August 2

COURAGE MONTH: DAY 2: “A ship is safe in harbor, but that’s not what ships are for.” ― William G.T. Shedd

This has been my thinking far too often in this life. I believed I was safe from pain if I stayed away from relationships and people. I am a loner, but today I am blessed with deep and rich relationships and a few new ones opening up. I believed I was safe…it takes great courage to walk out into the world and expose yourself to those who may not understand or take things from you that you believe are important.

I have learned that none of this is possible. That the risks I have taken and the courageous acts of exposing my soft sides to others have been the most beneficial things in this life.

Every inventory for most of my early recovery included the two fears of ‘loving someone and having them leave me’ and another about health issues. At 12 years of recovery, I got together with a man I had been in love with for those 12 years and we got married two years later. And he died very shortly after that…less than 5 years later. Now, I can say that common sense may have told me not to get involved with him had I known that he was going to die and that I would be his caregiver so soon after we got together. I am SO grateful for NOT knowing any of this!!!

I would have denied myself the happiest and best parts of my life! An adventure that changed the shape of everything for ever more! It broke my heart and left a gaping hole in my life, but what was given in that time was so incredible and rich and beautiful! So I cannot judge how to remain safe. All I know was that my courage checked in on the day that he was diagnosed as terminally ill.

My normal way of acting in this world was to be with men who were completely unavailable…I am SO attracted to that sick dynamic and then feel completely abandoned to the situation and my needs not being met. A cycle of many, many years. With this, I know how to leave and walk away. When my husband was diagnosed as terminal, my first thought was, well, it is time to get the hell outta here!

Of course that is not what happened…from somewhere I did not know existed came a voice that said, ‘Honey, you do what you want with this…get afraid, get angry, get sad…feel what you need to feel and do whatever you need to do…this is YOUR tea party and I am only here to serve you. I am your wife and I will not leave you…NO MATTER WHAT!’ And I called my sponsor when I got home and I told her I needed something from her that she had to do, even when I did not respond well. And I asked her to give me 5 minutes to bitch and whine when I needed to vent. Then she had to tell me to go and take care of my husband, because that was MY job and his clock was ticking down and I would have time to process MY shit when that was over. And that is exactly what we did.

I do not know where that woman came from. I am the one who leaves by the back door or out the window at 3 am to avoid scenes. I run away when the going gets ‘icky’…and I stuck around and it got very icky sometimes and then it got devastating, but I got courage from the fact that there was absolutely no way I was gonna go anywhere. In fact, I only left his side for a matter of a couple of hours each week…long enough to go to the market and the gym. I did meetings with friends who came to my home and that was what we did.

Today I have no regrets over anything that happened during those months. They were some of the very best times of my life…rich and powerful and miraculous events took place…and I learned how to be fully present to all of it…living in each moment we had left, savoring them and greedy with our time together. We did whatever we wanted and it was awesome! And then it was over and I got to see who I had become in this time…it still takes my breath away!

When we show up to life, exactly the way it is, accepting that whatever is happening is the Will of whomever we worked with in Step 3, events will begin to take place over which we have no say. We will become people we never could have imagined; doing things that are outside the realm of our narrow possibility.

What we must do is walk like the Sun into every moment of our lives…shining our love and light into things that seem dark and terrifying. We must live like we are the answer to prayers made by others, because we are and can be. We can say and do and be things that are beyond comprehension; as long as we remain mindful of these gifts we are given and our innate ability to live without apologies those truths that we are born to exhibit. We are not created to shrink and hide from life and need to stop doing that; believing that the silly fears we listen to in our minds are real. They are not…the same incredible Force that created the Pacific Ocean and Mount Kilimanjaro created US…each of us! And we need to claim and own and wear that like the amazing people we are…that is what courage is all about…daring to be astonishing! And amazing! And magnificent! And manifesting love and beauty wherever we go!