Blog entry for:

i am learning to ask for help. switching tenses sometimes make these lines fit my current circumstances a bit better, as well as switching to the first person singular. grammar aside, the reading brought into focus, some of the issues i am facing in my life and my recovery lately.
as i was talking to sponse the other night, he asked me how i could work the THIRD STEP to open up the possibilities in my life and my recovery. all i could come up with, is things that i thought i had reached my limit on, and could not see any place where i could expand. naturally the conversation took a very sudden turn, which is perfectly alright with me, and i ended up with an experiential assignment rather than a pen and paper one. that sort of assignment where i have to experience something, and worse yet, be present to observe what is happening as a result are truly my least favorites. why you ask? because there is little i can do to quantify completion of the assignment, i will just have to feel my way to the end and when i get there i will know. this sort of circular and self-defining stuff drives me nuts at times, especially the part of me that wants the world to be neatly measured and categorized for easier processing.
as i am discovering, life, regardless of what Microsoft may tell me, cannot be digitized, quantified and stored away for future processing. unlike the stuff that i wrote way back when and deciding what i want to keep and what belongs in the paper shredder, recovery and life experience does not get to disappear into a million little pieces.
when i hit the line in the reading that the taste of humility is never bitter, it made me stop and think about what exactly are my priorities in my recovery community today. the sponsee who i spoke to the other night admitted he felt shame for relapsing, as he was certain that there were members with less time that looked up to him, and how his relapse let them down. i certainly can be a victim of a similar trap, after all, appearances have always been what i am all about, even before i came to recovery. now that i have accumulated some time, that noose of believing that others look up to me, that my sponsee spoke of, becomes even tighter, at least in my own mind. as a result, i become constrained and limited in my growth process, exactly what me and the sponse talked about the other night. so arrogance and ego lead to a process that limits and humility leads to a process that opens up possibilities. putting that into the context of STEP 3, self-will as tempting as it is most likely will not bring the results i desire. if i do not get my desires than my alternative is to let go and move back into FAITH, that the POWER that fuels my recovery can care for my will and my life, today and every day, which is what this happens to be all about.
HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM.
anyhow, getting to there i see by the clock on the wall it is time to move on to the next task of my busy day. i can be more than i was yesterday, i can allow a POWER that is fueling my recovery to care for me and i can move into FAITH that if i listen, i will know what to do next, which just may be puking my guts out at the next meeting i attend.

∞ DT ∞