Daily Reprieve

From the Daily Reflections of November 17;

Almost without exception, alcoholics are tortured by loneliness. Even before our drinking got bad and people began to cut us off, nearly all of us suffered the feeling that we didn’t quite belong.   (As Bill Sees It, page 90)

The agonies and the void that I often felt inside occur less and less frequently in my life today. I have learned to cope with solitude. It is only when I am alone and calm that I am able to communicate with God, for He cannot reach me when I am in turmoil. It is good to maintain contact with God at all times, but it is absolutely essential that, when everything seems to go wrong, I maintain that contact through prayer and meditation.

END OF QUOTE

————————————

This holiday season is very quiet.  I have not decorated or put up a tree or felt the agonizing rush to complete a gift list.  I am no longer married, and my children are forging their own lives.  My Father is with me but is quiet and awaiting his time to cross over.  With prayer and meditation, I sense this is not punishment, but a calling to intimacy with my Higher Power. Removing all that rattles my brain and distracts my heart, I feel a loving caress.  Being alone now feels like being chosen by Gomu (God of my understanding).  I could fight this and hunt down human contact, but I am honored by the pursuit.  All else seems paltry.  This place was hard won, working through resentments and fears.  The Steps laid the groundwork for this new and profound knowing, this thing some call faith.  I will gratefully embrace this beautiful loneliness, and the ugliness that it used to represent slips away. Loneliness becomes solitude as I unite with God.

NINE YEARS LATER: My Father passed away in 2017, about three years after I wrote the preceding words. My offspring have sprung off, as it should be. I love any visitation I gain from them, but I value the sacredness of my Homestone, the reality of connection in the fellowship, and the lessening of fears that caused me to attempt to milk my Higher Power. When I come home and secure my perimeter, I work to become smarter, stronger, and more efficient. I no longer feel as if I am being punished for unidentifiable crimes. When I slow down, there are whispers of significance. I try to respond with gratitude. It is what I feel at this moment.

From the Daily Reflections of November 16;

What we really have is a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual condition.   (Alcoholics Anonymous, page 85)

Maintaining my spiritual condition is like working out every day, planning for the marathon, swimming laps, jogging. It’s staying in good shape spiritually, and that requires prayer and meditation. The single most important way for me to improve my conscious contact with a Higher Power is to pray and meditate. I am as powerless over alcohol as I am to turn back the waves of the sea; no human force had the power to overcome my alcoholism. Now I am able to breathe the air of joy, happiness and wisdom. I have the power to love and react to events around me with the eyes of a faith in things that are not readily apparent. My daily reprieve means that, no matter how difficult or painful things appear today, I can draw on the power of the program to stay liberated from my cunning, baffling and powerful illness.

END OF QUOTE

—————————————————-

There is something clarifying and liberating when you know that you are dead or destroyed except for the reliance on some greater force or protective discipline.  I was assigned near the DMZ in Korea back in the 80’s to a facility whose one job was to notify military personal that the North was crossing over.  We knew that if that occurred, we probably had about ten minutes before we were destroyed.  So we trained to do what are lives had become about in that moment, and we would get the message south before we died.  Every day I wake up, I am grateful for my sobriety.  I must find a way to make it count.  I have to get the message south with every sober breath I draw.  My daily reprieve is not my personal property, but a gift to reinforce a mission, which is the primary purpose of Alcoholics Anonymous.  That primary purpose is to stay sober and help other alcoholics find sobriety.