[easyazon-image align=”none” asin=”1455527742″ locale=”us” height=”110″ src=”http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51QV5ViuVhL._SL110_.jpg” width=”73″]Page 2: Heather Kopp: Sober Mercies: A Memoir
Kate, however, asked about those times when Kopp admitted to lashing out physically at her husband. And what about all the money she secretly spent on her wine stash? She missed parts of her kids’ special events because she was in the bathroom drinking, and she drove drunk with her children in the car. Clearly, Kopp had plenty of amends to make. As she went about making them, she began to glimpse the transforming power of real grace—the kind that comes only after we admit that we can’t fix ourselves or anyone else, only after we own up to our mistakes and ask those we love to forgive us.
The most difficult lesson Kopp must learn as she lives within this new faith paradigm, fully aware of her faults and powerlessness, concerns her son Noah, who has a drinking problem too. Every fiber in Kopp’s maternal body wants to save him. But her own experience with drinking and recovery has taught her than she can’t.
“[I]t was clear to me,” Kopp writes, “that I couldn’t carry this ache. I couldn’t carry Noah.” She begins to pray “almost angrily,” begging God to help Noah stay sober. “And then things took an unexpected turn. I felt myself being led where no mother wants to go, deep into the worst-case scenario. In my imagination I was suddenly experiencing what I feared most—losing Noah.” This vision leads her to a new understanding and a new way of praying, in which she doesn’t ask for specific outcomes for Noah, but offers him up entirely to God.
God was asking me to hand Noah over. Give him up. Let go of him. Let him fall off the ledge. Not just for today, so God could keep him safe. Not just so that I could prove my faith or so that I could feel free from worry or doubt. But hand him over because I choose to trust God no matter what. No matter what is a dagger to a mother’s heart. It means your only hope is to surrender all hope.
From that day on, Kopp’s prayers changed from “the kind of prayer that piled up words and lists and techniques and rested on the assumption that I could decipher God’s will for people—or better yet, determine it by my suggestions. In its place, I tended more and more to something I don’t have a name for except perhaps prayers of surrender…focused on openness and acceptance of what is.”
When I was seeking a publisher for my own memoir, the editorial director at one publishing house reportedly said, “If it’s a memoir, I’m not interested. Unless she’s addicted to something. Is she addicted to something?” Alas, no, I was not. And I am guessing that Kopp’s addiction memoir might not be the kind of story this editor was looking for either, given its lack of high drama. There are no bloody accidents or tense emergency room scenes, no arrests or jail time, no back-alley exchanges or confrontations with twitchy visitors from a drug-saturated underworld. There is just a wife and mother, a writer and Christian, trying to make sense of how and why she risked all that she has for another drink, tallying the losses and gains of the painful process of coming clean. The normality of her life and the simplicity of her desires—to stay up talking with her husband rather than passing out, to take up writing again, to witness her son commit to his own recovery—will resonate with many readers. Even those of us who have never lived with addiction need frequent reminders that we are all too capable of hurting ourselves and those we love, and that our inner life doesn’t always match up with the outer one. Heather Kopp’s Sober Mercies reminds us that we all need to learn to cling to God’s love and grace as the only thing powerful enough to truly change us for the better.
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Ellen Painter Dollar is a writer focusing on faith, parenting, family, disability, and ethics. She is the author of No Easy Choice: A Story of Disability, Faith, and Parenthood in an Age of Advanced Reproduction (WJK, 2012). Find her online at ellenpainterdollar.com
C. Christopher Smith is the founding editor of The Englewood Review of Books. He is also author of a number of books, including most recently How the Body of Christ Talks: Recovering the Practice of Conversation in the Church (Brazos Press, 2019). Connect with him online at: C-Christopher-Smith.com
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Oh, well done. Jumped over from your blog and I’m so glad I did. Thank you for this fine, thoughtful review. I’ll order this book soon.
I wonder sometimes if it isn’t harder for those of us who are afraid of our closest friends not only judging our actions but also our salvation to be honest about our struggles.