I believe that there is a higher power that can help restore me to sanity. It wasn’t easy getting here.
It’s not like I have lived my first 40 as an atheist or even agnostic. I believed in the God I inherited. Until I faced my wife’s alcoholism and the consequences of the unhealthy choices I made in responding to her sickness, I got along just fine with the God of my ancestry. Through this legacy gift, I have a connection with family who have struggled with the same questions as me. I never realized or accepted that faith required a consistent practice to maintain relevance in my life. Nor did I understand the relentless approach I personally have to follow to stay connected with my higher power.
Beginning the Al Anon walk and finding the gift of presence through mindfulness meditation and working The Artist’s Way, I realize I have a ways and means of being in this life as it is and no longer pretending it to be something else. I can find a sense of peace and happiness that has eluded me. Through these struggles, I know I have to come to terms with my own values and beliefs and not those others expect me to carry.
I have written about my wrestling match with taking the second step. I have looked externally for expressions of faith that might resonate with my own sense of being. There are so many trite expressions bandied about in 12 step programs. Some fit while others don’t. In working Step Two, I struggled with meaning behind the words describing God as a higher power. Words seem so limiting.
Take this one: “Let Go and Let God.” I have no idea what this means. There’s a passive connotation that makes me uncomfortable. This one particular mantra has rattled around my brain for more than a few months. Perhaps “Let God” is the same as the “trust” Thomas Merton refers to in his famous prayer:
“MY LORD GOD, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you.
And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.”
Or, perhaps the phrase means something else. What I realized in my own meditation is that trying to figure out what “Let God” means has kept me from making progress in my own recovery. I’ve judged those who have uttered this phrase rather than focused on my own understanding of God. I even hesitate to use the three letter word “G-O-D” because its connotation means so many different things to so many different people.
Like Merton, I don’t yet understand God, the creator or his ways. But, I can’t wait to have a perfect understanding as I have to get on with my recovery. This is why I love the Al Anon expression “Take what you need and leave the rest.”
While I would like to have knowledge of God or be able to confidently talk about “my personal Jesus,” I am stuck with a stone age brain only capable of a blind belief. And I choose to walk with God on my path through a relentless, mindful approach to his power. I can’t see this God, taste it or touch it.
Yet there is no doubt to me that there is a life giving peace and presence in this world – an enlightenment described by Jesus of Nazareth and the Buddha. I feel like I am on the path authoring my recovery through the inspiration of this holy spirit of presence. In fact, I can’t stay on the path without its presence in my life.
In the past, I’ve allowed my mind to crowd every moment of my daily life with anxiety and irrational beliefs. With my alcoholic wife, I have made poor choices in responding to her that have put my self-development to the back burner. What a mistake. I shut-off my relationship with her when I thought she was drinking. At work, I have put off projects because I feared that someone might find out I am not the best program director at work. My thoughts hijacked my ability to produce in ways that made my life unmanageable.
But my life doesn’t have to be this way. As my brain runs wild with fear that my wife is drinking and trying to destroy my career, mindfulness meditation gives me the ability to make space. When I practice this on a regular basis I can feel a sense of presence, the presence of a higher power in my life and I can move above the resentfulness and anger to respond appropriately.
On Friday, I walked in from picking up the boys from school and found a half full glass of wine on the kitchen counter. She must have felt flying shards of ice shooting at her from my stare. We hardly interacted that night. As I read the daily reflection from One Day At A Time in Al Anon the next morning after meditation practice, I had a real insight.
“I hear again and again in [Al Anon that] alcoholism is a disease-the alcoholic is a sick human being-we do not punish people for being sick.”
I may give ample lip service to this idea, but when it comes to real acceptance, my instinctive attitude toward the alcoholic is often hostile, as though [she] were an enemy, willfully bent on destroying me. I need Al Anon’s constant reminders that such feelings hinder both my spiritual progress and improvement in the family situation. I must rid myself of the poison of resentment, indignation at a person I am not capable of judging fairly, and useless pity for myself.”
Of course, she keeps drinking. When a glass of Chardonnay offers warmth and comfort versus my anger and resentment, what else would a person choose. Al Anon has given me a new perspective that the choice doesn’t have to be between me and the Modavi Brothers. For the remainder of the weekend, I kept this insight at the front of my interaction with my wife. We talked and had a little fun, together.
With that said, I am not naive. My wife is an alcoholic. Alcoholics drink. They manipulate. They lie. They neglect themselves. They neglect others. My wife does these things. Thanks to Al Anon and my mindfulness practice, I can look beyond the disease and see my wife. I see someone struggling with some really ugly ghosts from her past. I see someone who wants help right now, but has lost her way. I can help her find her way by finding my own.
Daily practice of mindfulness meditation gives me access to a higher power – my higher power. With discipline and determination I have the ability to make the space to make good choices, choices which may not be perfect but are pleasing to God. I know I am not alone in this journey and that my recovery is as good for my alcoholic wife as its is good for me.