Sunday Serenity: Three Powerful Words Pt 2

Happy Sunday, Cadre family. I am Jason Lennox. I'm here with you on this Easter. Happy Easter to those of you who are celebrating, to all forms of recovery. So I am grateful to be here with you on this Sunday. I'm actually on my way home from the family, so kind of pulled off in the parking lot here, but always glad to be here. I. You know, last week, I talked about three powerful words. Three of the most powerful words I've ever used and that I hear and that I think any of us can use. And those were.

I don't know. So, to recap that, I had. I had been in a really tough place in my life at 21 years old, and my cousin had asked me, jase, why do you do what you do? Why are you going down this path? You've seen all the family history, you see, but it was the best place I could be in terms of my recovery, because I stopped pretending like I had the answer. So I pointed to this week, saying there would be three more powerful words that I really wanted to talk about, and I want to tell you a little bit of a story.

So, 21 years old, people are asking me why I'm doing what I'm doing. For the first time, I'm willing to admit, I don't know. I don't know what's wrong with me. There's something, though, that's happening that I don't have any control over, and I really struggled with that, but that didn't mean I found recovery. And so for the next three years, I spent life really trying to. What I like to say is maximize the fun, which there wasn't a lot of, and minimize the pain, which there was a lot of. And so it took every combination of the right chemicals, substances, alcohol, people, environment.

All those things had to align for me to feel even a little bit better, even to feel a little bit okay. So, for three years, I went on most days wishing that I wouldn't wake up. And after a near fatal overdose and another trip to a hospital and being on the run with felony warrants for the better part of a year, I found myself in jail again. And I didn't think I was going to be leaving for quite some time. And I remember the pain I was going through and everything that I felt there. And I had actually made a call because my family had done an intervention a year and a half prior to this jail stay.

This is one of many, but this is the last one. And it didn't work out. Then the intervention didn't work. It was just not a good situation for any of us. But the reality was, a year and a half later, knew it was time, and I didn't really think there was a different way of living for me. I'll say the reason that I made the call for this interventionist to come back into my life again was because I just wanted less pain than I was feeling there. So I make the call. They arrange. They get me assessed.

They arrange for me to get to treatment, which was something that I'd never done before. I didn't know what to think. I could see that they were in pain, and it was something that was not good. So they told me my grandma had passed away. And this is the grandma who had staged the intervention at her place. She's a woman who took care of me as a young child. She was really like the angel and kind of the reprieve from life, if you will. And when I left the intervention, I said a lot of things to her that I would not repeat here or to anyone ever again, hopefully.

And that was the last time I ever got to see her. I never got to go back and apologize. I never got to make that situation right. So I tell you all of that to tell you that when they told me this, I was crushed. And I end up back down in the treatment center after they leave. And I'm thinking about, how the heck am I going to stay in this place? And I can't understand how I'm not going to feel this pain, this remorse, this guilt, this shame. So all of that to tell you that the three powerful words reference here tonight, or I need help.

And those three words, when I landed in a chapel and I wasn't religious and, you know, I didn't know what I was doing, but I got down and I was kneeling, and I was saying, I don't know how this works. I don't know what this is. All I know is, I need help. I said those three words, and I just remember having this feeling come over me. It was something spiritual happening to me. And I felt a little bit better, even in that moment where I knew that I had really lost any opportunity to ever make right the situation with my grandma, who was one of the most important people to me.

So I knew I needed help, and I felt a little bit of relief from that, ironically, and I wasn't expecting that. I was literally crying out for help. I felt some relief. And so I did that again the next morning, and I did it the next night, and I just continued to learn how to ask for help. And share those three words. And I don't always do it the best, and none of us do, because it's in our nature to want to feel like we can do all the things, especially in today's busy, fast paced world. We all want to be able to, you know, do it all right all the time, and we don't want to ask for that help because there's ego and all those things involved, and I understand that, and that plagues me just as well.

The second component is we often don't feel like we want to burden people. So I don't want to say that I need help. In that instance, it was just me. I was talking to the spirit, to whatever it might be. But, you know, when we're talking about other people and really thinking about how others can help us and how we might need to leverage other people in our lives for help, because I'm gonna tell you a little secret. That's what saved me was the people around me. So I needed help then. And when I was leaving treatment, I needed help.

I didn't have a place to go. I asked a recovery sponsor, and I ended up in their basement. Best thing that ever happened to me, saying those three words when my grandma had passed away. Now, I dedicated my life. My memoir that I released a year and a half ago was dedicated to her. And so I've been able to honor her throughout this life because of that. So these three words are powerful. They're so powerful, and they open up the door for us to really be relieved of those things. We don't have to carry these things all the time.

I still need help today. All the time. I need help. I need to talk to people. I need to leverage my relationships, and it's something that we don't hear often. We feel like we can't speak those words. And again, partly because there's something in us that just wants to feel like we got it all under control, and then there's part of us that we don't want to burden other people. I'm going to tell you one little thing before I finish up. I was talking to people early on, and I brought that up. Well, I understand that you're willing, but I just don't want to burden people.

Everybody has their own stuff, and I don't want to add to someone else's plate when they've got enough going on. And I remember somebody called me out and said, you know, how much have you experienced what it's like to help somebody? And, you know, at that point, I did a lot of charity work, volunteering. I've done a lot of that stuff over my time, and it's been some of the most magnificent work and the most fulfilling times in my life to be able to do that, to offer help, to be there, to support people.

I'm constantly trying to do that in my life, daily, personally, professionally. And so somebody turned that around and said, so you understand what that's like, yet you don't want to ask for help because you think it burdens someone. So not only are you thinking that it burdens someone and you're not going to speak up, you're actually robbing someone of an opportunity to experience everything that you feel, think and go through when you're out there helping others. So it was really an interesting take that I challenge everybody here to think about, and that's that I need help doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad thing.

It's an authentic, genuine way of being, and it frees us of a lot of things. Like we carry this around like somehow we have it all together. And then secondly, boy, when we're not sharing that, we're not allowing people in our lives, and we're not letting them in to who we are, to what we need, we're robbing them of a great opportunity to give the gift of offering a hand and helping us. So I think I need help. I know that today I need help often, and I'm not afraid to admit that. And I share that here, hoping that as someone who's been in this thing and been in this recovery space for 13 years and done pretty well in a lot of different ways, hopefully when you hear me say that I still need help, I need help on a daily basis with a lot of things in my life that opens the door for you, because that's where relationships happen.

When I can say I need help and I start that connection with somebody else, I know that I get so much joy out of, you know, offering and being that person that can help. So it's my job to make sure that others hear that from me so that, you know, that that really is okay. No matter how far along and where you are in this journey, I need help is an okay thing to say. So once you take that into the week and think about, you know, throughout this week, where you might be able to just step up and say, hey, I need help with this.

This is something I need help with. Even if it's just a text message to someone, I'm having these thoughts. I just need help. What do you. What do you got? What kind of advice can you give me? If it's at work, it's in the office. Hey, I need help because. I don't know. Combine those two beautiful phrases that I've been talking about so much. I just don't know. Can you help me? Be amazed at how freeing that is and how much weight that takes off and then the opportunity you grant other people to really step in and be of service to you.

So hope you've all had wonderful weekends. I hope your weeks are blessed and look forward to being back here again with you next week. Again. Don't be afraid to say it. I'm not. I don't know. I don't know at all. And the things I don't know, even the things I do know, I need help with that. And I hope to be in relationships with you and leverage you and vice versa. So take that in. Take it for what it's worth. Enjoy the week and we'll see you all one week from now for Sunday service.