Today we had a young man, who said that he had gotten into a big fight with his parents and had wanted to drink. He didn’t. He came to a meeting instead. Another young man said that he was facing jail. But, he came to a meeting. For them, two catastrophic events.
I couldn’t help but look back at all the catastrophic events, which my life seemed to hold so much of, since I came in. They were, for me, the world’s biggest horror shows. There were a lot. Depression, divorce, a ripping apart of the fabric of a family, financial disasters, hospitalizations, surgery, loss of jobs, deaths in the family, broken relationships…the list goes on. A lot of time I was just barely treading water.
What struck me was that in spite of all these things, I stayed sober. Not only that, but many of these events influenced the way my life went. Without the! m, I probably wouldn’t be where I am today. I looked back and realized that my life in the program is not the direction I started out in. These “catastrophies” were perfect for the way I was “directed” to go. I now believe that all these things had to take place.
I was reading a book by Robert Johnson the other night in which he discussed the soul and the spirit within us. He said they were hidden from our concious minds and it is there that God dwells within us. I, also, remember reading somewhere that God works in secret in our hearts. Shaping us into what pleases Him. I believe both these premises. I believe that what has occurred in my life is part of the process.
The literature says that we have two disciplinarians. Great love and great pain. Pain is the touchstone of all spiritual growth. Pain is unavoidable. Suffering is optional. It is separate from the pain. Sandy B. talks about that. He compares it to a scale. He said something to the effect, if pain is say 50 on the scale, but we’re at 80, the balance is the 40 we’re going through, which is unnecessary. Suffering that we choose to go through. I have to accept the pain, but not the suffering.
I need to tell you that there were many times in all the events in the past, when I suffered greatly. I, also, need to say that, as time went on, when I did not. Someplace along the line I must have learned acceptance and made the choice, with God’s help and the help of others, not to enter into suffering. I can’t tell you when or where. It just seemed to happen. Something like the spiritual awakening, when we stopped fighting everyone and everything. Someplace around the 10th step.
I’ve seen it happen in the lives of so many. I! ‘ve heard their stories. I’ve been able to watch them and learn from them what it was that I was supposed to be doing. Most of the examples were men and women, who had learned to turn their minds from themselves and look outward to others. They were good listeners.
None of this means that I have done any of this perfectly. Far from it. I’ve had many falls in the process, which have caused me additonal pain and added to the suffering. Too many wrong choices. But, they too seemed to be part of the process in the shaping.
Just thinking. Ned