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guilty as charged! yes, i can go here very quickly and after my work experience on August second, this was certainly one of the top thoughts in my head. i am better at not vocalizing it as much, but that is not a symptom of spiritual health, but rather an expression of my character defect of desiring to look better than i am feeling. ironically, and yes i do understand what irony is, the times i feel this, are most often the times i have brought it down upon myself. yes, you heard that correctly, i am a victim of myself, and what i really want is a free pass, to do whatever it is that i want to do, and get away without what i consider to be negative consequences. or even worse, i take a risk and things do not manifest themselves according to my expectations.
before i really get rolling, and this morning it feels like i am certainly on a roll, i know that from time to time, i really am a victim of injustice. it does not happen very often, but it does happen. in those rare and infrequent instances, i need to go to the same place that i go to when all i want is what i want and feel victimized by not getting what i want. it is at those times, where my old understanding of what God and the spiritual life looks like, that comes back to haunt me. after all Santa God is supposed to give me everything i ask for in prayer, especially if i am doing the next right thing, at the next right time, and yet, i do not always get what i want, and in those times, when i am wailing about how unfair it is, i can go back to the whole mysterious ways paradigm or even worse, fall upon the sword that i was put in this life to suffer and my reward will be given to me, after i shuffle off to the unknown beyond. the real truth, when i am fit is, that life happens, that not all of the risks i take, emotionally, financially, or spiritually will pay off. so when i catch myself, bemoaning the consequences of what looks like a considered and careful decision to take a risk, i am feeling victimized and need to remember that not everything will go my way, in fact very little will.
using my latest case in point, leaving my full-time contract down in Denver. it certainly did look like that was moving in a direction i wanted to go and i gave up some financial security to make that move. and yet, after just two days i was dropped off, to look once more at a very uncertain future and wondering if i was going to end-up being a statistic. yes i wailed. yes i moaned and shook my fists at the sky, asking why me. and then i realized that was the way i felt way back when i got popped for my last use, betrayed by my physical processes and having to decide to take a risk moving into recovery and take the consequence of incarceration. neither of those choices were palatable to me back then and since i had been “around” the program for six or seven months and heard over and over again about the power of prayer, i was more than a bit pissed that i could no longer use without consequences. you know what? facing that decision was one of the turning points in my life and has led me to a place where i can ask for and get the sort of job and career that i have always felt entitled to me, i got what i always wanted and far more than i probably deserved.
which brings me back to the top, feeling that i am getting more than i deserve, is no different than wailing about how unfair it all is, they are just different expressions of the same idea, that i know what is best for me, and anything that deviates from what i think, has to be somehow wrong. self-will was the topic a few days ago, and this is certainly yet another expression of my self-will and the self-entitlement that i so carefully nurtured in active addiction.
this morning? i DO NOT wish to allow that to rule my life anymore, and the path to fulfilling that desire runs smack dab through STEP SIX, at the risk at sounding like a fellowship automaton and parroting the party line, there is a step for that and guess what i just happen to be on it!
it is a good day to be clean and as it may be my last to have her freedom to choose what i do, professionally for a while, i will certainly do my best to enjoy it and fill it as full as i possibly can with all the activities i want and need to do. after all, i GOT mercy and not justice way back when, so it is time i treated myself to that mercy as well.

∞ DT ∞