acceptance

God, As I Understand Him

/ Tim / 2 Comments

I knew I had a problem long before I darkened the doors of a twelve step meeting room. I had tried self-will.  I had tried counselling.  I tried accupuncture.  I tried meditation.  I tried exercise.  I tried a lot of things and got tired of trying.  More than anything else, the whole ‘God’ thing kept me away from following a program for well over two years.  I had this idea that I would be forced to be a bible thumping, born-again, soapbox preaching Christian in order to join a group.  At least I had heard that God was somehow involved in the program.  I am sure that I invented most of what I thought about the whole ‘god’ thing.  I had tried religion and wasn’t going down that road again, thank-you very much!

Things got to a point where I had to do something, or I was going to go down and go down quickly.  Hell no, I wasn’t going ‘there!’ But I could see that the road I was on was taking me.  And it wasn’t the Promised Land.  That last couple of months before I stopped I remember waking up each morning and finding an excuse not to go to a meeting that day.  I knew where they were located and at what time they were held.  But, it wouldn’t be today and I’d start the ball rolling again of seeking oblivion, unconsciousness or blackout.  One morning I woke up and said today is the day and suddenly there I was, walking into a morning meeting.

I don’t remember much of that first meeting or even the first week of meetings.  I was invited to return, something which wasn’t happening too often then.  One of the reasons I returned was because I heard that I could choose a God, or Higher Power of my own understanding. What a relief!  I saw and heard that week from people who weren’t fire and brimstoning it.  Rather they spoke of a loving God as they understood Him.  I wasn’t quite sure what that meant at the time, but I knew at least I wouldn’t be expected to ‘Praise Jesus’ every 47 seconds.

You see, like most people who walk into the rooms of AA, NA, Al-Anon, CoDA or other Twelve Step group, I had been raised with a religion that had a pretty narrow vision of who God was and what He wanted and when He wanted it, and where I’d end up if I didn’t follow the precise dogmas.  And I wanted nothing to do with that God any more. Here, however, was a new approach.  I could choose my own idea of a god, capital G or small g, it was up to me.  If I wanted to, I could use the people in the room as my higher power because here were folks who weren’t drinking or using so they certainly had something that I didn’t have.  So I stayed and kept going to meetings.

It doesn’t matter if your God is the God of the religion you follow, the Spirit of the Universe, Source Energy, Creator or what ever you wish to call it.  If you want, keep using the folks in the room as your higher power.  The only caveat that I was given was that my higher power not be the guy looking back at me in the mirror; after all, he was the guy who got me into the mess I was in.  He wasn’t a very good example at all.

Choose a God of your understanding gave me an in.  I could live with that.  It gave me enough leeway so that I could stay.

I’m grateful to say that I still have a God of my understanding with me though I like the term ‘Higher Power’. I try not to define this power too much because whenever I say what it is, I limit it to that definition.  So it’s just a Higher Power.  And I often say and believe that my Higher Power hasn’t changed since I have been in the program.  What has changed a great deal is my understanding of that Higher Power and its role in my life.

Lately I’ve been looking at my Higher Power as the pilot on my raft going down the river.  It knows the river, it’s rocks, the bends, the depth of the river and where to steer my raft.  It is still my raft, my paddle, my life, but the pilot is my guide, helping me along.  It’s just a metaphor, but one that works for me.  It’s how I understand my God.

 

♥  ♥  ♥

I have been receiving lots of positive comments from you, my readers in the short time I’ve been writing this blog. If you think it can help someone, please share it with them in what ever way is most convenient:  Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, etc. or good ol’ copy and paste.  I would appreciate it if you would sign up and follow the blog as well.  My intention is to post Mondays and Thursdays.  Meanwhile, I am enjoying this process immensely.  There’s the whole new back end of the website and how it works that I’m learning as well as the research and thoughts that go into the finished entry.  Please comment.  I’d love to hear from you.

Once again, please like and share, not to stroke my ego, but for those who need the courage, strength and hope to start and continue their journey down Recovery River.

Peace.

Principles before Personalities

/ Tim / 1 Comment

I have a buddy in the program who has stopped going to meetings.  He’s returning to his program after just under ten years in and another four years out again.  Right now he has under six months.  He says he is fine.  He’s doing his readings and studying his books at home and he’s doing daily meditation.  He told me he has stopped going to meetings because his former sponsor is there, and he feels that the former sponsor is looking at him ‘funny’.  The community is very small here.  There isn’t an option for him to go to other groups.

I heard from another friend, a recovering alcoholic with well over twenty years in the program.  He has stopped going to meetings because there is too much discussion about drugs along with the alcohol.  He’d like to go back to the old times with completely closed meetings and no mention of any drug.  “There are other groups for that.”

I have been hearing similar and other gripes since I became a 12 step member.  Both AA’s and NA’s twelfth tradition reminds us to: “…place principles before personalities.”   What does that mean?  To me, it suggests that I remember the principles of the program: recovery, unity, service, honesty, humility, forgiveness, hope, integrity, love, discipline, perseverance and spirituality.  Not everyone is going to have all of these principles down cold.  (I had to look them up, to be sure, while writing because I couldn’t have named them all.) Some days I’m more honest or forgiving than others.  This tradition tells us that these principle are far more important than the defects of character in those who impart them to us.

I must remember that what is important is the message and not the messenger.  In our case, the medium is not the message.  Recovery is much deeper than those who present it.  Were it not so, for example, AA would have died out when Bill Wilson, the founder, passed on.  Something that is true doesn’t become false simply because I don’t like the person who is telling it to me.  Trust me, many people delivered a message to me that I needed help long before I began my trek in recovery.  Of course, in my sorry state I’d get angry with them and use even more ‘just to show them!’

