HOPE MONTH: DAY 18: “Never lose hope. Storms make people stronger and never last forever.” ― Roy T. Bennett
I saved this one, because the recent rain storms were predicted a couple of weeks ago. Big and nasty rains. I don’t like them…somehow, they frighten me…not sure what that is about. But I know they will be over and I wait them out.
So, I never lose hope. And life is full of things over which I have no control, no say, no power. And I get to be powerless, sometimes literally, in storms like that. They rage and I just watch and wait. It isn’t as terrifying as it is in some conditions. I have been ON the ocean in a horrific storm…did not like that at all. I almost gave up going out on the ocean…NOT!
Life is full of emotional storms and things that we get to live through and with. Hope is knowing that there will be a sunny day again and that, if it doesn’t somehow come to pass for us, we are always okay. What makes us stronger, I believe, when we pass through these storms is the power of our belief. We come to this whole recovery deal during a terrific personal storm. We are reassured by other recovering members that the storm will pass and it will be sunny again.
They even go so far as to read the Promises to us or A Vision for You. And we get very excited about how this thing might work for us, too.
We begin, right in that moment, to cultivate hope. It is so powerful! We don’t need to fight this battle, in fact, when we hear Step 1, we realize we can’t fight it even if we want to. Okay, so send in the army and the navy. Let them take the battle on.
And then, in Step 2, we get the message that there IS a Power Greater than ourselves, and that this Power can restore us to sanity (in this analogy, a sunny day.) Okay!
So, we begin to stop hitting ourselves over the head with the shovel we were using to dig our bottom a bit deeper and begin to fill in the hole and crawl out. Okay.
Now the sun is coming out and there is hope for a rainbow. And other recovering members tell us about the rainbows they have seen and the beauty of life while living in the sunshine and the rainbows that do come out when they journey through the storms without drugs and alcohol.
They also begin to reassure us that we can do it together…a great thing! Not fighting this thing alone is another beautiful way we walk through storms.
And we get to find a guide, someone who can hold our hand and walk beside us, showing us the ropes that we will learn to master in this process. We can practice with that guide until we begin to show other newer members how it all works.
This process is incredibly powerful and beautiful and the sun is always shining behind the clouds, no matter how dark and scary they are. We can be reassured and the promises are true. The sun is coming out, and the darkness will become light again. Hope is restored, over and over.
And then, one day, we have the light on inside us and the darkness is never as scary as it used to be again. I love that!
Dolphin Hug 