God's Will

Well, I certainly couldn’t bring myself to turn my will and life over to the care of the God that so many people in organized religion seem to believe in and promote! I had a hard time believing in the punishing, destroying, vengeful creature I had heard about in church and at home. Even my adoptive mother was fond of saying that “God will punish you for….” Blah blah blah – fill in the blank…. I used to always believe in two versions of God – one was the fiery brimstone spouting punisher that many church people talked about, and the other one was the one that said words of comfort to me. I just couldn’t reconcile the two for many many years. It made no sense to me. I think I even told several acquaintances and friends that I suspected God and the devil (you know the Hollywood gambling, card-playing trickster style devil) were the same person.

I heard about the concept of having my own Higher Power long before I ever really waded into the waters of recovery. And I heard about it from recovery literature. I took a very long vacation from Christian churches, although I am wading back in that direction to some degree with a firm grip on my own concept of God. Not every Christian believes in the punisher…. I’m certain of that.

My recovery started with step three. My recovery started before I quit, I think. It started when I was very frightened of the devil and having my soul stolen. You see, I have paranoid schizophrenia in addition to addiction, and was very paranoid at the time I did step three. My mental illnesses were untreated and undiagnosed. Things changed. God took me away from all the addicts and alkies, and predatory types I was hanging around with at the time. I also lost my place to live, however, it was necessary to make a change of scenery and people to really desire change for me. Not that I am promoting geographical cures, mind you, things did not change until I was ready, and had lived somewhere for a few years. It was not the change in scenery so much as the change in associations that did it for me.

A couple years after sobriety was forced upon me, I received a bookmark that said God is love. It was a Christian bookmark, and that is a Bible quote. But, I have made love my higher power. My God, my Spirit, is love. I finally had the ammunition to throw out the punishing domineering image of God I had in my head. If the Bible said that God is love, then that would give me the insight I needed to weed out all the opinions and blame in the Bible and find the truth. I really believed that bookmark. The God I knew had always loved me, and I knew it. I could feel love coming from outside of me. God had always been there, and was indeed, everywhere. Love made the world go round, I realized and had fun thinking about that often in jail….

And it became okay with me if God took my side (with predatory men, for example) and punished them! I had my reconciliation finally. Love sometimes means taking sides….

Things make a lot more sense nowadays because of that bookmark.

I honestly believe that God’s will for me is to be happy and healthy. Ultimately I believe God’s will for me is to become one with Him and/or Her. Not the same as… but become one with. Like the U2 song “We are one, but we are not the same…” God wants me to stick close by Him (or Her) and let Him rub off on me. I try to live in love. I show love to people. I love almost everyone I know. Having a Higher Power of love makes things very simple for me. If I am acting in love, then I am doing God’s will and I don’t get lost in worries and troubles and double-think. I don’t really have doubts. I love myself when I am troubled. I take care of me. They say when you are in an airplane crash, you must first put the oxygen on yourself before you can help anyone else…. So, I apply that.

I wrote a letter to the person who was my best friend when I first became addicted. She herself, is an untreated addict, and does not deserve to be one. In this letter, it was suggested I write to one person about my decision to turn my will and life over to the care of a Higher Power. The letter I wrote was lengthy. She finally broke the silence (silent treatment) with me to tell me to leave her alone, finally, because of that letter…

I explained to her that I have learned to trust my higher power. I explained how difficult it was for me to trust someone I really wasn’t sure I knew anything about. I went into great detail of my experience with step three with her.

The reason I actually sent the letter – or rather, one of the reasons, was to show her that step three is not as scarey or detrimental as she might think it is. One of my ulterior motives was to hopefully nudge her toward recovery by sharing my ESH with her in a very personal way….

Now I’m not perfect, by any stretch of the imagination. Sometimes I still have selfish motives or whatever. I have been known to still chase instant gratification and become irritated and impatient when I don’t get it. However I’ve found that acting in a loving way is a sure fire way for me to do the will of my Higher Power. I don’t have to dwell on anything negative. I don’t fight much of anything any more, although I have been known to argue with newcomers. Saving a life is worth a battle sometimes….

