Dianne
11-14-2006, 06:56 PM
Ever go to a meeting and come home feeling worse? It doesn't happen often but this is one of those times and it's usually related to the 11th step. Always goes like this. Meeting topic is Step 11. I mentioned hearing an AlAnon speaker talking about her God box and how she wrote down on a piece of paper the things she thought would make her happy, put them in the box. Maybe they wouldn't really make her happy, how do we know, but she wrote them down nonetheless. Then she would remind God every day about her God box. Then she shared how so many of the things in her box have come about. That really spoke to me. I went home and wrote mine down: that I could find pain control, that my relationship with my closest friend in the program that fell apart after she started drinking again could be healed - I miss her so much, and that she could find sobriety. And I pray for the kids too. She hasn't let me see them in 5 months now and I miss them more than words can say. I have other things in my God box too - a coworker that wants a baby. It just kills her working in an OB ward and not being able to have one of her own. For my marriage. It's hard being married to someone with a chronic illness who's always in pain. And it's hard for us too because in the end we still walk this path alone. So I shared at the meeting that I pray for the desires of my heart, the things I put in my God box. I just didn't say what they were. Then several people after me will quote the step "praying only for knowledge of God's will for us and the power to carry that out." And they say that's all they pray for. And that makes me absolutely crazy. I always come home feeling shamed.
Tonight on the way home I got it in words for the first time what bothers me about that. Years ago I had a therapist say "the way you can recognize a healthy relationship is if it's ok for you to ask for a reasonable request from that person, a want or a need, and you'll get it at least most of the time." That really stuck with me. It was never ok to have a want or need or ask for anything in my alcoholic family. When I came into AA, I came from a very rigid religious background. It was a long journey from the religious to the spiritual. When I established a new and healthier relationship with the God of my understanding, it was important for me to have a God where I could ask for wants or needs FOR ME. I wouldn't be in a relationship with a person that I could never ask anything from for me, why would I be in a relationship with a God where I could never have wants or needs or requests. If that were the case, then I am a victim in my relationship with God having no voice, obliged to accept whatever is heaped upon me. But if I have a voice, then I can ask for what I want or need, and I have choices. It's a healthier relationship. I allow God to say no to me just as I allow anyone else in my life to say no. And if I get a no, then I pray for a new spiritual way of looking at things. Or I look at what can I have if I can't have this? And in between all that I try to live the very best life I can live. If God's will for me is to be happy, joyous, and free as the Big Book of AA tells me, it is pretty difficult to be happy, joyous, and free when I'm in pain all the time. To not ask for answers, improvement, a cure, or better pain control and keep taking every possible lead or action to get me there, is asking me to be victim to a God who doesn't want me to be happy, joyous, and free. So I continue to ask. Asking me to just accept that I'm in pain, I'll always be in pain, that's my lot in life and if God wanted it differently, God would change it so I should just pray to accept God's will and live with this, no thanks. I need a bigger God than that. Maybe that's what I'll say next time. It's a suggested program of recovery and my way works for me - 20 years straight/sober.
Tonight on the way home I got it in words for the first time what bothers me about that. Years ago I had a therapist say "the way you can recognize a healthy relationship is if it's ok for you to ask for a reasonable request from that person, a want or a need, and you'll get it at least most of the time." That really stuck with me. It was never ok to have a want or need or ask for anything in my alcoholic family. When I came into AA, I came from a very rigid religious background. It was a long journey from the religious to the spiritual. When I established a new and healthier relationship with the God of my understanding, it was important for me to have a God where I could ask for wants or needs FOR ME. I wouldn't be in a relationship with a person that I could never ask anything from for me, why would I be in a relationship with a God where I could never have wants or needs or requests. If that were the case, then I am a victim in my relationship with God having no voice, obliged to accept whatever is heaped upon me. But if I have a voice, then I can ask for what I want or need, and I have choices. It's a healthier relationship. I allow God to say no to me just as I allow anyone else in my life to say no. And if I get a no, then I pray for a new spiritual way of looking at things. Or I look at what can I have if I can't have this? And in between all that I try to live the very best life I can live. If God's will for me is to be happy, joyous, and free as the Big Book of AA tells me, it is pretty difficult to be happy, joyous, and free when I'm in pain all the time. To not ask for answers, improvement, a cure, or better pain control and keep taking every possible lead or action to get me there, is asking me to be victim to a God who doesn't want me to be happy, joyous, and free. So I continue to ask. Asking me to just accept that I'm in pain, I'll always be in pain, that's my lot in life and if God wanted it differently, God would change it so I should just pray to accept God's will and live with this, no thanks. I need a bigger God than that. Maybe that's what I'll say next time. It's a suggested program of recovery and my way works for me - 20 years straight/sober.