Belonging...

I have found it hard to get an article written and posted for a couple of days now.  During that same time, I've been struggling meeting other commitments and also have been doing some reflection around AA's 12^th  Tradition (anonymity).  Funny how, for this alcoholic, the most difficult part of my existence is to just belong into my own life.

Huh.

I can't tell you the number of times I've been on the phone with my sponsor and I hear myself whining "...well, it may be a perfectly fine life, but it sure doesn't feel like my life..."

It's about surrender and sacrifice.

Bill wrote in the essay "Why Alcoholics Anonymous is Anonymous" (Language of the Heart):

...Powered by alcohol and self-justification, many of us have pursued the phantoms of self-importance and money right up to the disaster stop sign. Then came AA. We faced about and found ourselves on a new high road where the direction signs said never a word about power, fame or wealth. The new signs read, "This way to sanity and serenity--the price is self-sacrifice."

I was marveling with a sponsee, new in sobriety the other day, how we - even with years of experience, still continually balk at this sacrifice.  If I can't uphold the image I want, if I can't have the relationship I want, if I can't eat/drink what I want, when I want it, if I can't do what I want when I want - then, I may as well just die.

And so, many of us die.  Some slowly.  Others, not so much.

But, when I let go of that almighty "I", the reward is sanity and serenity.

Amazing.