Desire To Be

I feel like I'm in a holding pattern mode, waiting for something to happen. That's how I functioned throughout childhood. Never living in today, but waiting for something to happen. Two weeks from today I will be starting my first full day in rehab. I am still as scared as I've ever been about going.
It feels like the first day of grade one except they keep you there for 20 days straight.
But I am going.
I'm not giving myself any other option.
It's getting harder to live in today while waiting for these next two weeks to pass.

My addictions counselor tod me this week to be prepared that other clients in the program may give me some flack for being in rehab 19 years after my last drink. Maybe I can tell them I'm a slow learner.
She said it was going to be a good opportunity for me not to apologize for being there. I told her I had read just that morning on page 82 of the Big Book that "...a (person) is unthinking when (they) say that sobriety is enough." I have those words underlined and highlighted in my book because I am a poster child for that sentence. I don't feel any shame about it. Knowing that I need help and am reaching out for it feels like a gift today. It doesn't always, but today it does. The rest of the time I feel like I am screaming in silence and saying to myself WTF did I sign up for?

A week ago at my AA meeting I felt like I got a kick in the pants simply by listening to others share. It had been a rough week and I was feeling it. During the meeting I recognized that I wasn't doing the daily things that can set a person in the right direction at the beginning of the day. No reading the Big Book and other daily readings. No prayer. No surrender. If I want what others have in the program then I need to do what they do. When I got home I moved my books and journal to my bedside table and this week I have been doing those things before I even get out of bed. I know if I leave it until after I am out of bed that I can easily get distracted by anything on the way from my bedroom to the rest of the house. Like taking a detour when I come to the computer room only to emerge several hours later without any memory of what I wandered down the hallway for in the first place. So to sit with my journal and Big Book and other helpful reading material first thing in the morning feels good. Even on the days when I feel like I am simply going through the motions.

There is something about praying Thy will be done that puts life in perspective.

Yesterday I arrived at my meeting to find the door locked and no one with a key. Enough of us arrived though that we simply moved the meeting to a park that was a few blocks away. Someone had a Big Book in their van and we were set. Nine of us recovering alcholics sharing our experience, strength and hope with one another on a beautiful sunny summer day. What a privilege.

There is so much I haven't let go of. Today it's enough to know that I desire to let go of it. That letting go of it is possible. That by some mysterious combination of my willingness and God's grace, change can happen.

I found this gem this morning as I was reading:

"It is not what you are nor what you have been that God see with his all-merciful eyes, but what you desire to be."
~from the Cloud of Unknowing quoted by Sister Jeremy Hall in Silence, Solitude Simplicity.