Letting go and letting God. Interesting subject today. Not that it doesn’t come up in my thoughts often.
I’m glad that it did at the meeting today. Not often I get to hear others talk about difficulties with this. I know I have my own. Don’t know if I ever talk about it much. But to hear others. Especially old timers.
When some of those old timers talked about difficulties they find themselves in, when faced with decisions to turn it over. A couple of them made me chuckle. Nice to know that I’m not alone in this wrestling match I have had with myself all too often.
Outside, after the meeting, I was talking to a friend of mine and had to mention what it’s sometimes like, when I say the Serenity Prayer. Especially that part about grant us the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. Ugh! I may say those words, but in the back of my mind I’m already trying to rearrange a lot of them. Don’t I already know that I’m powerless over these many things? Apparently not.
I’m talking about things, which often bother me. My children, the sick and suffering. People across the country. North, South, East. and West. Nowhere in sight. Can’t even go and visit. But there I am in my own head not accepting.
And how about those moments of anxiety about what may or may not happen. You’d think by now I would know from my own experience just how incapable I am of doing anything about something, which is in the future. I know in my heart that I have to back off and let go of it. Leave it in the hands of my Higher Power. What choice do I have? Oh, no. Not me. With racing heart and mind, there I am trying to figure out what cannot be logically reasoned by anyone, except my Higher Power.
I could go over dozens of situations I sometimes find myself in, hanging on and refusing to let go, or at the least trying to manage in some way. That sometimes includes what’s already over and done with in the past. Another big Ugh!
Again I think of what I’ve often heard; the past is history, the future a mystery. Or, again, Dag Hammarskjold words. For all that’s happened, thanks. For all that will happen, yes. May not be the exact wording, but the thought. I try to remember those things, but how often they escape my mind.
Once more I have to remind myself of where I’m living. Right now. This moment. To concentrate on being in the present. How often that escapes in a thought or feeling or emotion. If I can see it when it happens, I may have a chance to get back and think of the 11th Step. God’s presence and His will. Not mine. And the power to carry it out.
That’s why I need meetings to be reminded of who I am. Just another alcoholic. No different that those around me. I’m so grateful for these meetings and what I learn and what I’m given by my Higher Power through the words of others. I sure identified today.