Sunday Serenity

Good evening to everybody here in the Cadre sphere. My name is Jason Lennox, and I'm coming to you with Sunday Serenity, 7pm every Sunday. And I am what I like to call resident recovery champion. So I am here to talk about all things recovery, which to me includes mental health, well being, but Sunday Serenity. The idea behind it is I think we're so much better off in this world of recovery when we can find serenity, find peace, and not be looking out there for everything. Drugs, alcohol, all the things that we can become addicted to.

So that's a little bit about me. But coming to you from Hackensack, Minnesota, tonight, if you're not from the area. Hackensack is north of Brainerd a little bit, maybe a half hour or 45 minutes. And we just got up here just a couple hours ago. This is the week that our family comes up and we rent out, actually a whole resort of cabins, 10 cabins, and ends up being 40, 45 of us from the family. So all the siblings, extended family, cousins, aunts, uncles, whole bunch of kids. And it's absolutely amazing up here.

I don't know if I'm gonna be able to get you a view. There we go. There's the lake behind us. So anyhow, hanging out in one of the cabins. And like I said, come to you from Hack N Sec. So I'm gonna keep it a little bit shorter, but it's fitting tonight that, you know, really what came to mind for me was thinking about family and just getting up here. There are about 10 or 11 of us up here now, and then the rest kind of trickle in over the next few days. But this used to be a strong family tradition when I was a kid and when I was growing up, and it really was the best week of the year, we would go Monday to Monday.

This is what we looked forward to the most. We were kids. We got to run around this resort, not this exact one, but we got to run around the resort day long with the cousins. We got to play a lot of games, drink all the pop we wanted, stay up late at night making s' mores over the fire. So really just was the highlight of the year. And my grandpa did that maybe for 10 years, and then he got a little bit older. 2005, I think, was the last year I remember doing it. And, you know, 10, 11 years went by.

He died in 2015, and that's when we started talking and said, maybe we ought to do this again. And, you know, by 2017, I think I made the trip And I found some. A few different places and ended up landing on this one. And so we've been doing it ever since. This is the eighth year, and it's just absolutely amazing. It is. Again, my favorite week of the year was when I was a kid. But now just spending this much time with this much family is so meaningful. And I want to teach a little lesson about that.

I was speaking last night at an event, and one of the things I kind of wound up with at the end of my speech was talking about what it's like being people in the rooms of recovery and what that means in terms of family and what that means in terms of our responsibility. And I can take myself back to this very family. Actually, I was a few years into my recovery, and I just had a lot of resentment still. There were a lot of things that I thought about and a lot of just resentment. I had feelings because I always felt like our family.

There's a lot of alcohol, there's a lot of drinking. It's just a normal part of the family. And sometimes to the extreme with, I would say, enough of the family. But somehow it was different for me. When I landed into the world of drugs, I was the different one, and I was all but disowned. At least that was my experience of it. And so it didn't feel good because it felt like when I needed people the most, I was the different one, and I was the outcast, and I just wasn't part of events. And some of that was my own doing, but some of that I felt like, was the reality of what people thought about me.

So I'm a few years into recovery, and I can remember having some of those feelings still. And then my grandpa passed away, and he was kind of the top of our family, if you will, the oldest of his generation. And he was just like the godfather of this family. So it was hard to look him. And at that point, we realized we probably saw each other for funerals and weddings, and that seemed to be the extent. And, you know, the rumbling started. Maybe we should do something like that again. Maybe we should go up to the cabins and find a place and do, you know, just get together more intentionally again.

I had some of these feelings brewing. So I remember because I was in recovery and because I didn't really just want to stop with finding this state of recovery and. And getting beyond the drugs and the alcohol, I wanted to take it a step further. I was always interested in how do I continue to develop myself as a person. So I end up in this seminar, it's a self development, a whole weekend thing. And I end up doing some work after. And what I said and what the decision I made in some of that work is, I just don't care anymore what I think they owe me, what I think I'm waiting for.

I'm not going to let that be what gets in the way. Because what it did for me was create a barrier and a boundary and made the relationship that I had with so many of my family members very surface level. Because I just had those feelings of anger, resentment, upset, even if it wasn't necessarily driving every move of mine, they were there underneath. So I do this work and I made the commitment that weekend and I said, you know what? I don't really care. I care more at this point about having this family.

And thinking back and after we lost Grandpa and thinking back to the way that we grew up, that's what I wanted. I wanted to experience that again. And for me, it was about taking, you know, taking one on the chin, if you will, and just sucking it up and saying, I'm gonna put the effort in and I'm gonna do what I can to, you know, really be intentional with this family. So how to talk with a cousin. And we end up driving up and found a place and organized and have ever since eight years. And, you know, it's.

My work is on the front end. I'm organizing. I'm trying to figure out who. Who's going where, who's coming, when they're coming, when they're leaving. But for me, the beauty of that was the very first year, it was very, very quick that I realized and I had these moments as I sat around the fire and I watched 40 plus people, some from across the country. We had three people playing the guitar, and they were taking their turns, and then people would jump in and sing. And it was just this. I couldn't have imagined a better week and the joy and just sitting back, I was kind of a level out from the fire.

