As I've had continually drilled lovingly into my heart, powerlessness and willingness are where real life truly sprouts. After so many years of hiding, my dark and horrific insides never matching the shining picture of perfection I was trying to present on the outside, I finally cracked. What came spilling forth was honest, raw, uncut, and in need of some serious pruning. In that delicious brokenness I found complete freedom. When your worst fears are realized, and The Great Oz behind the curtain is shown to be nothing more than a scared and lonely little girl wanting to be loved and truly known, it's kinda hard to save face. And in all honestly, I wouldn't want to. My disease of addiction wants nothing more than to pry me from my God. (I choose to call my Higher Power God. If you are bristling at that statement, take a deep breath, and remember that step 3 states we are turning our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him). Cause when I'm not on the ground frantically scratching at whatever remnants of sobriety I can get my hands on, I'm as good as dead. Not to sound dramatic, but that really is the truth for my story. I nearly died trying to be perfect. I had to do everything perfectly on the outside because it was the only thing that made me lovable. I was trying to use my feeble attempts at control to shroud myself in anything that would distract you from the ugly cesspool that was my soul. I needed to be smashed to tiny bits before I could be remade. "It's never too late to be what you should have been. --Elliott".
When I was a kid, I remember going on a road trip to Yellowstone National Park. We had been driving for what seemed like FOREVER when we finally got there. I distinctly remember sweating bullets because I'd consumed too many juice boxes and there was no place to pee. Every attempt at "hang on, we're almost there" was starting to fade. I was crazily moving my toes, letting out loud and random high-pitched squeals, bouncing even. Anything I could do to hold myself over another 15 seconds until I could get to the toilet. Just when I thought we were rounding the corner to arrive at the loo, i saw before me a flock of Buffalo stopping traffic. The lazily winding roads of Yellowstone had become my prison of misery in that moment. What was this?!? Didn't the universe understand I was going to christen the inside of my mom's gloriously large and golden Dodge Aries with urine if I didn't get there? I crossed my 10 year old scrawny chicken legs with desperate frenzy. I grit my teeth, sure that I was not gonna make it. But somehow I did. The heavens parted, doves were released, the angels sang the hallelujah chorus as I tore across the field with my eye on the holy land, the stone outhouse, and I let er' rip. THAT moment, that unbelievable relief is what I feel when I embrace powerlessness. I fight it so hard, and struggle against what I know is best for me. And usually it ends up that I'm beaten down by circumstances into powerlessness. As the big book states in the chapter We Agnostics, "Faced with alcoholic destruction we soon became as open minded on spiritual matters as we had tried to be on other questions. In this respect, alcohol was a great persuader. It finally beat us into a state of reasonableness". (p. 48, Alcoholics Anonymous). Sadly, it usually takes being beaten into a state of reasonableness in order for me to surrender. My son Noah, who is two, will sometimes get so tired that when it's nap time I have to hold his hands against his side to keep him from flailing. It feels mean, but in that state, he cannot help himself. He needs mommy to pin him in a big hug. And he hates it. He screams, and wails, and bucks himself around. That is, until he finally collapses in complete surrender to the exhaustion. That is so the picture of an addict, isn't it? When I find myself embroiled in "restless and discontent", I find that my higher power is using a circumstance to bring me back to the sweet release of powerlessness. In the same way I lovingly bring Noah to sleepy-land through discomfort, my God uses circumstances to say, "Stop fighting it. It's OK. I've got this one. Just let go". That's where the peace is. When I'm snuggled up to powerlessness and willingness. If you're fighting something, it might just be your Higher Power telling you to surrender. So come on. Give it up. I promise you'll sleep better.
When I was a kid, I remember going on a road trip to Yellowstone National Park. We had been driving for what seemed like FOREVER when we finally got there. I distinctly remember sweating bullets because I'd consumed too many juice boxes and there was no place to pee. Every attempt at "hang on, we're almost there" was starting to fade. I was crazily moving my toes, letting out loud and random high-pitched squeals, bouncing even. Anything I could do to hold myself over another 15 seconds until I could get to the toilet. Just when I thought we were rounding the corner to arrive at the loo, i saw before me a flock of Buffalo stopping traffic. The lazily winding roads of Yellowstone had become my prison of misery in that moment. What was this?!? Didn't the universe understand I was going to christen the inside of my mom's gloriously large and golden Dodge Aries with urine if I didn't get there? I crossed my 10 year old scrawny chicken legs with desperate frenzy. I grit my teeth, sure that I was not gonna make it. But somehow I did. The heavens parted, doves were released, the angels sang the hallelujah chorus as I tore across the field with my eye on the holy land, the stone outhouse, and I let er' rip. THAT moment, that unbelievable relief is what I feel when I embrace powerlessness. I fight it so hard, and struggle against what I know is best for me. And usually it ends up that I'm beaten down by circumstances into powerlessness. As the big book states in the chapter We Agnostics, "Faced with alcoholic destruction we soon became as open minded on spiritual matters as we had tried to be on other questions. In this respect, alcohol was a great persuader. It finally beat us into a state of reasonableness". (p. 48, Alcoholics Anonymous). Sadly, it usually takes being beaten into a state of reasonableness in order for me to surrender. My son Noah, who is two, will sometimes get so tired that when it's nap time I have to hold his hands against his side to keep him from flailing. It feels mean, but in that state, he cannot help himself. He needs mommy to pin him in a big hug. And he hates it. He screams, and wails, and bucks himself around. That is, until he finally collapses in complete surrender to the exhaustion. That is so the picture of an addict, isn't it? When I find myself embroiled in "restless and discontent", I find that my higher power is using a circumstance to bring me back to the sweet release of powerlessness. In the same way I lovingly bring Noah to sleepy-land through discomfort, my God uses circumstances to say, "Stop fighting it. It's OK. I've got this one. Just let go". That's where the peace is. When I'm snuggled up to powerlessness and willingness. If you're fighting something, it might just be your Higher Power telling you to surrender. So come on. Give it up. I promise you'll sleep better.
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