MIRACLES

Fate is what is going to happen unless there is some kind or change or intervention. The spiritual reality of recovery brings with it the power and responsibility to defy fate at it's worst. Recovery allows us to first see and then participate in God’s miracles. Some of us sense this in terms of personal power and it overwhelms us with implication. It is not our own personal power that works these miracles, it is the power of life and God in us all that is awake and directs all action in our lives. It is the power that links us together as humankind. It may be the power that all religions call God and the common truth of that acknowledgment howsoever we may differ as to language, culture and personal experience. Reflection plays a role in this. Whatever we do or let go is matched by the universe surrounding us. If we are indifferent and uncaring, we can expect the same from life. If we show concern for others and an ability for self improvement, we cannot escape the attention of those who treasure such inclinations.

While seemingly inconsequential, the changes for the better we permit ourselves add up to a lot of positive change for humanity. Like the myriad mistakes that eat up our lives in active addiction, the myriad corrections we make in recovery refill our lives. There is always one more miracle ahead of us. Miracles are unlikely or impossible in ordinary times. Miracles occur by the grace of God and represent evidence of the spirit working in the world.

An addict seeking recovery finds the only meeting in town. A member plagued by a need to make amends runs into someone on the street they thought was dead. A member who really needs a job, tries one more time, and gets it. Large and small miracles seem to take place endlessly among members who are active in recovery and working their steps. Like so many other things in life, we get more out when we put more in.

God is the doer of all things. We can participate, try to block the flow or get pushed out of the way. Naturally, when we were loaded, we were out of it most of the time. The ‘it’ we are out of is a healthy and functional state of mind, body and spirit. While wounds of the mind and body are more obvious in our society, wounds of the spirit show in our attitudes and our inability to process certain feelings, like enthusiasm and joy. As a result of our addiction, we became habituated to despair and misery to some extent and must relearn happiness, acceptance, and courage. Clean, we not only get to see the divine force move in our daily lives, we get to participate and play a role as part of the greater hand that is moving.

The biggest miracle we get to experience is the adventure of personality change. The more we learn, the more we realize that people just lose the capacity to change as they grow older. Many forces outside themselves make change almost impossible. Anonymity is one way we elude these forces. As long as we are clean, the old labels don't apply to us. By staying clean and living differently, other labels begin to apply to all others know and have personal knowledge of us and our current actions and reactions.

This is not a bad deal for society - or for us. Without an alternative, we are pretty much useless to ourselves and others. Most of us begin making amends immediately without realizing it by subtracting the burden our using takes out of the general economy and especially those close to us.

The catch is that we stay clean and grow spiritually. If we do not, we miss out on the rest of what recovery would have to offer us. It is all set up so that the benefits stay hidden until the moment they are released to us. How often have we in ongoing recovery reached points where we had no real reason to go on and yet we did. Later we found out that our fears were for nothing and miracles of precisely the type we yearned for were moving right to us. We forget that part of our human condition prevents us from being able to use in effect x-ray vision and see through our present reality on to what is headed our way. We just have to have the faith to wait and see.

Many of the miracles we experience come from the application of what we call spiritual principles. Although the words we use to describe these principles seem to change for us as we grow in recovery, they are convenient and give us a basic way to communicate our inadequacy along with areas of proficiency.

When we first hear the phrase "surrender to win," we assume this is a quaint way to sugar coat the fact that we can't handle many parts of life and any parts of using drugs. Later, we discover that surrender means not having to waste energy on futile enterprise or conflict. We can let our egos subside and escape graciously from situations where we used to feel the need to assert ourselves uselessly. Assertion is no substitute for ability.

When powerlessness became a word in our vocabulary, we lost the need to interfere as much in the affairs of others. Also, we could more clearly see when someone was actually meddling in our affairs. We are getting somewhere when we realize we are the someone we have been looking for to straighten out the messes we have made of our lives. Finding a way to communicate with our higher power through prayer or meditation allows us to grow into our own solution. Others can and should be allowed to help us out. We help others in our turn. Recovery is interactive. Still, we must bear like all creatures the burden of our choices be they for the most we could hope for or the least. Strangely, reality doesn't seem to care much what we get as long as we're happy with it and can take care of what is entrusted to our safekeeping.