Chapter 13 The Hall of Famer

 

In the Bible, Jesus tells a parable about a young man who asked for his inheritance from his father. His father obliged, and the young man traveled far off and partied with it. He engaged in all types of sinful behavior and found himself broke, working and living in a pig pen. He looked around and saw the pigs eating better than he was. He knew he could save his life if he went home and became his dad’s servant, knowing he lost the right to ever be called his son again.

He decided to go home—broke, poor, barefoot, stinking. He planned to apologize to his father and beg for a position as one of his slaves, knowing full well that his actions wrecked his place in his father’s family forever.

When he finally saw the city where his dad’s home resided, we can all imagine the shame running through his head. He already knew what he would say:

"Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Treat me as one of your hired servants."

He probably rehearsed it a hundred times as he walked toward the gates. But what he saw was his father running to him. Running.

Before the young man could finish his speech, his father grabbed him, kissed his soiled face, and hugged him, undeterred by the filth. He saw his bare feet—a sign of his financial ruin—and placed sandals on them. He took off his signet ring, the key that accessed all of his wealth, and placed it on the young man’s finger. Then he demanded his servants throw a party so resplendent that they would use the very best the father owned, including the fatted prize calf.

The father said to his entire household:

*"Let’s eat and celebrate! My son was dead and is alive again. He was lost and now is found."*

The young man went home to repent, and his father gave him restoration.

He went home for a clean shirt and his father gave him his best robe.

He came home seeking survival and his father adorned him in riches by placing sandals on his feet.

He came home to get bread and his father threw him a feast.

He came home broken, ready to become a slave. His father gave him his ring, returning the inheritance he foolishly wasted away

The father did not need to reinstate him. Regardless of what the young man did, he never quit being his father’s son.

“We believe, and so suggested a few years ago, that the action of alcohol on these chronic alcoholics is a manifestation of an allergy; that the phenomenon of craving is limited to this class and never occurs in the average temperate drinker.” (*Alcoholics Anonymous*, p. xxviii)

I will never call myself an alcoholic again. As this book attests, the things I can say “I am” go far beyond this declaration. I am a father. A child of God. A son. A writer. Broken beyond repair. A warrior. A prodigal. A Reignmaker. The apple of God’s eye. A cleansed leper. A man after God’s own heart. Unless I can say all of those things and much more, I will refrain from confessing this one thing as the embodiment of who I am.

Even though my two-year anniversary of sobriety approaches and I believe in my healing from alcoholism, I will never deny my physiological allergy to drinking. I loved it. It was my friend. I could never get sick of it. I love prime rib and Diet Coke and a hot shower and Stephen A on when he appears on Fox News. But those things can grow banal at some point. Not vodka and lemon juice. Before I learned I could get abdominal muscles in my forties, it was rum and Coke. And in my twenties, whatever drink, whomever was serving.

Not all people who drink are alcoholics. But alcoholism is not a matter of willpower. People who drink, who aren’t alcoholics, can get sick of drinking. People who possess this allergy possess a craving that can never be fulfilled. Even during seasons of my own sobriety, it took willpower not to drink.

We all deal with emotional pain in some way. Some use Tinder. Some use the Wendy’s dollar value menu. Some abuse their employees. Some vicariously live through the Kardashians. Some use work. Some use Sunday school. Some spend hours on Facebook. Some use anger. Some use racism. Some use self-righteousness. Some use Mountain Dew. We don’t really choose our forms of sanative. I wish drinking water did what alcohol deceptively did for me.

For all the variety of reasons I drank, medicating emotional pain became the roller coaster that would carry me on a descent to purgatory. But I could not tell the difference because I medicated to assuage the torture of the flames already flaring around me.

And so, this pattern played out since something traumatic happened to me after college, thirty years ago. Seasons of sobriety. Failure. Pain. A season of binge drinking. Restoration. A season of sobriety again. Failure. Pain. Binge Drinking again. Rinse and repeat.

In 2020, I was in a three-year season of sobriety—writing books, preaching, getting promoted at my job, guiding my youngest son along his burgeoning basketball career. I worked on a book for two years called Broken Hallelujahs. It was my masterpiece—a theological exegesis that explained every question about why God chose Jesus to die the way He did.

