“The Grind”

I played a lot of golf in Door County this past week. And honestly? My game was just a bit off. Not terrible. But off. The swing wasn't quite right. The ball striking was a hair away from where I wanted it. Putts were lipping out time and time again, the kind that make you want to use some colorful words that would make your mother blush. Every tee shot seemed to find the rough by a few inches. Just enough to make every hole harder than it needed to be.

And yet, I still managed to grind out a somewhat decent and honest score.

If you've played golf, you know these rounds. The ones where nothing is clicking, but you refuse to quit. You just keep grinding. You make the smart play. You take your medicine. You stay patient even when patient is the last thing you want to be. And somehow, at the end of the round, you sign a scorecard you can live with.

I bring this up because it really describes my experience off the course this week too.

Just a heads up. This is a vulnerable post for me. But I figure this is the space to write about these honest moments.

My wife Jessa, who is my best friend and greatest support and advocate, and I were part of a large group gathering for five days in our favorite place, Door County, Wisconsin. It should've been easy. And in a lot of ways, it was beautiful. But for me and my sobriety journey, it was a grind.

The majority of the group was drinking throughout the week. And truthfully, I haven't been around that amount of alcohol consumption for that long in over a year. Not since before I went to Hazelden.

There were a lot of thoughts and emotions bottled up inside of me throughout the week. I had to keep my head on a swivel at all times to make sure I didn't mistake an open beer, a seltzer, or a mixed vodka drink for my sparkling water or non-alcoholic beer. At every second of every day. Literally. There were open bottles of wine, liquor, and beer everywhere. Drinking hours were long. And I found a large sense of being overwhelmed but masked it with a smile, keeping busy, and repeatedly saying "everything's fine" when it clearly wasn't fine inside of me. I was basically a sparkling water sommelier with trust issues all week.

This was the greatest grind of living a life of sobriety and recovery.

My story and my sobriety journey weren't respected or honored at all. It landed more in the hazard of being disregarded and dismissed. Which hurt more deeply than I can explain here. And I want to be clear about something. I love the people I was with deeply. They mean the absolute world to me. Honestly more than they know. I should've said something, and that's on me. I own that.

But here's the scorecard.

I stayed sober. That's the most important thing. I still found beauty in the people I love. I played golf with the crew. I witnessed glimpses of joy in all of the kids' hilarious outbursts, even though it felt like I was standing in the middle of a 7 foot sand trap with no wedge in sight.

And I did the thing those of us in recovery are supposed to do when the round is falling apart. I went back to the fundamentals. I hit a meeting. I called a trusted friend. I called my sponsor. Even in the grind, especially in the grind, it's important to do the fundamentals so things don't go off the rails.

These are the experiences that I have to believe build resilience, strength, and hope for the road ahead. Even though it was a grind and really hard, I found myself able to learn something about myself along the way.

Some rounds aren't pretty. You're not going to birdie every hole. Sometimes you're just trying to make par with a bogey (let’s be honest, a double bogey) or two sprinkled in. But you keep walking. You keep swinging. You sign the card. And you show up for the next round.

That's the grind. And the grind counts.

Not perfect, but good.

One Story. One Swing. One Gathering at a Time.