FAITH MONTH: DAY 30: “All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson
Yes! We get to see incredible miracles around this place. Not only in recovery, but there are miracles all around us.
Life, death, blooming, dying back…it is a miraculous cycle that none of the finest minds in the thousands of years we have been around can completely figure out.
If the miracles of the Universe do not completely sway our lack of faith, the miracles of recovery should do the trick.
What is really funny, if you ask me, is that we are so convinced it won’t work for us that we balk so much with this step. I certainly have, for many years, been absolutely adamant that it would not happen for me. My arrogance is legendary, right?
Yes! All of us. There is a tremendous amount of arrogance in us believing all that we do about how anything we are…whether it is undeserving, too sick to heal, too much of an addict, too much shame, too much infiltration into the world of addiction. We have these incredible beliefs around this faith thing.
Some of the stories are great! My personal denial system went something like this: I was convinced I was crazy. Step Two might have offered me hope, but I did not believe I could be restored to sanity, because I was crazier than the rest of you. Why?
Because I did not have information about blackout drinking. I did not know that term. Yet, I never could remember what happened after the 2nd drink. I am almost embarrassed to tell you how bad a drinker I was, something in my Irishness tells me I should have been better at it. I was not a good drinker.
So, not knowing what was happening to me, I concocted this elaborate story about it. I began to convince myself I had multiple personalities. I had separate identity information created for my alter-ego, whom I named Herbert J. Schwartz, and called him the little Jewish bastard who got me into trouble all the time. Herbie, damn him!
Many of my arrests, which all happened when I was drinking, were under that name. That is why I was able to evade arrest for many of the warrants I had out until statutes ran on them, or close to it. Another story for another day.
But, I was convinced that if “they” (whoever that is) ever found out, I would end up in Patton or Camarillo for the rest of my days. Crazy as hell!
Only this is how intrinsically linked my denial was. When my counselor suggested I see if I could be restored to sanity, I was aghast! It just wasn’t that simple! She did not understand! So, Step 3 was a dead end.
At about a year of recovery, I realized that Herbie, that crazy party guy, had not made himself known for a year! Wow! What a great coincidence! Only I knew it wasn’t.
And I began my journey into faith. But my skepticism has remained with me. Denial is my companion in so many ways to this day. It lessens each time I trust that I am out of ideas and miracles occur where I saw only doom. I have never gone hungry, nor have I been homeless or completely destitute.
I have been loved, cherished, fed, housed, sheltered, and even thrived when all seemed hopeless and my feeble ego could not find the way out of things. I have walked through incredible fear to do things others thought were courageous. It didn’t feel that way.
I have never been completely alone. I am a person who values a great amount of solitude, more all the time. But I have been called out into the light time after time, and I feel an immense sense of presence nearly every minute of every day.
My life continues to manifest solutions that were impossible, which is what I call miraculous. And every day, it seems at least, I have my doubts. But my faith has far outgrown them, at least that is true today.
Dolphin Hug 