The theology in the book was unheard of anywhere. I thought God had directed everything in my life toward the creation of this book, and that its publishing would catapult me to the next stage of my destiny.

On October 25th, an hour before I received the finished copy from the publisher, the worst event of my life happened. One day I might share the event, but it doesn’t make a difference for this story. We all have our own personal apocalypses. It is a human birthright. This one shattered me.

While going through recovery, repressed emotions began surging within me beyond my control. I began talking to a psychologist, fearing such turmoil could lead me back to drinking. When telling the doctor my event, she said that in all her years in this profession, she had never heard anything like it. She said that for the past thirty years, I lived with post-traumatic stress disorder, which would explain my perpetual baseline of needing to medicate. But what happened on October 25th turned my PTSD into Complex PTSD. There is no therapeutic cure.

She used a computer program to calculate the odds of my event, and she said it was like winning the lottery, in the middle of a tornado, while being struck by lightning.

I didn’t know all of that then but I did know a nuclear bomb exploded inside of me on October 25th. When it started, I took a personal day from work, drove to the store, and for the first time in three years, bought a liter of vodka—and never stopped drinking.

When I speak at recovery meetings, I try to explain how I existed for the next three years. I tried to use the song “Rotten Apple” by Alice in Chains. The song tells the story of eating a metaphorical apple that was supposed to satiate pain. However, the apple began to replace the original pain and become the source of the pain it was meant to heal.

But ironically, eating the apple would temporarily ease the pain that eating the apple was now creating. So, the singer would eat the apple to escape the pain that eating the apple created—thereby creating more pain that only the rotten apple could satiate.

The singer knows the apple is rotting before him. He can see its moldy brown flesh, the swarming flies and worms crawling across it, and feel the rotten stench suffocating his lungs. But he still picks it up and eats it. The end of the song is a resignation to his death. An unintentional suicide.

That was a little bit too deep for some people. So, I began to say I was Wile E. Coyote in the Road Runner cartoons—running as fast as I possibly could from the mushroom cloud chasing me until I ran off a cliff.

Shocked, I levitated in the air for a second—then fell precipitously, hundreds of feet, until I hit the earth. When I woke up, on December 11th, 2023; a doctor stood over me, telling me that I had contracted end-stage liver disease—and that my probability of living past three months was less than thirty-five percent.

They also diagnosed me with encephalopathy, jaundice, colitis, depression, ascites, edema, insomnia, and chronic alcoholism. As I began to become aware of my surroundings, I saw the consternated looks of my youngest son, his mother, and my brother. I could not fully comprehend the news I heard, but they endured hours of waiting for me outside the ICU, with doctors fighting to keep me alive, and then in my hospital room, waiting for me to wake up.

I almost immediately talked to my mom on the phone. They told her to wait before she came down until I regained consciousness. But almost two weeks passed before I talked to my dad. Even though he called every day, I did not want to talk to him.

Just a week before, my mom came to visit me, her motherly intuition warning her that something was wrong with her son. When asked about my well being, I lied to her, telling her I was fine. She asked me to call my dad for help. I told her I would rather die.

One of the greatest moments of my life happened when my college inducted me into their hall of fame for sports. They told me they needed someone to introduce me. There was no question who I would ask. My dad gave an arousing speech about me, about what I overcame to get there, about the lessons he tried to teach and amplify. He said that even though he loved my accomplishments as an athlete, what made him proudest was who I became as a man. His speech was so stunning, he almost got a standing ovation from the hundreds of participants in the room.

Shocked, as I went up to give my acceptance speech, the first words out of my mouth were, "How can I possibly follow that?"

I wanted to give him this honor. This unique gift. It was the only way I could reward him for all the years he loved me—for the battles between us, where, afterwards, we still found a way back to each other. For the wars he fought for me. I wanted him to know they were not in vain. His son was able to accomplish something that most fathers could not say. His son made a hall of fame as one of the best ever.

And now, in that bed as they proclaimed death for me, I knew that in this competition of life, no matter the reason why, I lost. Everything I ever accomplished in my life fractured into little pieces when I woke up on December 11th. I was now a failure. My own shame weighed so heavily on me, I could not bear to hear the disappointment from the man whose judgment and opinion mattered most to me. I could not do it.

