If ever there was an invitation to an alcoholic to get lazy and careless and just sit back and sink into complacency, it’s one of our most important sayings: Easy Does It.
When I first came in, and for some time afterward, as desperate to stop drinking as I was, this saying I took to, like a duck to water. It was just the ticket for someone like me to sit around and do nothing. I not only misread it, I was easy doing it all over the place. There was plenty of time, I thought, to do what was necessary later on. Tomorrow. Or maybe the day after, or the next, and so on. What a great excuse to do nothing and avoid all the hard stuff.
It wasn’t long before my sponsor caught on to me and my stuff and began to give me the directions I so desperately needed. Easy does it became easy does it, but do it! My ego was such that I thought that I knew what I was doing and I was back running the show. It never occurred to my inflated image of myself that I was on the same track I was on, when I was drinking. Self will run riot. I could have just as easily slipped through the cracks and dropped into a vat of whiskey.
I can still get that way, if I’m not paying attention. How often I need to be reminded to get my focus on what’s important and remember that the reason I’m here is to do the right thing. To not take that drink one day at a time and to seek and do God’s will for me, which is always to help someone else.
It’s whenever I get speeding and in a hurry to go nowhere fast that I need to hear the counsel Easy Does It. It’s when I think that I can get holy before Thursday, that I need Easy Does It. It’s when I feel the need to cram my head full of information, which I think will be good for others, that I need Easy Does It. But mostly, when I become worried and fearful, anxious about anything, that I need to be told to back off and take it easy.
I’m no longer in control. I must learn to back off and let God run the show for me. I just need to do the footwork. I’m along for the ride and I need to learn to sit back and enjoy the ride God is giving me. There will be times that I wiil be asked to get out of my seat and serve others, but I can still look out the window and see the scenery as it goes by.
But I don’t have to slip into sleep walking or lay back and do nothing. Everyday is a day I can do something to help me and others to enjoy one more day of not drinking.
Just thinking about taking it easy.
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