Divinity in Drag
Finding God in the inopportune moments
As a recovering alcoholic and drug addict, there are a few elements within my working brain that I certainly cannot afford to navigate anymore. I no longer have the luxury of entertaining negative thoughts, resentments, or fleeting moments of gossipy behavior. I will drink or use drugs if I sit on any one of these for too long.
I used to work in the service industry as a waitress, and this job alone was quite enough to test the strength of the 12-step program I’d worked for the past 20 months. I made an honest mistake once and missed an early-morning shift because I read the schedule incorrectly. I was supposed to work a double that day so, when I arrived to work, unbeknownst to me that I had missed my initial shift, I walked in and greeted my coworkers with my usual smile and hello. The restaurant was full of weekend diners.
“Where have you been?” The shift manager quipped from across the restaurant, condescension dripping from her mocking tone.
The restaurant fell silent. Forks came to a halt and every eye in the room laser-pointed to me standing at the door. I froze.
“What do you mean?” I gasped, as my face fell, fully aware of all eyes on me.
The lady customer in the back booth broke eye contact with me, shifting her glance from me to her plate, trying to avoid the tension welling up in the grease-stained air.
“You were scheduled to work first shift,” the shift manager retorted.
I stood there stunned. Unconsciously, I reached for my phone to check the schedule, then slid it back into my apron.
“Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize,” my apology gushed forth. I felt terrible. It was an honest mistake and I immediately felt sympathy for my coworkers who had to pick up the slack for my no-show.
I apologized once again as I walked behind the counter, headed toward the back. And I truly meant every word of my apology. These days, I am always trying to do the right thing. This is a bit of trial and error for me because for so many years I have opted to do the exact opposite.
Passing through the doors into the back of the restaurant, I ran into my other manager. Again, I began to apologize profusely.
“I tried to call you but the call went straight to voicemail,” he said.
“I am sorry but we have to turn our phones in at night and we don’t get them back until 10 a.m. the next morning,” I said, explaining the rules of the sober-living facility that I live in. I apologized once more.
“It’s okay,” he replied.
The shift manager then came up to me and proceeded to show me a simple trick to check my hours on the schedule. Despite her previously harsh tone, I recognized that she was trying to be helpful.
I then turned around and apologized once more. This time, I asked her what I could do to help her finish.
Exasperated, she said, “Nothing. Everything is finished.”
I continued through my shift, feeling defeated and morose. I truly felt sorry for not showing up when I was supposed to and putting my coworkers at an inconvenience. I also felt guilty that perhaps I was engaging in addict behavior. Was I sliding backward or was this a simple oversight?
My shift ended and I drove home. I was still obsessing about the missed shift, only now, my thoughts had turned negative. I justified and rationalized my behavior throughout the night as I tossed and turned in bed. How dare she talk to me like that, my alcoholic thinking kicked in. Doesn’t she know who I am?
Then a sentence from the AA Big Book sprang to mind, “If we were to live, we had to be free of anger. The grouch and the brainstorm were not for us. They may be the luxury of normal men, but for alcoholics, these things were poison.”
“The grouch and the brainstorm were not for us,” flashed repeatedly inside my brain, highlighted with neon lights. I’d always been intrigued by this line, but until this moment, I couldn’t fully comprehend this sentence.
I got up from bed and did what I always do when I can’t sleep — I began to write it out. The more I wrote about the earlier scenario from work, the more pressure I released. Then I came upon the part where the shift manager showed me the simple trick to figuring out my schedule. It was then that I realized despite her anger with me not showing up, she was still trying to help me. She was no longer the cutthroat coworker I’d made her out to be in my delusional mind. Despite the gruff way she had appealed to my fragile ego, she was displaying kindness in the midst of it.
Ah, there was God. He was standing right in front of me, dressed in shift-manager drag. It was a revelation. Immediately I saw through my shift manager’s tough exterior, straight to her kind heart. She was willing to get vulnerable with me, and in that vulnerability, I saw the source of my creator.
My thoughts then leaped to another incident that had happened two nights before. The restaurant was slammed with customers seated at every table. The phone rang off the hook with more customers wanting to place to-go orders, but among the other tasks such as running food for diners, cashing out the register, washing dishes, and refilling drinks, it was impossible to grab the phone. I had just finished ringing up a customer when an older gentleman stormed up to the counter.
“I have tried to call three times to place an order and no one has answered the phone! Y’all aren’t busy!”
I froze in my tracks for a split second and then immediately began to apologize, all the while making a mental note of the filled-to-capacity restaurant. My humanness wanted to react in a brash way, full of egoic attitude. However, the spiritual principles of my 12-step program took over instead.
“Sir, I am sorry for your frustration. Let me get your order and we’ll get your food right out to you,” I said.
He gave me his order, our dialogue interspersed with his random comments of, “I can’t believe you didn’t answer the phone.
“Y’all aren’t even busy,” once again, and, “I just can’t believe you didn’t answer the phone!”
I could feel myself boiling on the inside. I wanted to retort. Instead, I kept my cool and called out his order.
He went outside to wait on his order and pulled out his phone to make a call. Surely, to make a complaint on all of us, I mused. At this point, there was nothing I could do. I had controlled my emotions, apologized, and tried to remedy the situation as much as possible. I truly felt sorry for him and the reality that he lived in. His outburst had nothing to do with me.
While working through the 12-step program, I have learned that people’s reactions to me are out of my realm of control. The way that someone treats me is a reflection of the way they treat themselves. The way that I treat others is a reflection of the way that I feel about myself.
When I first began this sober journey, I hated everyone and everything and was quick to judge others or blame others for the way my life had turned out. Then one day it dawned on me: everyone and everything is a reflection of my reality.
I was a very negative person and I viewed everything through this negative scope. I have worked very hard over the past 20 months to change my way of thinking because, I, as a recovering alcoholic and drug addict, cannot afford such thoughts — these thoughts will send me back to the bottle.
My coworkers and I quickly prepared the irate customer’s food and sent him on his way. In the space where one can choose to leave a tip on the credit card receipt, he stroked a line so definite it tore the paper. His anger was evident. That pen stroke dashed across my little ego.
I wished him a good night as he stormed out of the restaurant in the same manner he’d entered.
I could have spent the rest of the night in the “dark recess of self-pity,” blaming myself for what had occurred. I also could have ruminated on resentment for this gentleman, entertaining a spiraling conversation inside my mind by thinking of all the snarky things I could have replied to in our exchange.
Instead, I resorted to compassion for this man. However angry this man had become, in him still resided a spark of divinity within his soul. This man, after all, was a creation of his creator, appearing as multifaceted as each of our creators are. He was still a spiritual being and he was having a human experience of frustration. Even at this moment, I could see the God of my understanding working through him.
In closing, I will say this: We are so quick to think of “God” as an entity that doesn’t experience sadness or anger. We see “Him” as a source of only light and love. But God is just as multifaceted as we are. It is through His creation that he experiences humanness, and it is through our Creator, that we experience divinity.