But my brother tricked me. One afternoon, he just walked in with his hands hidden from me and said, "Dad is on the phone. You want to talk to him?" And he held the phone to my face. Bracing myself for the stern, thunderous voice that had shaped my discipline my entire life, I took the phone and said, "Hey, Dad."

With his voice—always strong, but dripping with love and gentleness—he said,

"Hey, Hall of Famer. Don’t worry, we are going to beat this."

They told my dad my death was imminent. They asked him if he would take responsibility for financing my funeral. They told him that if he wanted to see me alive for the last time, he needed to travel to Florida immediately. Nothing of substance told him otherwise. Every time he received reports from family members, he only heard hopelessness. He could hear me dying in the way I answered his questions.

But instead of fear, he began praying. Instead of despair, he began prophesying. Instead of shaming, he began coaching me… one more time. He no longer referred to me as Alaric. Not once did I ever hear my name uttered from his lips at any point from then on. The only name he would refer to me as from now on was “Hall of Famer.”

 "Hey, Hall of Famer. How are you feeling today?"

 "How is my Hall of Famer doing?"

 "I heard you got up and walked around with a walker, Hall of Famer. I am proud of you."

 "Don’t worry about anything, Hall of Famer. Not your bills. Not your house. Not anything. Your Dad’s got you."

 "Hall of Famer, I am praying for you. I believe God is going to do a miracle."

 "I don’t think God is going to let you die, Hall of Famer. Your story isn’t over yet."

 "Keep fighting, Hall of Famer. I am proud of you."

He paid thousands of dollars to support me and my youngest son, my hero and caregiver during all of this, while I spent three months going in and out of hospitals. He celebrated every victory. He would measure each syllable when I spoke to judge whether I was getting stronger. He would challenge me on theological matters just to push me. He would tell stories of some of my great feats.

When I healed enough to walk on my own, I played “Hypnotize” by Biggie and asked my mom to record me. Feeble and skinny, I did my best crip walk. When Dad saw the video, he screamed in laughter and joy. “My Hall of Famer. My boy is coming back.”

If that wasn’t enough—he stopped drinking for me. Even though he never struggled with alcohol addiction, for me, he gave it. Every sobriety chip I received, I got one for my dad as well. I put my one-year chip in a frame for him.

It really made me feel his presence with me. In every struggle. In every hardship. In every shameful event. I felt him with me. I heard the same voice when he introduced himself as my dad at the age of five. I saw those same fiery eyes staring at all those who tried to get me to quit and die. The same Allen scowl he used for all of those who came after his sons.

I felt the same precision he used to perfect my jump shot or my swim move when going after the quarterback. I would see the same dance—the fish dance—when I would report to him each time God healed me. I would call him with each miracle.

When God healed me of colitis, he acted like he did when I dunked on Anfernee Hardaway. He would agalliao. (What Jesus did in Luke 10:21. Become deliriously happy in the way one leaps for joy).

When I told him God healed me from colitis, he would agalliao.

When I threw away the Prozac and OxyContin because God healed me from depression, he would agalliao .

When I told him the optometrist gave me an eye exam and could not tell that that jaundice once stained my eyes, he would agalliao.

When I told him that after going weekly to the hospital to get ten liters of unprocessed food drained from my stomach for months, my last visit showed they could not find any liquid to drain at all—and that I would never need to go back—he would agalliao.

When I would cook and send him a video of me eating, after losing sixty pounds because even crackers would sicken me, he would agalliao.

But the best happened when I told him that the gastroenterologist confirmed from the X-ray that my liver had regenerated itself and that I would no longer need a transplant. I was no longer a cirrhosis patient and my life expectancy returned to normal. My Dad turned into David, Elijah, and Deion Sanders all at once.

"Ahhhhhhhhh!!!! Won’t God do it? Won’t God do it? I knew it. I knew it. God put too much in you to let you go. You have too much to do. I knew God would heal you. Ahhhhhhhhh!!! This is a blessing. God did this for a reason. My boy is back. Praise God. I prayed a thousand time, every day.. I knew He would come through. Ahhhhhhhh!! My boy is back. My Hall of Famer. Ahhhhhhhhh!!!!!!"

The most astounding element of my recovery, however, did not come from the physical manifestations of God’s power, grace, and love. It came from the emotional healing to conquer alcoholism. The first healing began with my dad.

