Prerequisites to Critical Moments

As I've mentioned several times recently, I've been chewing on something I read recently and I just can't let it go:  The one obstacle to grace is control.  Ever since I read that line in David Richo's book, When Love Meets Fear, I've seemed to have this truth front and center in my consciousness most of the days since I first read it.  As I've been doing this "fear work" that I also mentioned in my last blog entry, the connection between the felt need to control things in my life and fearfulness is so close as to make them indistinguishable.

This morning as I was thinking about three of my sponsees who are all seemingly stuck in a very early recovery, I had a series of thoughts that sort of came pouring out: 

• the prerequisite of grace is letting go of control
• the prerequisite of letting go of control is willingness
• the prerequisite of willingness is not wanting to do something
• the prerequisite to doing something that you don't want to do is hopelessness or despair.

It's very hard to watch people holding on to control as though their life depended on their holding on to what they are holding on to.  It's especially hard when you know that the solution is not in holding on, but in letting go.

I just left a men's meeting at Old St. Mary's Church in downtown San Francisco.  The man who led the meeting read something from page 164 in the Big Book, including the most humble of all lines in our Big Book: "Our book is meant to be suggestive only.  We realize we know only a little."  I am truly aware of my own ignorance when it comes to what will work for another person.  I barely know what works for me and oftentimes I only learn that after thousands of failures and deadends and lots of pain.

So what do I know when I suggest to another suffering alcoholic that they consider trying what worked for me?  Nothin.  If anyone had suggested that I "let go" a moment before I did on the morning of October 20, 2001, I would have told them to go to hell and I would have stomped off without a clue as to what else I might try.  I let go only when there was no energy left to hold on and no other options.

I suppose that will happen with these guys also.  Or at least, I hope so.  There's always the other alternatives of jails, institutions and death.  Once again, I have to let the disease do the hard work of sponsoring the guys dumb enough to ask me to sponsor them.

Take care!

Mike L.