Step by Step

I spoke to my new sponsor on the phone the other night. Just a way for us to become acquainted with one another as sponsor and sponsee. She told me how she is kind of hands off in her approach. I’m not sure if that’s what I need, but I’m willing to give it a try.

She said when I felt like I was ready, we would go through Step 4 together. Woohoo! From not working the steps to Step 4. Now we’re talking!

Then, for probably the first time, I sat down and really looked at the steps as they directly relate to my life.

Step 1: We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.
Yep. No problem there. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to look around and realize that.

Step 2: Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
I’m with ya. I can see the movings of God in my life, when I allow Him to enter, and truly realize the power he has to restore order and sanity to my world.

Step 3: Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
Whoa! Stop right there. This is where I stumbled when I read through the steps. Turn my will and my life over to God? Not so sure I can do that. Directing my life and exerting my will is what I DO. My husband’s alcoholic behavior has eroded my sense of trust so deeply that I’m not sure I can trust anyone — not even GOD — with my life.

It would be easy enough to tick past this step with a nod and a “yep.” But if I’m being completely honest, I am not ready to yield to the will of God over my own. So how do I get through this?

I think the first step is prayer. “Dear God, please open my heart to be able to give you my life and my will…” Saying that short prayer over and over is part of my plan. But moving from words to action, well…that could take some time.

I’m really not in a hurry. Like losing weight, I think the slower I move through these steps, the more likely the outcome — serenity — will stay with me. So I’m not going to look ahead to Step 4 or beyond. I’m not setting a deadline for myself for getting through Step 3. I’m just letting God know that I need him on this one, which, I think, is a step in the right direction.

I’ll cry if I want to

I don’t cry often. But I cried on Wednesday. As are most Wednesdays, it was an emotionally draining day for me. A feeling of being overwhelmed at work, followed by marriage counseling and Al-Anon at night. It was a day in which the tears seemed to have taken up permanent residence on the surface of my eyes.

I am really working on crying. It doesn’t come easily to me. Even when I get teary-eyed, I don’t often allow the drops to fall. I suck it up, stay strong and rationalize my way out of crying. When I showed up at marriage counseling, having asked my husband to bring me a mini bottle of wine for the session — I was serious, but he didn’t do it — it didn’t take long for my emotions to show.

“You look sad,” said our counselor.

“I am.”

“My job,” she said, “is to get you to stay in that sadness until you’re done with it.”

Uh? At $50/hour, that’s gonna be expensive. I think she must get a bonus for actually making me cry.

For me, crying shows a vulnerability that I don’t want to face. Holding it together, being the strong one in the face of adversity, that’s the image I want others to have of me. Yet, I am learning that sometimes it takes great strength of character to accept the pain that comes with — that calls up — a good cry.

So I cried there in our counseling session, feeling very uncomfortable crying in front of my husband, the one person I should feel most comfortable sharing my feelings with. But I did cry.

I went to Al-Anon that night and asked someone to be my sponsor. She, in the very nicest way possible, sort of declined. She agreed to be my temporary sponsor, to help me meet others who might be more available to sponsor me. While I understood and respected her perspective and was grateful for her offer to help, I couldn’t help but feel rejected. Then someone in the meeting who just rubs me the wrong way corrected me, privately, for something I had suggested. It all added up to one big reason to cry.

So I went home and I sat with my husbanded and opened my heart to him, allowing him to see my hurt and to just be there for me, when normally I would have stuffed those feelings of rejection and shame to a place where I didn’t have to deal with them, adding one more brick to the wall around my heart.

Recently I read Psalm 51:19 which says “My sacrifice, God, is a broken spirit.” I’m trying to remember that in those times of brokenness when I am able to let the tears flow, I am giving a gift to the God — and when I choose, the husband — who loves me.

Sponsorless

I didn’t have to make the decision, to ask or not to ask. My sponsor-to-be was not at tonight’s meeting. Of course I felt “Darn! I was ready to ask her.” When in reality, I don’t think I was, but given that the opportunity didn’t present itself, it was easy to be all confident about what I would have done. Guess God was giving me an opportunity to pray about it.

