Brokenness....

Or "Why It Sometimes Takes A Sledge-Hammer To Get Through To Me."

There are times that I can be really still and really welcoming to hearing God in and around me. I can be willing and open. I can be responsive and serene. Yeah, there are those times.

Unfortunately, more often I am hard-headed and determined to go my own direction, and well obsess about things that I feel are important. I can be impatient and forceful. And, I can continue in this direction until I crash.

This isn't to say that those things I choose to focus on or obsess about are not good things, and they may even be in the direction God has for me. But, I, in my personality or disease, warp it and take it to an extreme. I' ll hear whispers: "Slow down." "Wait" "Let It Go" -- but I continue in my true breakneak fashion. Until...I end up in some sort of physical or mental pain. And then, that pain even needs to be extreme to really get my attention.

This is me right now. In my extremeness over the last few weeks I have stopped taking care of myself and I have continued to push forth frantically in getting my house ready - in my mind it became something that I have to do right this very minute or it won't happen at all. Yes, things need to be done around the house and that is okay. But it doesn't have to be done in the next three days or even the next three weeks for it to happen at all. But, when I am in the midst I cannot think like that - I am stuck. So, I stop eating regular meals and since I stop eating regularly I stop taking my vitamins. I start going to bed later and later until I am working on 4-5 hours of sleep. My wants and desires, and my drive, become more important to me than my recovery connections and my spiritual health.

Yesterday and today I have been hit with the sledgehammer. My body is physically sore in so many places and I could not think due to exhaustion. My heart and being are heavy and depressed again. Today, I have tried to be better. I made it to a meeting and came home and took a nap. I have only done the necessities around the house and I have just sat and tried to be in meditation with God.

You, see, I have to be grateful for what I do have. This month I always think back to the January that my life turned a corner. The beginning of the year of brokeness in my life. Thirteen years ago I was a lost soul. I didn't want God in my life. I didn't want to be in my life. My life rotated around alcohol, drugs, self-abuse and the various men of my life. I was 18 - and I didn't want to live anymore. I was admitted to a hospital on January 27th and I spent several months there as an in-patient and out-patient. I was stabilized and told that I probably had an addiction problem. I tried at first to work on that - but wasn't ready, so for the next year I steadily became worse. You see, at first I still had friends in my life and other things - I had, in order to do something different - to become open to God - I had to become broken and it had to take a sledgehammer to do it. Fast forward to the next January and those friends I had were gone - tired of my bull. My parents - frustrated and worried about me. Myself - I just didn't want to go back to the hospital even though that was where I was heading. It was only then I could go to God and ask him to help me. It was only then that I could actually allow myself to hear Him, to feel Him.

I have gotten better, and it doesn't require me to reach these depths anymore. But, I still have to become broken out of my willful, self-focused, obstinate behavior in order to become willing to have God work in my life.

These past years I have not remembered this lesson all that well. But, I am grateful that I did remember it this year. That I was able to see the self-destructiveness that had re-entered my life and that there was a place that I could go. And, today, with the craziness in my life and my mood - a gray, gloomy cloud - I can be so very grateful for the life God gave me in spite of myself. I can be grateful that I am alive today, that I have a house to worry about, children to drive me batty and a husband that I can become irritated with. Because in all of those things I have love - love for them and love given to me. Love and gratitude - what a foreign ideas those were to me at one time.

Peace,

Amy