One of my favorite acronyms is one for faith: Finally Allowing It to Happen. For me, the dogged pursuit of faith was a driving force in my early recovery. My dogged pursuit of happiness had only resulted in my falling into alcoholism; once I was sober (or dry, shall we say), I was desperate to find something, anything, to replace alcohol. So began my quest for faith.
When I was young, I had a child’s faith, complete trust in my parents and in some invisible being I heard about in Sunday school that I was told I should believe in. As I experienced more of the world, as well as life in my family, that faith and trust began to erode. I went through the appropriate motions, getting confirmed in the church of my parents’ choice, doing everything I was told by my parents and teachers, but there was a disconnect between my beliefs and what I experienced. I held on to the notion that everyone knew better than I did, and if I just obeyed well enough, I’d be fine. But the harder I tried, the worse I felt. And the more I saw in the behavior of those I trusted, the more confused I was about right and wrong. When alcohol came into my life, all the confusion and false beliefs were cemented in place. Unknowingly, I had developed a faith in the very thing that was destroying me.
I remember once talking with my husband about the difference between persistence and beating your head against a wall. He pointed out that it has to do with dogma. I had to look that up to get a deeper understanding, and sure enough, dogma was the inflexibility and rigidity that had imprisoned me for so long. I was still in pursuit of something that I couldn’t quite seem to grasp. I had been in AA for some time, going through all the appropriate motions (where have we heard that before?), but true faith in a higher power was just beyond my reach. No matter how hard I tried, there was some undefinable distance between me and God. I just didn’t get “it.”
There have been times in my life that felt like the end of the world as I knew it, but each time something pulled me through and gave me something better (not that I knew it was better at the time…). When my dad died, I stopped drinking. When 911 happened, I started going to AA. When my mom died and the pandemic hit, I went into a period of doing nothing – I wasn’t depressed, or experiencing what I had known as depression, but I just wasn’t forcing myself to do anything. I simply let myself be. Now I see the gift in that period of time. I finally was able to let it happen. I experienced faith in a whole new way, but it wasn’t until I let go of the pursuit that it came to me. Let go and let God…finally!
Thank you all for the opportunity to chair this meeting. Please feel free to share on this topic or anything else that might be burdening you.