Sam was drinking again. Heavily. My stomach churned as I texted with him.

Me:   Where are you?
Sam: In a motel.
Me:   Which motel?
Sam: Who cares?
Me:   I care, Sam. Where are you?

Silence.

Me:   Sam?
Sam: I’m so ashamed.
Me:   You’ll be okay. Where are you?
Sam: Look, man, I got to do this.
Me:   Do what?
Sam: Let the whiskey take me.

Chills ran down my spine. I understood his meaning. He wanted to die.

Me:   Sam, God is good and so are you.

Silence.

I didn’t hear from Sam for several days. I prayed for him, looked for him, but couldn’t find him. Maybe he didn’t want to be found. Maybe he’d accomplished his plan.  

Then one day, I got a text from him. “Will you take me to the detox center? God is good and so are you. God is good and so am I.”

My heart leaped. Sam was alive! And he had claimed the Truth about himself and God. He was on the path of recovery.  

This time he made it. He reached out. He broke free from the false belief he was bad.

So many of us walk around with that negative view of ourselves. It comes in different shapes and sizes. It packages itself in various words and phrases. But it has the same theme: I am bad. I am broken. There’s something wrong with me that needs fixing.

But it’s not true. It’s a lie.

Like Sam discovered, God made us all in his Divine Image. We are Divine Love made real.

God dwells in us as us.

We just need to discover that truth. We need to dig deep within our souls to let go of all the falsehoods we’ve told ourselves to find at the core of our Being who we are.

Maybe our stories aren’t as dramatic as Sam’s. Maybe we’ve never holed up in a flea-infested motel trying to drink ourselves to death. But, I—like so many others—have told myself repeatedly the same lies that dragged Sam into that prison of despair: “I’m bad. I’m not good enough.”

But it’s not true.

This is the Truth:

God is good and so am I. God is good and so are you.



—brian j plachta
brianplachta.net