It doesn't seem that I ever know how to become entirely ready. It always seems that I notice that I've become entirely ready only after the fact, only in retrospect.
In terms of my getting sober, I never saw sobriety coming. Sobriety was a seeming impossibility. I just couldn't stop drinking and I'd really stopped trying. All I was really trying to do was drink without getting caught or in trouble. But "stopping" wasn't something that seemed at all possible for me and I'd given up hope that I could ever do it.
Then one morning, something happened. I woke up thinking the exact same thought that I'd woken up thinking for some months, ten to be exact: "I just can't stop drinking!" Nothing really substantially "bad" had happened the night before. I'd had "only" two drinks while I was waiting to go back and pick my son up after his Friday night NA meeting... Two drinks was just perfect for that hour and a half waiting period. True, my son almost caught me that night...almost discovered that I was drinking and that I couldn't stop. But he didn't. I'd lied and he seemed to have believed me. And I'd gone to bed totally demoralized with myself and who I'd become. I just couldn't get myself out of the hellish life I found myself confined to living.
And then, I simply woke up the next morning and after thinking the same "I just can't..." thought again, for some reason, that morning, that hopeless thought led to another thought or awareness: "This inability to stop drinking is what they call 'alcoholism'." Wow, where did that come from? Actually, I know where it came from (I'd heard them talking about it many many times over the last ten months of my son's treatment program...) what I don't understand is why was it that morning, it all of a sudden "made perfect sense." Ah, a disease! That's it! I have a disease! Everything I'd been doing for years and years all of a sudden made perfect sense! I wasn't crazy or immoral or selfish, I was sick!
With the realization that I was sick, came the next thought that, well, that's not my fault. It's just the way things turned out to be. It's no one's fault. It's just the way it is. But now, I understood that "I could do something about this.... I could do what my son was doing, one day at a time. I could do that. While I couldn't "stop" drinking, I could begin trying to "stay" sober. All of a sudden, I had a glimmer of hope.
All this leads me to believe that "entire readiness" is something that I know only in retrospect. I didn't will it to happen. I didn't choose it in the way I normally think of "choosing" or of free will. It just seemed to happen as the result of a convergence of a wide array of seemingly disconnected but connected things and events. My son's recovery. My alcoholic father's death. Seeing several young kids, including my son, get and sometimes stay sober. Seeing people fail miserably at their attempt to get and stay sober: but seeing many of them get back up after falling down and starting over. Seeing these struggling sober alcoholics/addicts disclose their inner most truths and fears....and walking through them with a level of courage and integrity that seemed totally out of my reach or capability.
Today, almost 7 years later, I'm discovering this "entirely ready" state of being is also outside my willpower in terms of more than my recovery: it's ever present in my efforts to let go of habits and behaviors that clearly cause pain and suffering for me and for those I love. I want soooooo much to be ready to let these things go and have them drop away like lead weights. But they don't. It seems, rather, that they fall away like leaves from a tree: they fall when their time to fall away comes. When they've served their purpose. When I've embraced them for what they are: neither good nor bad. Simply what they are. To the extent I love and accept them like I did with my dis-ease of alcoholism, to that extent will they blossom into something beautiful and to that extent will they eventually die a grace-filled death.
Take care!
Mike L.
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3 comments:
It's a lot like what we used to talk about in early recovery:
How do you know if you're willing to "go to any length" until you actually GO TO ANY LENGTH?
In my experience, this is how the process of growth occurs, because all we really need to do is go just a little bit further than the furthest that we believe we're capable of going. To change we don't have to move a lot, just change our perspectives a little bit to have significant effects.
So what is this Power that is obviously greater than ourselves that enables us to go further than we believed we were capable? The Big Book talks about "tapping an unsuspected inner resource".
Still this is unsatisfying. Because if the answer is within me and this Power greater than me is within me, then why can I not use it to exceed any limitation? Why can't I be president?
Maybe the whole "meeting calamity with serenity" defines a natural limit to this Power. Perhaps God, as we understand Him, isn't all powerful -- at least not yet. Maybe He's only a little bit more powerful than me. Maybe He grows along with me. How can this fail to be a loving God?
One of my favorite readings is from As Bill Sees It, p. 115, "Essence of Growth":
"Let us never fear needed change. Certainly we have to discriminate between changes for the worse and changes for the better. But once a need becomes clearly apparent in an individual, in a group, or in AA as a whole, it has long since been found out that we cannot stand still and look the other way.
"The essence of all growth is a willingness to change for the better and then an unremitting willingness to shoulder whatever responsibility this entails."
I think this really speaks to what you were talking about. Being entirely ready is so hard to do. What I'd like to strive for in my recovery is being aware of it and accepting it IN THE PROCESS of it occurring -- to have the faith that will sustain me through the long and hard road that will lead to the payoff (maybe) in a (hopefully) not-so-distant future.
But do I want the payoff, especially when I am occasionally given a glimpse as to how wonderful it can feel?
Today, I am grateful for those glimpses, in whatever form they take.
An Irish friend Of Bill Said…
Heard in a meeting !!
AA Slogans !!
"You're not responsible for the FIRST thought that comes into your head, But you ARE responsible for the SECOND thought, And for the FIRST action." And - "AA is full of Mirrors and Lighthouses"
Patrick’s Response…
One of the hallmarks of AA is the slogan-ridden language. Slogans are thought by members to contain great wisdom & ultimate truths.
What they do is short-circuit critical thinking & thought.
It is the “language of non – thought”.
Are you an AA ZOMBIE, An Irish Friend Of Bill?
This is where AA ZOMBIES GO - if they don’t REPENT!!
Patrick makes a perfectly valid point that there is a danger in slogans becoming an escape mechanism to avoid critical thought.
That said, I'm chuckling over the fact that Patrick ends his own diatribe to self-perceived truth by closing with his own comfortable slogan re: the importance of repentance. "Repent or go to Hell" is a perfect example of a fundamentalist (a longer word for those who condense all Truth into a couple of neat slogans or fundamentals) Christianity which avoids critical thinking like the plague.
Heee_larious!
Mike L.
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