ACCEPTANCE MONTH: DAY 3: “Know that everything is in perfect order whether you understand it or not.” ― Valery Satterwhite
This quote was one I read when I was about a year into recovery. I loved it, because I was not a happy camper. I was like a lot of us, I truly believed I would somehow be transformed by that magical day when I had a year clean and sober.
Hahahaha! Time is only good for one thing around here. Experience. I have been around long enough to have had some experience of spiritual principles and their application to the things in life I don’t like. Hahaha…and the things I do like too. That’s all.
So this helped me to understand that I might never get to the place where I could see the perfection of life, but I had to accept it anyway. Okay. That is all.
We are so busy trying to “figure it out” or “understand” things that we stay stuck in the middle of our own shit and cannot climb out. Our constant “WHY?????” is only an immature way of trying to get our own way out of life and the Universe. It still doesn’t work, but dammit, we are gonna give it our all.
So, trying to understand and figure out WHY things are the way they are is just like playing with yourself. It might feel good, but it has little true satisfaction at the end of the day. Leave it alone and move on. I am just as likely to do this as anyone, but I have seen the tremendous wasted time and effort involved in telling the Universal Power just how displeased I am with life.
I stamp my feet and shake my fist and cry and moan and wail, but it doesn’t go far. Not really. I have deep and abiding respect for the Universe when it does not buckle to my will. (Has not happened yet, anyway…but that won’t stop me for long, I know.) Great respect. But I still moan and groan and cuss (a lot!) about that. WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!
That was fun to type…btw…lol! Acceptance is where I get when I am face-down in the mud, splattered like a bug on the wall I keep hitting at 120 mph, broken fingers and toes from trying to peel a new set of answers to the same old questions from somewhere…in other words, when life is just about getting me ready for a real good surrender.
I GET surrendered by life. I cannot, at least not in these first almost 33 years, surrender a damned thing on my own. I GET surrendered every time. It kicks the shit out of me, and I have nowhere else to go, nothing will work, I cannot take another moment of the torment of the fight I have put up…and THEN, I get surrendered. What a tremendous, and mostly underrated, gift of grace this is. So, it would be nice for me to just let it all go and surrender myself again and again, but I mostly get to have this process take me for a roller coaster ride of self will.
Yippee! The only good news here is that we all get to do it. Me, my sponsor, my sponsees, all of the folks I know who tell the real truth about life. We do this. And we hate it, but what the hell else is there? I don’t know. Thank God it happens less often and hurts way less than it used to. I truly believe my ego has been shattered so many times it kind of just goes, Aw shit…again? Okay do it then…
Dolphin Hug 