“What’s In A Miracle, Anyway?”

I got some bad news on Sunday that has put my world into turmoil. It’s got me questioning a lot, mostly myself and mistakes I’ve made in the past. I’m wondering how much longer I’m going to have to pay for them. The news has shaken me at the foundation, really. It’s tough to walk through. They say that ‘this too shall pass’ works both ways, meaning that the bad times don’t last forever, but neither do the good times. In this moment, I’m thinking the same could be said about ‘more will be revealed’—that what is revealed can be good or bad.

The NA ‘Just for today’ daily meditation comes to me in my e-mail. There was a passage in today’s which really struck me: “living life on life’s terms can send shock waves even through the recovery of long-time members”. The meditation was talking about the need to avoid painting an overly-rosy picture for newcomers. Not that we should whine about the difficult times, but that it’s important for newcomers to see that it really is possible to handle life’s difficulties without resorting to our old ways of dealing with them. We don’t have to reach for the bottle, or for the bag. We don’t have to check out. We really can get through whatever it is sober. Even if it doesn’t seem possible, it is. And talking about our difficulties while showing we’re dealing with them without getting loaded can be a powerful message to newcomers. To those of us going through those difficult times, getting through them without getting loaded can seem like an outright miracle.

It is.

A lot of people feel that becoming upright citizens, through working the program of Recovery, means refraining from the use of profanity. I’m not one of those. Life is fucking hard, sometimes an evil bitch-goddess, and shit happens. But this is one of the reasons why we used in the first place: we didn’t know how to or couldn’t handle life any other way. If a woman left me, I got loaded. If a friend betrayed me, I got loaded. Fucked up day at work? Yep, got loaded then too... even if I had already gotten loaded to get through it to begin with. It was my answer to everything. I didn’t have any other solutions. And I didn’t have any faith in myself to deal with it any other way.

At a recent meeting, I heard someone talk about the ‘no matter what’ club. I haven’t heard it spoken of like that before, but I liked the sound of it and I do consider myself a member. One of the things I tell myself through tough times is that I don’t have to get loaded—no matter what. Right now, I’ve got craziness with my job situation and I’m having major issues in one of my close friendships. It’s pretty hard stuff, to put it mildly, and I’m really feeling like the rug has been pulled out from under me in a number of different ways. My preconceptions are being challenged. What I had come to depend on in my life as stable is proving that it might not be so. It’s hard. It hurts. It’s pretty fucking scary, to be honest. But I know that it’s okay.

Life goes on, no matter what we do. Everything is always changing. For human beings, creatures who seek permanence, this can be really upsetting. We can lose our cool. We can cause all kinds of damage with our reactions, with our attempts to control. Recovery teaches us this: don’t. Stop trying to control. Let. Go. Accept what is, let your higher power guide you, and move forward.

Some people talk in meetings about the successes they’ve had, thanks to their recovery. They get new cars, great relationships, go back to school, even land their dream jobs. That’s great, and there is nothing at all wrong with being grateful for the good things in our lives. But for me, the real miracle has been and continues to be that I can face life on life’s terms; that I can get through the good times and (especially) the bad times without getting loaded. For someone who once used getting loaded as a response to anything and everything that life threw my way, THAT is the miracle.