It’s the end of October and I’m reflecting on everything that has happened this month. October started off on a bad note with my relapse after 10 years sober, but I am now committed to staying clean for good.
The last few weeks have been hard, but each day is better than the next. It helps to be surrounded by people who care about me and remind me that addiction is a disease, not a choice.
Daily Reflections October 20
Obviously, the dilemma of the wanderer from faith is that of profound confusion. He thinks himself lost to the comfort of any conviction at all. He cannot attain in even a small degree the assurance of the believer, the agnostic, or the atheist. He is the bewildered one. TWELVE STEPS AND TWELVE TRADITIONS, p. 28
When I was a young man struggling with sobriety, it took me some time to understand the concept of God.
The images that came into my head were heavy from past trauma and rejection; they held fear in their grasp like an iron fist wrapped around your neck while simultaneously wiping away any sign you might have had for something better than this life where everything feels so unfair
Until one night when heard about how Ed dealt his puppy ownership over at home.
I had been trying to get sober for a long time. My past was filled with fear, rejection, and condemnation from my alcoholic father.
While it’s true that these feelings were not in any way God-given, they still felt very real during the early years of sobriety when I struggled to find an image of a Higher Power who would love me unconditionally.
That is until one day when Ed shared his experience as a young boy whose guardian asked him to care for their litter of puppies – he said he couldn’t get angry at them because “that’s just the nature of puppies.”
And so too, we are all imperfect but perfect enough in God’s eyes.
