stubborn elephantz.mp3

content: Mar 13, 2017 · podcast: Nov 14, 2020

Audio (MP3): 20170323 - Looking for a road to walk

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One of my absolute favorite lines in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous is the last pertinent idea of How It Works (PDF):

God could and would if he were sought.

We only have to seek god, that is all.

Half the time I don’t feel in touch with anything but I’m looking for a road to walk, searching for spiritual footing. I'm questing, out to slay demogorgons and smell the flowers.

When I first got sober I had to climb out of that damn hole I'd dug and unfortunately when I got out there was a huge hill before me. And then it was all uphill from there. The good news though is that the incline isn’t as steep the higher we climb, the farther we go.

No matter what I'm going through, the pain, the anxiety, the fear, the emotional puke -- they all gradually relax their grips the more I keep walking through whatever fire has been lit.^[1] Then one day I realize that my feets are no longer smoking and only mildly warm, just a smolder.

It feels chaotic at times because the pain seems to come in lightning bolts that I was never expecting.^[2] I've always felt blindsided by them. What the fuck was that? And then it can take months or even years to recover from those bolts. It'd be nice if pain went away as fast as it seems to come but it doesn't.

So what I do is pray for miracles because God could and would if sought. God just does for us what we cannot do for ourselves. Lightning bolts can come out of the blue but so do miracles.

As an example: we'd moved to Oregon state in late 2000 right before the tech bubble publicly burst in 2001. It was impossible for me to find work and financial times were lean and then dire. In 2004 I hadn't worked full time in I don't know how long. I'd applied for jobs of all shapes and sizes, had my resume on all the online job boards, blah, blah.

I mean, you have applied to everything on wheels from Toyota to Schwinn. You're gonna get a job any day now.
– Caroline Butler, Mr. Mom

And then one day I'm watching Mexican Wrestling in broad daylight and I get a phone call^[3] from a recruiter looking to fill a contract spot at Microsoft. Again, what the fuck was that? I couldn't believe it. Why the hell would someone call me of all people to go hammer on a keyboard at Microsoft?

I worked there for a year as a contractor and then full-time until late 2006, met some of the best people I've ever known. My world was all of a sudden bigger inside and out. It was one of those eras in life that I still treasure when I look back.

My point is that one phone call from Vinny changed everything, changed everything from there on out. For the better. It's like when you're walking down a street in a shady neighborhood and then turn right and all of a sudden you're in the safest, hippest part of town.

Even though I was drinking at the time I knew that telephone ring was all God's grace. It wasn't anything I'd done, wasn't anything I'd surely deserved.

It's easy to loose sight of hope when the times are dark but expect miracles, peeps. They're coming soon to a theater near you -- just be open to receiving them and then embrace them when they come.

And please don't think I've transcended up to any spiritual, moral higher ground. Some days I get sucked into playing video games for hours because I don't wanna climb no damn hills. Or I'll watch Mexican wrestling because it makes me feel good and distracts me from responsibilities and real life. It's risky but I do it because I don't have any real consequences.

So with all that said, my actions seem to influence how I feel much more than the other way around.

If I act like an asshole then I feel like one. If I act like a good person then I feel like one, too.

I just try to be the best me that I can in any given moment. And then I seek god's will. That's all.

Last thing: just look for God and worry about the finding later.

#alcoholism