The Faith That Can Meet Any Emergency (step seven continued)

I have it (the faith that can meet any emergency), and I don’t.

For early sobriety, I think faith in AA is necessary. When things are tough, people who have recently stopped drinking need something to give them the strength to go through the undrugged emotions in order to maintain sobriety, grow in sobriety, and lay the foundation for a sober life. Emergencies, by definition, are usually unexpected and require immediate action. Failure to act in an emergency, or acting the wrong way, could result in harm. Meeting such an occasion with faith is an interesting concept. So at first, I think we need faith that we’ll be able to do it sober, whatever the outcome. Working the program of AA doesn’t render us right in all circumstances. I think we have a better chance of being right, since we study and share these ideas with others who are walking the same path. The safety net of talking about these things after they occur also helps us do better the next time.

As time has passed for me in sobriety I’ve come to believe that only do I make better decisions and perform better actions when I’m sober, I also know that my alcohol use would be a complicating factor, making any given emergency that much worse. If I can do nothing more than stay sober in a crisis, I’ve sill done a lot.

I’ve been through some tough stuff in sobriety. I struggle with characterizing my particular “stuff” as “tough.” There is always, for me, the thought that relatively speaking, my lot on Earth is so much better than what has been experienced by most of humanity through all time, and now. I’m going to try hard to leave that thought out of it for the purpose of this post, and to just see my stuff in relation to my particular time and place, and to the people I share the rooms of AA with.

The most difficult things I’ve encountered in my life are the troubles my loved ones have had. Without getting too personal about them, I’ve worried about my immediate family and my extended family. I and they have had health scares, and over time, people have died. I’ve lost primary relationships, and I went through the dog attack I described a bit earlier. I’ve been financially frightened, though I have never lacked anything I need.

The literature (I’m terrible with this and I don’t know if it’s the Big Book or the Twelve and Twelve) touches the core of it for me when it says that sometimes we go through terrible things. I have never been able to get behind the concept of “it will all work out alright.” Sometimes it just doesn’t. The part of the literature I’m thinking of lists calamities from unrequited love to losing a child in a war. Seriously bad stuff. What I understand from it is that as humans, we are fragile, and terrible things happen to us.

I struggle to accept this as truth in life for me. I don’t know why, and it’s my belief that we don’t get to know why, in essence, bad things happen to good people. Some others believe that they know why, and maybe they do. I wouldn’t think to argue it with anyone. Some make sense of it by believing in a life after death. They may be right. I don’t know.

I approach the really scary emergencies of my life with a faith that I will probably get through, one way or another. At one point I won’t make it anymore. I can’t see the end of my time here on Earth. Looking back at emergencies that have passed and resolved for the good or for the bad, I can see that faith can help me be strong during the emergencies and act in as good a way as is possible for me. I can help others through also at times. The program boils things down sometimes so that I know, for example, in an unbearable sadness, time will pass and the feelings will pass and I don’t have to feel them forever.

So at the place where my faith meets my emergency, I can be strong, I can ask for help, I can follow directions, I can get through. At least I have so far.

Nearly All A.A.’s Have Found (Step Seven continued)

Nearly all A.A.s have found, too, that unless they develop much more of this precious quality than may be required just for sobriety, they haven’t much chance of becoming truly happy.  Without it, they cannot live to much useful purpose, or, in adversity, be able to summon the faith that can meet any emergency.

I had to look back at what I had written about humility in order to begin to intellectually wrestle with these concepts.  “Just for sobriety,” I had to accept, to some degree, that I am the same as everyone else.  Not better, not worse.  I had to accept that the people of AA had an answer to my problem that I had been unable to attain on my own.

If I stopped there, or, as is sometimes tempting, took the fact of my humility and program out into the real world and used it as something that actually makes me feel superior to the poor schleps who don’t have a program, I couldn’t be truly happy.  Why not?  I can’t be truly happy when I’m feeling truly superior.  Or inferior. I can’t forget the important flip side of humility where I stop being the same as other people and find myself worse off than they are.  There are infinite ways to do so.

When I think of living to a useful purpose, my work comes immediately to mind.  I will have to look at it more and in depth, because so many of the guiding principles of the program and of religion come into play for me through work.  It’s also a work crises for the most part that has driven me back to these steps and this examination.

I have other useful purposes.  I’m part of a nuclear and extended family, a community, a country on earth.  I’m part of the fellowship of AA and a sort of reluctant part of a church community.  I have useful purposes as a mother, daughter, dog mommy, cat mommy, wife, friend, consumer, neighbor.  To live to a useful purpose is an interesting lens through which to look at what I do and who I am.

I think the faith that can meet any emergency is huge concept and deserves to be considered all on its own.  I’ll do that in a separate post.