I’m grateful for a gorgeous Friday morning, complete with actual pink clouds. I’m grateful for seeing what I couldn’t before. I’m grateful for the people who get me. I’m grateful for trail markers and secret signs. I’m grateful for getting lost. I’m grateful to be sober today.
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Happy Friday to those of you who celebrate it. The first thing you should do is read what Jane wrote yesterday. I thought the part where she wrote out her prayer and put it in the basket was really powerful. I think it’s really important to pay attention to what she prayed for; She simply asked for help.
Tommy, Your Sponsor and mine, too, says this thing about God answering prayers in unexpected ways. I’m coming to believe he’s exactly right. I see things happen in my life and then have the “oh shit” moments where I connect up a certain wish or desire expressed to the Big Guy at some prior point and those certain consequent events in my life. I frequently find myself acknowledging, “you’re right, I did kind of ask for that.” In my experience, the Big Guy has a sense of humor that’s a little bent and definitely has some tricks up his sleeve. And seriously, the God that takes an interest in this alcoholic definitely has to be a little trick and have a kind of warped sense of humor.
I think the part that comes after prayer is acceptance, and that’s the hard part. At that point, I’ve pretty much done what I can and the job that is left is listening for the answer and being ready to accept it. During my years in the wild, I prayed a lot, but those prayers were pretty specific and pretty cagey. It’s probably worth remembering that I had some pretty significant professional experience asking questions that could only yield the answers I wanted. I realize my prayers were more like cross-examinations and it turns out that the God of my understanding does not really respond to that. Thinking about it, that’s the kind of stuff that probably ought to have gotten me a bolt of lightning, or at least a mild electrical shock.
My prayers back then were mostly back-door efforts to try and get God’s help in continuing to drink. There was a fair amount of asking to avoid certain unavoidable consequences and getting other people to understand certain incomprehensible things. My prayers were designed to let me keep drinking and I did. Maybe God’s shoulders shrugged in a really sad way when I asked that. Maybe there was a very resigned, very sad, “ok.”
The problem was that I was asking for things that the God of my understanding couldn’t or wouldn’t do. The Second Step is about figuring out what God can and will do and that required me to accept three pertinent ideas (Big Book, p. 60):
a) I was alcoholic and could not manage my own life;
b) That probably no human could relieve my alcoholism
c) That God could and would if sought.
Jane hasn’t wasted ten years with cagey, self-serving prayers, I think she got it right the other day. The request has to be open-ended and simple. When praying, I don’t get to impose conditions, suggest alternatives, ask to water down the words or the impact. Writing that seems ridiculous, as though I ever had any of those powers. It seems more than arrogant how I thought I could manipulate even God with the false prayers of alcoholism.
The God of my understanding is definitely willing to tolerate a fair amount of nonsense and like Martin Luther, I can’t think of much I’ve done with my life to justify the extravagant gifts I’ve been given. Sobriety, for me, has been about realizing a lot of different things, and some of them are pretty hard. Like learning to be ok not knowing what the rest of the plan is and being willing to show up every day to find out. That way of life seemed unimaginable to me for a long, long time. Being willing to tolerate all of that uncertainty, giving up the idea that I was the Captain of the ship, letting the bat drop from my hands.
As long as I clung to those ideas, that way of life, well, that way of life and those ideas required me to keep drinking. At the bottom, when the desperation is pouring in and quickly filling up the room, there’s really only time for Jane’s prayer: Help. I celebrated three years of sobriety this month because I finally understood that was a prayer God could and would answer it. In fact, did and still is.
Thanks for Letting Me Share