We were sitting around the fire. Watching this family kind of be together and do what they were doing was just. It was so meaningful to me. And so the lesson I taught as I was wrapping up this speech last night is I really had to push through that and say, you know what? It doesn't matter what I think people owe me. It doesn't matter what, what. Emily, it's good to see you here. Happy Sunday. It doesn't matter more than what really mattered to me, and that was having family together. And so I Got to experience that.

I really got to experience that. Now we've done it eight years and now it's trickled into so many other things. And now I have the greatest relationships. And by the way, that family that I told you that I thought kind of left me hanging, disown me, all the things. As we began to establish these relationships and things just became much closer. You know, they came out and there were the apologies and I'm sorry and you know, we just didn't know. But we're just so happy that we have this relationship now.

So it took a lot of work for me to go, you know what, I don't care how mad I am, I don't care what I think they owe me. I'm just going to be the one to drive this. I'm going to be a driving force to make sure that we are not spending our times getting together at funerals and at weddings. There has to be more to it than this. And again, now we have an eight year tradition where 40 to 45 people are up here for the week and it is the most meaningful week of the year. And I wouldn't have that and a lot of other people, 40 other people wouldn't have that probably if it wasn't for recovery and what recovery drove into me, which is I'm just going to always continue to get a little bit better, clean my side of the road and just make sure that I'm doing everything I can to establish relationships, to be there for people and to contribute to this world.

So the lesson I'll land with and what I said last night is I think it's not only an opportunity to participate in family that way, but for me, I feel like, and maybe I didn't think this then, but I know today that it's responsibility. And why I say that is we as people who are in recovery, and most of us, when we get to the point of recovery, that means we've gone through a life that sometimes feels like a living h***. And to be able to walk through living that kind of life, come out the other side, I think it's my responsibility because I feel like I'm so much more well equipped than a lot of people in this world to actually take one on the chin, to suck it up, to say, you know what?

I am going to make, put in the extra effort because I have that experience. It's easier for me to fight through the burn, to feel that heat, to think about all the things and the time and the energy and those things that it Takes, gosh, I got a lot of experience out there doing that. And I really think it's, it's, it's my job to be responsible and take responsibility for driving and for continuing to, to put in the effort when, when sometimes people don't. And I also said, you know, we live in a world where, you know, we talk about not putting in more effort than the next person in the relationship.

If it's a two person relationship, I'm not going to try harder than they do. And I've heard that a lot. And sometimes I say that, but I do not believe that. I do not believe that for one minute because we are always in different places. And I can tell you, if I wouldn't put in more, more, if you will, energy and effort into some of my relationships, I wouldn't have them. And guess what? Yeah, that, like, maybe there's some like, you know, gratification in that. I'm not going to try harder than you, but I'm the one missing out.

You know, there are a lot of relationships I have that I wouldn't have today, or certainly they wouldn't look like they do if I wasn't willing to go the extra mile and I wasn't willing to push forward, forward a little more. And now it's become second nature. So I tell you all those things again, for me, family is one of the most important things. And I ended that speech with that. If I had to sum up and say the one thing that's mattered most and been most impactful in my recovery, it's my ability to create and be in relationship with the people in my life and the people that I love.

And you can't. Those are the things that can't be taken away. I referenced a song, it's by Nico Moon. It says I have all the things that money can't buy. Money cannot buy those relationships. And that's what really matters to me. That's what was missing for so long in my life. And that hurt. And I came into recovery with a lot of resentment, like I said. But today, the clearest fact that I know is that my family is the single most important thing in my life. And it blends into my recovery. My recovery feeds it.

It feeds my recovery. And I just have these beautiful relationships that I wouldn't have. That's what gets me up. That's what keeps me going. Running around here, setting up shop here, getting this to kind of kick off the ground and watching these kids, they're not even. I took a picture. We were 20 minutes into this place and there are six kids in the water. They just don't even waste any time. And it's just absolutely beautiful. So I will wrap it up here. But again, just wanted to point out, point to that lesson, point to that thing that has occurred to me over the years, and that's.

I actually feel like I have a responsibility. Having gone through recovery and survived a living h***, I think I'm more equipped to kind of be the one to put in some extra effort and fight all the demons and things that we get every day and figure out how to make this thing happen. So we've all survived some pretty terrible things and some pretty, pretty wild moment. So I think coming out here and doing some of the things we do with family, pretty small. So that's what I got this year, this week.

Family, family, family. And I get to spend the next week with them. So I will be back home next Sunday. Look forward to Sunday serenity then. If you're in Minnesota, anywhere around here, hope you enjoy a nice, cool week. We're starting to feel a little bit like fall, which I can appreciate had a lot of sun this summer. It's been great. But September, fall is really some of my favorite times of the year. So I will leave you with that again. Hope you think a little more about family. And family doesn't always mean a blood family.

I have a lot of chosen family, too, that I get to spend time with and have incredible relationships with siblings that I consider siblings that I'm not related to through blood. So I know we don't always have the best relationships with family, but I just told you had some bad ones. I didn't have good feelings. I pushed through it. I got over that, and I did everything I could to kind of fight through that. But wherever your family is, I hope you get to spend some time with them, think about them a little, and maybe think about how you might be a little more equipped than some of your other family members, because we've been through a lot and that gives us a little bit of extra fight.

So enjoy your weeks, everyone. I look forward to seeing you again in seven days. Sunday serenity. Talk soon. Bye. Bye.