I don’t actually have to say a prayer or think much about it at all when I do it that way. I am more then willing to act out of love…. So I rarely make conscious decisions throughout the day to “do the will of God,” but in acting out of love, I have the security of knowing I am doing just that.

Growth

I think in order to grow we have to take risks. We have to take positive healthy risks. Of course we don't want to take unnecessary foolish risks with our lives like we did when we used drugs and over used alcohol. One of the gifts that recovery gives us is our value for our life. We learn that we don't actually want to throw it away, especially to just become a statistic. There is no glory in dying from a drug overdose....

Taking risks requires much courage. I learned that if I could take the foolish risks with my life that I was taking, certainly I could take the more positive (and significantly less risky) risks of developing intimacy with my new friends. I could talk about anything. I would talk about anything. I would and will share my feelings. There is no point in keeping my secrets all bottled up inside. I don't need to harbor shame, guilt and resentments. I can air them out. I can talk to my new friends -- about anything. I have friends now that I can be completely honest with about my spirituality and beliefs. I have friends now that understand. And, I don't think I would have found those friends had I never opened up about what I really believe and feel.

The way I see it, I have nothing to lose. I really am living on borrowed time, so to speak. I should have been killed or died of an overdose or something a long time ago. I am here by the grace of God/dess and because I have something valuable to share. It is important to take the risks necessary to grow, because if I don't grow, I shall surely wither and die.

I don't want my death to be a statistic!

I shall go either of old age or in a blaze of glory I have decided. Clean and sober! I don't want to be in a muddled state of mind, anyhow, when I do finally get to meet my maker.

Truly, it is scary to open up to others. It is scary to be honest. It is scary to make a stand for what we believe in. But I have my fears prioritized. It is more silly to be less afraid to die of an overdose then it is to open up to others. We need others to grow spiritually. Nobody is an island. We need other perspectives. We need to love to feel compassion. We need to value ourselves enough to feel compassion as well. We need others to feel love fully. We learn about all the facets of God and Goddess through all the variety and diversity in others. To learn from others, and I mean really learn from others, we need true intimacy with them. To be intimate is a risk.

Physical intimacy, I learned in therapy, should never surpass emotional intimacy. That is another silly risk. It is much more silly to be less afraid of catching an STD or all the other myriad things that can happen when we sleep around so to speak then it is to be afraid of truly being real with other human beings.

It's much more fun to keep other people's secrets then it is my own, anyhow. I guess true friendship does require keeping confidences.

They say that fear is a lack of faith. I agree with that, mostly. Although, I do believe that healthy fear and faith can coexist at times. For example, it is healthy to run away from abuse and fear that abusive types will end my existence. One can have faith that God or Goddess will help us live a healthy or healthier life! There is no doubt in my mind we need faith to grow. God/dess wants us to grow strong, and healthy. God/dess want us to LIVE not just survive! To live we must feel. To fear silly things, to have anxiety is not condusive to growth. Faith is the balm that can heal those silly fears and anxieties -- most of which never come to pass.....

I want to grow in my recovery. I want to grow in my relationship with Spirit. I want to grow in my relationships with others. I want to die knowing I lived life to the fullest! Bad feelings certainly aren't the end of the world. And sometimes I tell myself that -- as well as telling myself "it will be alright." a lot. It helps me feel better, often. I use mental discipline to shut down the "itty bitty s**tty committee," worries and what-ifs. I trained my brain to be positive. I worked on it for years, and the drugs helped me not at all. There is all kinds of information out there on the power of positive thinking as well as love! So I won't get into all the details of how to do it here. It isn't even a battle nowadays; it's as if the negative ghosts in my subconscious know exactly how to surrender. I can let the little things go, these days.....

This too shall pass.

And there is, of course, the serenity prayer.