I heard this in a meeting the other day, “Trust the process, reinvention can be painful.”
It is so easy to focus on all of the pain and upset happening through our growth process. Sometimes it feels like we will never get to the other side of this…whatever it is.
When we get sober, we reinvent ourselves. Nothing is the same. We don’t hang out with our drinking buddies anymore, we meet new sober friends. We have more time because we’re not spending time acquiring the alcohol, drinking it, then getting rid of the evidence. How do we do everything without the safe escape of alcohol to numb when it gets hard? How do we live without it? How do we celebrate victory? Cry and grieve with loss?—especially when they are delivered in the same moment?
How do we reinvent ourselves without the alcohol or drugs defining everything we do. How we respond to life’s challenges?
This reinventing ourselves process can be painful.
Our daily experiences show us the way. Each day. Each day brings something we need to face. Starting with gratitude helps. When we experience that we CAN get through that one thing without alcohol, our brain records that little victory. Gathering up little victories, one by one, we see it is possible—day by day
Going to meetings and listening how others have done it and learning new ways of handling situations. Praying and asking for God’s help for strength. Sometimes just “feeling” something for the first time without numbing it is scary. Pressing through and getting to the other side of that—Baby steps. Knowing that we CAN. Journal-writing became a healing balm for me.
We have to trust the process along the way. Becoming this new person without alcohol is scary and exciting at the same time. Scary because at first, we don’t know this new person (me) or way of thinking and living—but exciting to find we that we start to like our new selves.
Death and loss took me to the bottom of my drinking. I have faced death in sobriety and have learned how not to take a drink through it. To move forward and celebrate today’s victory (being sober) in the face of loss, is good. If we look at it another way, being sober through the tough stuff gives others the hope they need to know they can do it too. If we show that we DON’T have to turn to alcohol for the solution, it’s one more victory for us, and hope for others to do the same.
I used to hate routine. Boring. Same. Monotonous. Now, I count on it. It is stability in my life. It is in the routine of our shared experience staying sober together, where we find the assurance that life continues whether we are happy or sad. We don’t have to change the way we feel by drinking to cope.
I am not sure how anybody goes through this life without faith in God. I do know that God is in the meeting rooms of AA. I see it every day. I have seen atheists come to faith in the rooms, I have seen healing in the rooms. And there is not judgment. God gives us strength to bear the suffering, and in the peace of that strength, lives the joy.
Joy of celebrating our victories even in sadness.
I never thought that was possible.
But, it is.
Trust the process.
"Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.”
James 1:2-4
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