We will always meet people who irritate or bother us in some way, in and out of our meeting room.  We don’t like to be told what to do and how to do it.  We don’t like to have to do anything.  When someone is sharing I can focus on their speech impediment or their ugly shirt, or their hot body,  instead of listening to what they are saying and that probably isn’t what the program is about.

Early on in my program I heard someone talk about the 70-20-10 Rule.  He said that seventy percent of the time, what you hear in a meeting is good solid stuff that can be stowed in your tool box and brought out later to help you through a difficult situation. Twenty percent of the time, what you hear will have you at the edge of your seat; it’s exactly what you need to hear at this time.  It is as if your higher power is speaking directly to you.  And ten percent of the time, what you hear is an opportunity to practice your patience and tolerance.  This rule has proven to be true for me, and others have told me so as well.  However, what is my twenty percent, may be your ten percent, and visa versa.  Our higher powers just works that way.

There’s an old joke in AA:  What do you need to start a new meeting?  A resentment, a coffee pot and a friend.  If your recovery is at risk because you can’t get around the personalities in the room or how things are managed or what people are doing, then find another meeting.  Try attending on-line meetings, start your own meeting, do anything that protects you from your disease.  If sobriety is my number one priority, then I don’t have the luxury of cherry picking.  I need the program more than it needs me.

Periodically I attend Al-Anon meetings.  These folks have a lot to teach me about life.  I particularly like a part of their closing statement:  In closing, we would like to say that the opinions expressed here were strictly those of the person who gave them.  Take what you liked and leave the rest….We aren’t perfect.  The welcome we give you may not show the warmth we have in our hearts for you.  The message delivered by the personalities around the table and the principles intertwined in that message are what keep me sober, not the personalities who deliver them.  Keep coming back.

Surrender

/ Tim / Leave a comment

“In order to win, you must surrender.”  That is one of the first enigmas of life that I encountered when I started my journey down Recovery River.  Hell no, I thought.  You have to fight to win in this life.  That’s what I had been taught.  You come up swinging or you get your revenge some other way.  I had my masters in passive-aggressive behaviour. Life is tit for tat.  You’re nice to me and I’ll be nice to you.  You piss me off, and look out! I didn’t do surrender. Surrender is loss.

There are few of us who come from a ‘functional’ family.  Most of us grew up in families that were somewhere between the Cleaver’s in Leave it to Beaver and The Addam’s Family.  As a result, we arrived at adulthood with ideas and beliefs about life that were unbalanced.  If a drug, alcohol or other addiction, either our own or that of a family member, was thrown into the mix during our early years, those ideas and beliefs are even more distorted.  When I arrived for treatment, I had to admit that my best ideas, plans, thoughts and theories about life had brought me to that point.  Something wasn’t working, in fact it was pretty much broken.

I was told to surrender.  I had to admit to myself that my choices in life weren’t in my best interests. I had to admit that they were leading me to an early grave.  I had to see that the river I was paddling upon was not the one I wanted to be on.  There were no bucolic scenes of grassy banks with hopping bunny rabbits and Bambi. What I was witnessing was a combination of the burning river in Cleveland and the contamination of Love Canal. I was a gawd awful mess. Something had to change.  I had to give up what I had thought was true and accept that I didn’t know much of anything when it came to life.

I had few friends, and those were drinking buddies.  When there was nothing left to party with, they left.  I couldn’t wait to walk the one block home from the liquor store to crack open a bottle and take a swig.  I fell off bar stools, slipped on steps, staggered and sometimes drove home from the local bar.  I gravitated to whatever was cheapest to get my sought after high.  I was losing my partner, I was alienating my family, I couldn’t remember what I had done the night before, or any night the past week.  Was that working for me?

It’s hard to admit, that for a long time I thought that I was normal.  “Everyone has blackouts.  I’m just looking for a good time.  Ya, sure I stumble and fall, big deal! Sometimes I overdo it ‘a bit’, so what?  I work hard, I deserve to party.  What do you know about my life? I can handle myself,  get out of my way.  I can stop all this whenever I wanted to, I just don’t want to so get out of my way.” What I slowly came to realize was that I couldn’t.   I had lost my grip on reality, only I was probably the last one to know it.

I will forever be grateful to whatever power it was that got me the help that I so desperately needed. Here I learned that cold fact that my best thinking had brought me to this place of desperation.  I had to admit that I couldn’t do it alone.  I had to admit I while I still had a house, car and family, I was no different that the guy in the back alley drinking cheap wine from a box and smoking whatever was offered.  I needed help.

I swallowed my pride and found myself with a group of other like minded folks who gave me this enigmatic slogan: “Surrender to win!”  Fortunately I was beaten down enough by life, that I agreed with what I was told.  I gave up.  I did what they told me to do.  I admitted that I didn’t have life’s answers.  I looked around and saw folks that seemed to be happy, laughing, smiling and willing to lend me a helping hand.

After a number of years on Recovery River I am grateful that I know I don’t have all of the answers to life.  I’m grateful that I have a willingness to learn, to seek and to ask. I am grateful that I let go of those beliefs that were literally killing me.  Now I’m one of the folks who seems to be happy, laughing, smiling and willing to lend a hand to anyone who is reaching out for it, And I smile when I hear that phrase being told to a newcomer, “You gotta surrender to win at this man!”  I know that a wonderful journey of discovery is about to begin.