Friends, Romans, Pigs: Lend Me Your Ears
(Reprinted from my blog post August 9, 2018)
Being an alcoholic can be a gift. Yeah, that's right. Wrap it up and tie it with a nice little bow. You have the power to turn a curse, like being a fall-down drunk, into a blessing from God.
Theresa, at my home group A.A. meeting, said, "It's not what happens to me. It's what I do with what happens to me."
Like makin' a silk purse from a sow's ear, I guess. We get stuck sometimes holding that sow's yucky ear. God probably didn't drop it into our laps. We went Van Gogh on that poor piggie all on our own free will. So what are you going to make from your sow's ear?
I like to quote The Purpose-Driven Life (https://www.goodreads.com/author/list/711.Rick_Warren). "God also planned where you'd be born and where you'd live for his purpose. Your race and nationality are no accident.... He planned it all for his purpose."
He also gives us free will. We can pawn the mower we stole from our neighbor's garage, we can have an affair with the married woman at work, we can drink alcohol until we drown out some forgotten-about pain. What then can we do with all our free-will mess-ups?
If we work our way through A.A.'s Twelve Steps, we eventually make it to the final one: "Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics and to practice these principles in all our affairs."
We have the God-given opportunity to ease other alcoholics' pain because we have experienced it for ourselves. We see many along our own road to recovery who are also on their own interstates, ready to encourage and mentor, showing us the lovely silk purses they have made.
Whether she made this up on the spot or heard it somewhere, there stands Theresa reminding us: "It's not what happens to me. It's what I do with what happens to me."
Being an alcoholic can be a gift. Yeah, that's right. Wrap it up and tie it with a nice little bow. You have the power to turn a curse, like being a fall-down drunk, into a blessing from God.
Theresa, at my home group A.A. meeting, said, "It's not what happens to me. It's what I do with what happens to me."
Like makin' a silk purse from a sow's ear, I guess. We get stuck sometimes holding that sow's yucky ear. God probably didn't drop it into our laps. We went Van Gogh on that poor piggie all on our own free will. So what are you going to make from your sow's ear?I like to quote The Purpose-Driven Life (https://www.goodreads.com/author/list/711.Rick_Warren). "God also planned where you'd be born and where you'd live for his purpose. Your race and nationality are no accident.... He planned it all for his purpose."
He also gives us free will. We can pawn the mower we stole from our neighbor's garage, we can have an affair with the married woman at work, we can drink alcohol until we drown out some forgotten-about pain. What then can we do with all our free-will mess-ups?
If we work our way through A.A.'s Twelve Steps, we eventually make it to the final one: "Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics and to practice these principles in all our affairs."
We have the God-given opportunity to ease other alcoholics' pain because we have experienced it for ourselves. We see many along our own road to recovery who are also on their own interstates, ready to encourage and mentor, showing us the lovely silk purses they have made.
Whether she made this up on the spot or heard it somewhere, there stands Theresa reminding us: "It's not what happens to me. It's what I do with what happens to me."
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