The meeting was a speaker meeting. The speaker was a member of AA who has done two stints in prison and told his story while wearing a house arrest anklet. I could alternately hear the pain and the joy in his voice as he recounted his addiction and his serenity. The way he described some of his feelings was exactly the way my husband has spoken of his own addiction. As he told his story, I realized that I was not sitting in judgement of what he had done in his past. Why do I find it so hard to avoid judgement when it comes to my husband’s own struggle with alcoholism.

After the meeting, I made it a point to speak to a couple of people. And I had arrived a few minutes early to help set up chairs and materials. Both of these activities seemed to have worked to make me feel more welcome at the meeting and more as though I belonged.

Maybe next week, I’ll have a sponsor and will finally be a real rabbit! (Velveteen Rabbit, anyone?)

Do I have the guts?

Tonight is Al-Anon night again. For the third week in a row, I’m going feeling like I need to ask someone to be my sponsor. Also for the third week in a row, I know I’ll probably chicken out.

I have someone picked out. I’m not sure why I think she’d be a good sponsor. I know she’s been in the program for 8 years. I know that her alcoholic is sober. I know that she is serious about the program and seems to do a lot of reading about recovery.

But what if I ask and she says no? I’ll be so embarrassed. I’ve considered other people in this group, but I always come back to this same woman.

The only thing I haven’t done is pray about it. Maybe I should give it another week.

Hello? Do you see me?

I went to Al-Anon again tonight and left feeling pretty lonely. I go to the meeting, sit down in the group. Listen, offer a little of where I am when the discussion comes to me. And then at the end of the meeting, everyone gathers in small groups of 2 or 3 to visit…and no one talks to me.

No one asks how things are going at home? If I enjoyed the meeting? Do I attend other meetings? In my mind, I want to consider this my “home” meeting, but isn’t home somewhere you feel wanted?

I’ve got enough Al-Anon under my belt to know that I shouldn’t be pointing the figure at what other group members are or are not doing and need to be looking to myself for a solution. I should engage others in conversation. I should tell someone personally what their comment meant to me.

But truthfully, I want to be taken care of. I want someone to reach out, pull me in and shepherd me through these first months of my own recovery. Is that too much to ask?

Still hiding

Wow. It’s been almost a whole month since I’ve posted on this blog. Not coincidentally, it’s been almost a whole month since I’ve been to Al-Anon, read One Day at Time and gone to couples’ counseling. I know that none of the above is good for me or for my relationship with dh, but it’s so much easier to coast along as if all is well.

DH moved back home a couple of weeks ago, and overall, I’d give the experience a B. We’ve had some adjustments to make, but in general its been good. In addition to allowing myself to hide out and pretend that “wife of an alcoholic” is not one of the roles I play in life, I’ve watched him let his own program slide some. He went from 5-6 meetings a week when he was living in the halfway house, to 2 meetings this week.

The ease with which I’ve let this all go makes me think that I really should find a sponsor, someone who will keep me accountable to my own recovery, regardless of what dh chooses to do or not do. But the prospect of actually asking someone to be my sponsor is scary. There are two women at my Al-Anon meeting who I know b/c dh is friends w/their dh’s thru AA. I’m not sure I want to be tied in that close — seems like it might be one big, messy, in-bred web. But who else would I choose? Hmmm….I’ll have to think about that.

I’ve also found a second meeting that I think I could go to, at least most weeks. It’s during the day, so I’ll need to block the time on my calendar. But it’s not too far from the office. Going to a new meeting seems really scary, though. The one I do attend (most of the time), I went b/c some ppl I know told me about it and I knew they’d likely be there. To choose one off a piece of paper and just show up, well that’s a whole different story.

It’s much easier to just stay hidden.

Excuse me while I hide

This post doesn’t have much to do with my husband’s addictions. I guess you could say it has to do with my own recovery from the disease of YES. There is a neighborhood picnic going on right outside my house right now and I am choosing not to attend.

It’s not that I don’t like my neighbors; I do (most of them at least). But I am just burnt out on mothering and socializing. I’ve spent the last two days at a sports tournament with my kids. I’ve chaperoned them at restaurants and micromanaged their behavior at church. And the thought of having to police them at this picnic is just beyond my capacity.

