more like rehab and rehab is hard, and if you’re in it to succeed, it can take a long time and you don’t get out until you are ready to go back into society. Sometimes God sends us into this wilderness rehab against our will, like the Israelites and their forty years in the desert, and sometimes we chose it ourselves like Jesus’ forty day wilderness fast following his baptism. Either way the outcome is good, like God is good.

April will likely be a long, hard, beautiful, restful, sorrowful month for Chad. God will be intertwined in both the joy and sorrow and Chad will feel peace (oneness) with Him in all of it. God will probably heal Chad’s hatred for music in a completely different way than we expected and Chad will surely write hit singles about it. Then we’ll get together in May and he’ll buy me lunch and tell me all about it over crab cakes and diet coke and hopefully we’ll finish our song.