The Gift of Desperation
In 12-step meetings you hear the term “the gift of desperation.” When old strategies fail. When the self you’ve relied on—cleverness, charm, self-will, grit—finally collapses under its own weight. It feels like ruin, but it’s actually a clearing. A place where God can finally get a word in edgewise. When I dropped into child’s pose on my kitchen floor six years ago, something in me gave way. A door opened.
Desperation is a gift because it strips away illusion. It unhooks you from the fantasy that you can orchestrate your own rescue. It returns you to humility—not humiliation, but truthfulness. When everything else fails, surrender stops being a spiritual concept and becomes a bodily instinct.
The AA Third Step prayer is: God, I offer myself to Thee—to build with me and to do with me as Thou wilt. Relieve me of the bondage of self, that I may better do Thy will. Take away my difficulties, that victory over them may bear witness to those I would help of Thy Power, Thy Love, and Thy Way of Life. May I do Thy will always.
After a relapse, mania and years of depression, my prayer was: Fuuuuck. I cannot do this. My way is not working. I know not. Show me. Show me how to find you. Please God. Please.
The prayer worked. I became willing—really willing—and something came into focus that I now call God. It was as if I’d been handed a new pair of glasses: the shift was sudden, but what I glimpsed keeps unfolding, revealing more than I can ever fully grasp. In God’s mysterious ways, God has been revealing Godself to me ever since—along with the myriad ways I delude myself.
For a few moments though, God revealed a perfect symphony. A reality in which every footstep aligns with a universal rhythm. Every piece of trash that skittered across the street, every flutter of a bird’s wing, every pain, every joy was part of a beautiful chorus I could feel in my bones. The feeling didn’t last long, but a thread of it remained.
I did not ask God for the paranoia that followed—the belief that my life was being joked about on late-night talk shows, Saturday Night Live sketches, and Snoop Dogg’s Instagram posts. That was a bonus, all somehow part of the same bizarre symphony that can sound more like a repetitive Terry Riley composition than Bach at times. My mind didn’t know how to sort revelation from overwhelm; the door I’d flung open let in the holy and the hallucinatory together. Eventually, the hallucinations passed.
Along the way I found writers who circled that same luminous place—mystics. I saw their fingerprints everywhere—Rumi, Hildegard, Eckhart, Rilke, Merton, Thurman, Rohr… They made me feel less alone. In my daily life, I interacted with only a handful of people—my family, and the occasional friend. Their love and presence were real, but I couldn’t adequately share what I was experiencing with them. The glimpse of that luminous place left me with a deep, aching loneliness. It felt like living in Plato’s cave: I’d touched sunlight, but the people I loved were still staring at shadows. Could it be that I just thought I touched sunlight? Of course. More will be revealed.
Still, I wrote Table Manor because I wanted to share what I had glimpsed with others—to bear witness and participate in the flow of that light. I’ve learned over time that reflecting light takes practice; it doesn’t happen alone. I need other people. Community. It’s taken six years for that understanding to move from my head into my life. I think I will forever be learning what it means and how best to reflect it.
My Third Step prayer is: God, do with me what you will. Let my success and my difficulties reveal your hand. Let my heart be your mirror and help me recognize when my ego is clouding it. May I feel your love and love as you do—unconditionally and without bounds. Show me how to live it, however imperfectly, one breath at a time.