They are good kids. But BUSY. Especially the youngest. And my dh while he’s all “I’ll take care of it,” will get in his car and leave in 45 minutes, leaving me coax them back inside, do the bedtime routine, pack everyone up for camp, Bible school, babysitters tomorrow, and do a load of laundry tonight so I’ll have clothes to wear tomorrow for work.

If I told all of this to him, his response would likely be “Well, you’re the one who kicked me out of the house.” But I kicked him out because of his drinking and lying…

So, I guess this post is about his addictions. But mostly its about a party. Not the one happening on my block right now, but the pity party going on inside my head.

Called to Step 6

Tonight’s meeting was a step meeting focused on Step 6: Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

I haven’t actually started working the steps yet, though I think I’ve managed Step 1.

But as I listened to the discussion at the meeting, I knew that I’ve been being called to Step 6 for several years. I’ve been on a few retreats and had one significant dream, all of which I came away from with the message “Surrender.” Give it up, let go, quit fighting it…surrender.

And that idea seemed like an edict to throw up my hands in defeat and concede that I can’t do it — “it” being a variety of things from control what people think to how they act to continue living the impossibly crazy life I’ve been living.

But with a few months of Al-Anon under my belt, that same call to surrender seems like an invitation to a more serene life. I am beginning to understand that I was partially right, I CAN’T do it…ALONE. I have been and am continually called to allow God to restore me to sanity.

Hmmm….looks like I am moving into Step 2 by recognizing the call to Step 6.

ETA — There is a young woman I met at Al-Anon who hasn’t been there in a few weeks. I hope she is ok. Please pray for P. that God give her the grace that she needs at this time.

Where do I place my trust?

The topic of tonight’s meeting was trust. Boy, was that tailor made for me. Trust, or more specifically the lack of it, is one of the primary reason’s why I asked my husband to move out. I’ve asked myself over and over again how do you have a marriage without trust?

The chair who introduced the topic read from Courage to Change, August 19. It said, in part:

“I continue to find it hard to accept that I can’t trust the promises of someone I love. Yet I see that most of my heartache has come from my own refusal to accept reality.”

So, if I just accept that I cannot trust my husband, I will save myself the heartache and disappointment when I find that he has lied or been less than honest? That really challenges everything I know and believe about marriage. Again, as with other things in Al-Anon, I felt myself bristle defensively at what I was hearing. But I listened as the people in the room shared their thoughts. And I began to see and understand, if just a little.

“The only entity I can really trust is God. If I accept that all humans are imperfect, then I am less devastated by imperfect behavior.”

“If I live my life focused on when I can trust him again, I will go crazy. I can’t chase that. Instead, I have to focus on turning things over to my Higher Power and my relationship with Him.”

The other thing that struck me was the comment made by a young woman whose parent is the alcoholic in her life. She spoke of never knowing trust in positive things. “I could trust that there would be chaos.”

And I thought my own children probably have that same understanding. Not just chaos from alcoholism. But chaos from a mother too wrapped up in her own self to keep up with the laundry, or make a decent dinner every night or turn in permission slips on time.

That young woman’s comment was like a wake-up call to me. Yes, my husband’s alcoholism has created chaos in our home. But I am not doing my part to offer security where I can.

Now that’s a sobering thought…

Alcoholism is a disease?

The reading in my “One Day at a Time in Al-Anon” book today talks about alcoholism as a disease. It says with regards to relapses from sobriety, “I can no more blame the alcoholic than I would blame him for a relapse in any other disease.”

Yet I do — or I have done so. I have blamed my husband for his relapses, using them to point out his character defects. I know if his disease were cancer and he relapsed after some time in remission, I would be loving and sympathetic and would never consider placing blame on him. So why is it so hard for me to think of alcoholism in the same way?

I think it’s because the consequences of his alcoholism have a direct negative effect on me and on our children. I feel like “if he loved us enough, he wouldn’t choose the drink over us.” And I know that holding on to this errant way of thinking is what makes it harder to shed my anger.

It’s something I need to work on.