Freedom From Fear
This quote from “As Bill Sees It” is the one I have chosen as our topic this week. As many of you know I have been dealing with some health issues which have been increasing for the past while and while I thought that I had achieved, for the most part, freedom from fear I have found that it has been an underlying corrosive thread which has raised it’s ugly head once more.
“The achievement of freedom from fear is a lifetime undertaking, one that can never be wholly completed. When under heavy attack, acute illness, or in other conditions of serious insecurity, we shall all react to this emotion – well or badly, as the case may be. Only the self-deceived will claim perfect freedom from fear.” (page 263)
I personally know of a few people on this list that are dealing with health issues on a daily basis and I can only speak for myself but there have been days when the fear has taken hold and had its death grip on my heart and soul. I will state unequivocally that I am not afraid of death itself, it is the dying in pain that the fear comes from. Some days I can stay in the moment and be okay right where I am, but there are other days when I am off into the future whining that “it is going to be like this forever*.
I try to remind myself of what my past sponsor told me before she died “we have to accept where we are right now and hopefully build on that”. She would remind me that we are never given more than we can handle in a 24 hour period. Sometimes I doubt that, but so far with God’s help and that of my fellow travellers I have made it through with a modicum of peace.
This program gave me a life and it is up to me to live it to God’s will and his service for as long as I can. I can look back at my life from the vantage point of my years (77 tomorrow) and realize that it is only by God’s grace that I have made it this far with my mind still functioning and my body not in a worse state that it is because I know for a fact that the illnesses I have been contending with are a product of the lifestyle I lived, not only in my drinking years but before and into sobriety. God has been good to me and I thank Him daily for my life.
I am sure that there are others here that are going through their own brand of fear, not just health but other things and I would like to hear how you handle it on a daily basis. What gets you through? Of course feel free to talk about what ever troubles you at the moment.