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i am denying faith in a Higher Power, and in my experience this only brings me more suffering. i heard a couple of themes this morning and i am not certain which way to go. what is ringing the most loudly in my head right now, is the power theme. i accept as true, that i lack power in most of the things and events that i happen to run across in living day by day. i accept as true, that there is a POWER that fuels my recovery, and that POWER is greater than the part of me i call addiction. i accept as true that the feelings that arise within are also beyond my power to control, while i am in recovery. given all of that, why would i want to give up what little power that i have by placing emotional value judgments on the feelings that i am having, on the events that are transpiring, or my life in general? i spent enough of my life in a state of wasted energy and chemical oblivion, trying to exert power over all of that, and what did it get me? a chair in the room of this fellowship and the price of admission. in the long run, the battle against feeling bad or ducking the trials and tribulations of living in the real world, cost me far more than that temporary respite provided. yes, there are times i gaze back fondly, remembering how for me, the chemical stew that was my buffer against the storms of life worked right to the end. at least for the first twenty minutes or so, then the whole getting the ways and means to maintain that bliss took over and voila, no more concerns about how bad i was feeling or how sh!tty life was treating me.
not much of a life when i look back at it through the filter of the many days in a row i have clean, it looks worse when i run it through the sieve of my program of recovery. (NOTE: CLEAN TIME DOES NOT EQUAL RECOVERY!) so if i can choose what battles to fight today, and where i can apply what little power i do have, i CAN live quite comfortably in my own skin, here in the REAL world. which sort of brings me to the other theme that has been circulating through my noggin, looking at the role FAITH plays in all of this.
WARNING: i am bout to spout some of the party line here, so if you are offended by reading the same old stuff, i suggest that you navigate away from this page right now!
recognizing where i have power is important and it certainly is a saner action than believing the extremes: that i have NO power or that i am ALL powerful. i have been at both end of that particular spectrum and for me, neither was a good place to be, i, however digress, once i see where my power lies, the next task is to deal with all of those things i have no power over at all. today, for a change, i choose to give all of that over to the care of the POWER that fuels my recovery. that's right, i CAN and often DO make a decision to allow that POWER to care for my will and my life. which brings me to where i just happen to be in my step work, namely STEP 3. today, one of the gifts i get from that POWER, is the ability to know what i can influence and what i cannot. i am connected to that spiritual grid all the time, although being who i am, i choose to turn down the volume from time to time and proceed on my own, pretending to be oblivious to what i am hearing. turning down the volume, pretending to be oblivious? yes, sounds like to me, evidence of self-will in control, and it certainly is. more evidence that i am right where i NEED to be, and that the next right thing is to move from the feeling part of this journey into the writing part.
i am certain of two things at this point, i cannot exist comfortably in a state of abstinence only, and that i have no desire to return to the hell of active addiction. which only leaves me the alternative of doing the next right thing, allowing my WHOLE WILL and LIFE to be surrendered into the care of the POWER that fuels my recovery and let go, in other words live in the FAITH that i have so grudgingly built up over the course of my clean-time, one bit of evidence at a time, and be happy that i have a solution today. so off to the showers and into the real world to face what ever iot ius i need to face this morning.

∞ DT ∞