The Blessing

This is a story, that the late Pat C. who had over 40 yrs in Al-Anon, used to tell. There are also books you can read about this very same thing.

It's called "The Blessing."

At birth every child should receive this blessing.

To be:
Named
Accepted
Revered
Respected
Cherished
To be Loved

Sometimes this doesn't happen. Not because the parents wouldn't, although that certainly can be the case, but because they couldn't. You see, they had not received it themselves. You cannot transmit what you don't have.

This is often the case with families affected by the disease of alcoholism or drug addiction. The parents are unable to give the blessing because, as I mentioned above, they either weren't given it themselves or they couldn't give it because the disease was alive and well in their homes. This is not to say that everyone who is born into the disease never gets the blessing. Some do.. Some still get this gift from one or both of their parents. I have a best friend from high school who grew up in the disease. Her father was a severe alcoholic, but she did get the blessing from her mother. I have to tell you, there were many days when I was a teenager that I wished her mother was mine.

I know that my parents tried to give me the blessing. However, there was insanity in the house I grew up in. Lot's of fighting. Lot's of verbal, emotional, physical and sexual abuse.
So the blessing that my mother and father tried to give me didn't have a chance at surviving. They did the best they could. My mother got the blessing. My father, however, never got the blessing from his parents. He lost his father at age 1 and his mother didn't want him. By the time he was 3, she had left him and his sister in an orphanage in Florida.

In recovery, we learn that God sends us people to stand in the gap. There are so many women who have given me the blessing. They have loved me unconditionally and because of that, I have learned how to give love unconditionally. I have learned what that feels like and what it looks like.

I stand in the gap for other women in my life as well. There is one particular young woman that God has put in my life currently, that needs a mother. Needs to be loved and cared for. I can be that for her.
When I give of myself in that way, I get paid back ten fold. My heart is filled and I am healed further.

The journey of Recovery is a long one. I trip, stumble and fall a lot, but I know that God's holding me. I will never be perfect. I don't try to be.
If and when I fully recover from my alanonisms, it will be time for God to take me home to him.

Until then, I'll keep practicing.
I'll keep learning lessons.
I'll get back on the beam I fell off of almost a year ago and work on my disease.

I know God's will for me will never take me where God's grace will not protect me.

I've been self-will run riot this last year. That's not a secret.
For today, I've made a decision to turn my will and my life over to the care of God as I understand him.
It's a process and I get a daily reprieve, contingent upon my spiritual maintenance. I have to make the decision each day. I have to do the footwork and be the vehicle in which God can drive change.

I know Al-Anon and AA works. I have seen it with my own eyes and I have had it work in my own life.
We're not bad people... We're sick people trying to get well.

That's enough for me.