The Challenge

Before recovery I was totally
outer-directed.  I did what I thought would bring me approval and acceptance.  I
came by these traits quite honestly as they run in my family.  Recovery from
alcoholism was the beginning of a new journey after many years of dependence on
alcohol to help me “cope” with life – which had become a downward spiral that
led me to many desperate places, internally and externally.  As long as I was
drinking, I could not deal with any of the other problems in my life, many of
which were caused by the altered perception that comes from using a substance to
make life “more enjoyable”.  Just as many were there before I ever picked up the
first drink. Until I had stopped drinking for several years through AA I
couldn’t tell the difference…  

After a time in recovery, I realized
that I still had problems with “people, places, and things”, mostly: people.  I
had a difficult time with boundaries – I didn’t have any.  Nor did I understand
that I not only have the right but also the responsibility to set them.  It was
difficult to even begin to sort that stuff out, as I seemed to “breathe in” the
expectations of those around me and instinctively tried to live up to them. 
This tendency started in my childhood.  The unwanted second child of a failed
marriage who should not have been born – that was me…  I’d heard it and
internalized the rejection that came with it.  I “knew” that I was unlovable and
it never occurred to me to doubt that perception.  Of course I didn’t doubt it –
THEIR reactions to me spoke louder than words and loomed very large in my young
mind.  Without knowing I was doing it I made them bigger than they ought to be –
I made them ‘god’. 

Knowing I was a disgrace to my
family, I left them behind; but I took with me the trait so common to
codependents: the fear created by rejection and disapproval issues and the
driving urge to overcome the consequences of living in fear.  The ‘unfinished
business’ from my childhood showed up in every relationship I ever got into – so
for a long time I thought that staying out of relationships altogether was the
answer.  In truth, this was just another fear: the fear of commitment, as I
would lose myself totally if I let them ‘in’ – plus the fear that they wouldn’t
like me if I did, because I “knew” what I was…  The ‘yo-yo effect’ was that I
was ok on my own for a while, then got lonely, then felt trapped and overwhelmed
and needed out, then was ok on my own – for a while…  It was a cycle that went
on and on for many years. 

In early recovery I fell in love –
which narrowed the participants in my cycle down to one and I ended up marrying
him.  Which I thought had stopped the cycle.  It hadn’t.   After several
challenges to my recovery from alcoholism and lots of journaling and praying and
meetings and step work I finally did the once unimaginable: I left him after 10
years of marriage.  The first 14 months apart from him I spent getting over
him.  I had to – the wounds were still ‘bleeding’ and oozing the pus of
bitterness and resentment over ‘what he had done to me’.  A 4^th Step
inventory on the pain and disappointment of the failed marriage helped greatly
in getting past the emotional bondage that had come out of the ‘bond’ I had
thought it was supposed to be.  I let go of him – and finally ‘remembered’
myself.  After all, I had been a person in my own right before I met him… Which
was true, to a point.  In all actuality, it became a return to the original
‘tapes’ that had been recorded long before he ever showed up in my life.

Sober and in a growing relationship
with God, I was now a ‘single’.  Though this means ‘dating’ for some peers I
didn’t mean that I could – or should.  I needed to take time for myself, to do
some healing.  I did not trust my own judgement in relationships.  The patterns
of dys-functionality were all over my life… Through the pain and in the healing,
my relationship with God grew to a new dimension. And so the Real Challenge
began…

 The sorting out of ideas that I had
accepted as “true” turned out to be the most challenging and taxing process that
ever took place for me.  It lasted 18 months.  In this process I became aware of
how much I was suffering due to things I did not understand.  Of the numerous
ideas that I had always believed without ever really looking at them, many came
in the form of “God wants you to …”.   Someone had told me what THEY thought God
wanted me to do or be, and I had never doubted them.  I began to question at
this point the various ideas that I had been taught. 

Starting with the beliefs I had
about me, I began to discover that at one point I must’ve been ok… when I was
born, before I had any opportunity to do anything “wrong”.  I began to ask
questions regarding “right” and “wrong” as these were taught to me, and to look
at the places from which they originated.  Many things I absorbed were the
beliefs and attitudes of people who were spiritually ill, just like me.  I began
to question if these ideas had something to do with what God had said – and what
exactly He Himself had said about such matters.  I studied with concordances and
other help tools to seek the pertinent information.  I made some interesting
discoveries. I began to discover that human error had, many times, been the
cause of quite erroneous conclusions. 

“The traditions of men” vs “God’s
doctrine” became the arena of my search.   I began to discover that in the realm
of the spirit many times the error is rooted in a spiritual lie – that many
times the root cause of “error” is really a successful attempt to deceive those
who can be deceived.  That no human is ever exempt from this possibility –
everyone of us is (and always has been) a “target” for the spiritual entity that
seeks to deceive, in order to draw us to himself rather than to see us draw
closer to God.  Some attempts at deception would actually convince that there is
no such thing as an entity that deceives… to better ensure that we ignore our
own inborn senses!  They become dulled as we calmly ‘accept’ that “we can never
understand these things”… as this is what we are taught (by … people who may
very well be deceived).  As long as I believed that idea, I depended on someone
else to “teach me”, on their understanding to help “lil ole me” as I just can’t
figure out a thing… and I continued to make them “god” in my mind.  Then I
finally took my eyes off “people” and focused on God…

There is a dimension beyond my human
understanding, and THEIRS – whoever I assume to be the ‘authority’ on such
questions…  They are human, too, and just as error-prone as I turned out to be. 
I no longer believe myself to be ‘fundamentally flawed’ as I once did – this was
part of the “error net” I got caught up in before I could even think.  The
spiritual realm is a lot bigger than I realized…  certainly a lot bigger than
“just me”.   There is more to the picture than the trouble I have and the things
that are “wrong” with me – according to someone else’s opinion.  To think of me
in this way keeps me believing I’m “all that” – negatively.  It keeps me stuck
in a form of self-centeredness that is the root cause of my codependency and
also my alcoholism.  To trade in “my old ideas” merely for “THEIR old ideas”
kept me stuck in the problem. 

There is a struggle going on indeed
– a spiritual struggle.  I used to think that this struggle originated in ME.  I
found out that it doesn’t… that I have simply somehow become the “rope” in a
spiritual tug-of-war that isn’t mine and never was.  That this is the fate most
humans have in this day and age: to sort out the lie from the truth, and to get
free from the bondage of spiritual illness running rampant in this generation. 
I am not the cause of this – nor am I the cure for it.  I have no control over
these matters.  Seeing the bigger picture and at least a little part of the
bigger picture has set me free from the life-long struggle I’ve had with CONTROL
based on fear.

I’ve dared to question every idea
that was passed on to me.  Many of them I have rejected…  In the process, I was
given the freedom to no longer have to believe anything that is self-based
whether the basis is my ego or someone else’s.  It has been my experience that
God will not desert me when I attempt to seek His understanding of all matters
that concern me – and that it is often very different from that which I was
taught.  I have willingly submitted myself to Him and no longer submit myself to
“people, places or things” as they no longer rule me.  The Freedom that has come
out of this is incredible.  I am grateful that I took on the Real challenge – to
not let anyone define God for me, or explain “what God wants” but to truly let
Him lead me through the troubled sea of human and spiritual confusion.  It has
become the Great adventure of Living, beyond anything I could ever imagine.

Love, Simba