The Miracle - When your ready

Here on Christmas Eve I thought I would write about a miracle. Not that miracle but something in the spirit of the season and what working the steps has to offer.

My personal miracle is that I am happy. I won't bore you with a repeat performance of my grief and depression. I think if you have ever read this blog you have heard it before, over and over again and frankly like you I am sick of it. But it was honest and where I was in my life and I have moved on.

I want to write about my own spiritual awakening that resulted from the steps. Not just once but over the years many many times. Some were just ah ha moments others were oh my god moments. Some obstacle that has been there all along reveals itself. I think it suddenly appeared but really I had used my cloak of denial to hide it from myself, in some cases for years.

All the pain in my life comes from my inability to accept the situation at hand and my need to hold on to what no longer works for me. The only way I can do this is with denial. I must keep the dream alive and if that means I have to deny reality than so be it. This is of course and art form an takes years of practice. When I came to Al-Anon I found so many people just like me. I could clearly see their denial and really wanted to help them. Come on now their problems were so so obvious.

The steps worked for me then and still work for me now. They help me to slowly reveal what has been there all the time. It can be something small which I can buzz through the steps sometimes all in one day. With other problems it took years to really get to the core of the issue. The time it takes me has to do with the degree of denial I am in.

Sometimes I have to overcome a lifetime pattern that has set me up for failure over and over again. I can't seem to break the pattern the pain is familiar and I hate to admit it but comfortable. Same play different actors, still no happy ending. A better version maybe but the outcome is always the same. Then I, the star, am shocked that the ending was the same. The audience, my friends, are bored to death and say they have seen it all before.

Then it happens somewhere along the road I here that small still voice OK it isn't so small or still it says. What the hell are you doing? One eye open. Can we not do this anymore, haven't you learned anything? Both eyes open. The spiritual awakening has began and it isn't pretty. Next comes the what I call the scramble it is really uncomfortable denying the denial. It takes some serious pain for me to get past this point. But I eventually get there when I decide I can live without that belief or person or dream. The ironic thing, by this time, all that is left of it is in my head.

This is where I have to be nice to myself. I am letting go of patterns developed over a lifetime. A power greater than myself comes in handy about now. I am fully awake and I am pissed. Why didn't someone point the obvious out to me so I didn't waste all this time. It is all so clear. At this point those who love me roll their eyes and yawn. I wasn't ready, maybe I needed all the little things that led up to this and maybe it wouldn't take if I didn't get the full lesson

So there you have it my version of a spiritual awakening and when your ready you are ready. It all takes time. In the beginning you think it is the drinking that is the problem (yours or theirs), then you realize you are the problem and luckily the solution all wrapped up in the same package. A present just in time for Christmas.