When my dad hugged me after we beat Anfernee Hardaway—unbeknownst to him and me—it rewired my brain. That single moment, wrapped in pride and victory, carved a blueprint into my soul. Even without meaning to, he taught me that love and approval required the impossible. To earn my father’s pride, I needed to shatter limits.

So, everything I chased had to rival that game. I couldn’t just make a hundred thousand dollars—I needed a million. I couldn’t just give a good speech—it had to shake generations like the Gettysburg Address or “I Have a Dream.” I couldn’t date just anyone—they had to possess movie-star looks, the kind that made jaws drop in every room. I couldn’t just raise kids—I needed to raise world changers. I couldn’t just know God—I needed to call fire down from heaven and part open seas.

And to fail this standard felt like death. The anguish of failure, already difficult for any man, metastasized in such a way that it suffocated my identity.

Drinking numbed that pain.

Going through the steps, I found other reasons why I drank that caused me pain. Racism. The hypocrisy of American Christendom. Boredom. The stress of family. To never drink again, I needed to solve all of these issues. But first, God needed to solve the issue of the fallacy I created about how my dad felt about me.

And God healed me. He healed me of this stronghold in that deathbed—unable to move, steeped in failure, wishing to kill myself before I heard my dad’s voice. He healed it when my dad whispered in all of God’s glory:

Hey, Hall of Famer. We are going to beat this.

I became the real-life prodigal son, and my dad, prophetically, became the father kissing his son in his shame, wrapping his cloak around him and throwing him a feast. Now, I take the glory of what my dad trained and nurtured me to do and dismiss everything else. I do not pursue achievement to gain his love. I pursue it because I already possess it, and that love overwhelms me so much that all I want to do is live up to what my dad knows I can become

For example, what other son thanks his dad for his love by writing an entire book about their relationship?

But as amazing as my dad was at being my father, his role as prophet shines the brightest of all. This was not just his story with me It was God’s story with me. For God is a Father. And as much as my dad loves me, God loves me infinitely more. God, my Heavenly Father, gave me my own Psalm 103.

He forgave every sin I ever committed. Even the ones I repeated. Even the ones that almost killed me.

He healed me—not partially, not emotionally only, not symbolically. He healed my body—my liver, my mind, my depression, my stomach, my shame. All of it.

He pulled me out of the grave. They gave me three months to live. He gave me a new life.

He crowned me—not with condemnation, but with compassion. Not with guilt, but with love. He dressed me in mercy when I was still wearing failure.

He satisfied me—not with alcohol or women or success—but something much better. Psalm 16:11. His Spirit.

All of a sudden, I felt more loved than I have in my entire life—while completely alone. I felt happiness overflowing but connected to nothing happening. I felt peace even when they told me I needed a transplant to live. I never felt less shame. I never felt more worthy. I have never been smarter, more excellent, more courageous, more moral.

My youth came back. My strength came back. My fire came back. Everything horrible that happened to me, He began to redeem in such a way that if I could be on that deathbed to get what I have now, I would do it gladly, a hundred times over.

He didn’t count my failures. He didn’t treat me as I deserved. He opened His heart to me and showed me a glimpse of His love that spanned the distance between heaven and earth.

He removed my sins so far away that they can’t find me anymore. I remember them. I will always remember them. But I laugh at them—how weak they were and how foolish I was to believe their lies.

Just like my dad had deep, tender compassion for me as his son, so my God had compassion on me as His son. He knew my weakness. He knew I was dust. And He chose me anyway.

And now I just want to be whatever He wants me to become. When I ask what’s next, God gives me one answer:

Imitate those who through faith and patience inherited the promise.

And I asked, what did they do?

He says:

They conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what was promised; who shut the mouths of lions, quenched the fury of the flames, and escaped the edge of the sword; whose weakness was turned to strength; nd who became powerful in battle and routed foreign armies. Women received back their dead, raised to life again... the world was not worthy of them.

All this comes from Hebrews 11, which Christians call the Hall of Faith.

So, I set my eyes on this prize and pursue it like my father taught me to pursue everything in my life—not to earn God’s love, but because I already possess it.

I want to hear God call me what my dad did on that deathbed.

Another Hall of Fame beckons me home.