Came to believe………

Getting sober was a BIG problem for me most of my life. Somewhere in my early program with the State, the urge to drink was lifted from me. I can’t really pinpoint the reason, but can only relate what I did prior.
While I was in a dorm at CRC, I met a guy that was doing a bible correspondence course and he seemed to be taking the incarceration and program in “stride”. I didn’t really understand how anyone could be “comfortable” being where we were at. Locked up, in prison, and mandated each day to attend the Amends Recovery program, the being in groups each day with other inmates, listening to a lot of BS from most, and not understanding a lot from those that were “working their program”. All I could think of was the day I’d be released from there, and could once again do as I wished.
Having had quite a bit of religious upbringing in my early youth, I was aware of the religious beliefs and the bible. I had lived with Baptist preachers as foster parents in my 5-9 years of age days, and attended Catholic teaching from age 11 to 14, receiving communion and confirmation of the Catholic Church.
At age 9, a major event happened in my young life, with my birth mother “taking” me from the foster parents off the steps of church one Sunday morning in 1955. I don’t have much memory of my youth prior to being reunited in 1955, probably my mind blocking it from my memory. Since my recovery began in 2000, piece by piece, parts of that life emerge. As the saying goes, “more will be revealed”.
Getting back to the bible study and the urge to drink being lifted from me, I jumped into the study with “both feet”, going thru the lessons quickly and getting more and more. It seems now that it was like getting a “review” of my religious backgrounds and experience in the church. I had read the bible in my youth complete, a couple of times, so it was not new to me, just refreshing my memory and reconnecting me with my GOD.
For reasons unknown for certain to me, I strayed away from my religious beliefs sometime in early adulthood, and after the death of my 1st son in 1980, gave up on religion altogether. I know that I had blamed GOD for my transition from a foster mother that I only knew as “mother”, and then again for taking our first born at age 11 in 1980.
At this time as I look back, and as I process what I read this morning from Dick B’s story, I have a tendency to think that my “straying” away from my beliefs, just MIGHT have had an effect on my becoming alcoholic/addict, or in staying in that life for such a long time. I can’t even say for certain that my picking up my faith again was everything that brought about recovery for me, but I’m sure it had a lot to do with it. I think that being more comfortable with myself gave me the stamina to absorb and retain what the program was teaching and offering me. My retention as to quoting from the Big Book or the Good Book is not there, but the readings and teaching are imbedded in self. My actions and thoughts retain those teachings and readings, even if my mouth doesn’t speak them as read.
Step 2 of Alcoholics Anonymous say: “Came to believe that a power greater than myself could restore us to sanity”. I believe today that by reestablishing my contact with my GOD, that it gave me the strength to drive out that urge to drink, along with working the 12 steps, prayer and meditation, wanting something other than what I had been living for the prior 35+ years, and the willingness to change. Daily meetings and sometimes more were sure the extra kick in the butt that helped also.
When I was finally released from the CRC program in 2002, I was sent to a transition recovery house in Vallejo. It was an African/American run recovery house, with mostly African/American clients and counselors. Having been brought up a in very prejudiced time (the 60’s), just leaving a prison atmosphere where racial issues are a daily occurrence, it was quite the place for a 55 year old ex-con, alcoholic, addict, with a past of closed mindedness to go and be. I was out of my comfort zone, that’s for sure, but I think that my GOD had something to do with sending me to this environment. Another part of MY recovery process. What I learned there was acceptance, humility and the ability to accept people for who they are and not what they are. My days of profiling were in the past.
I started this writing with the intention of it being about “balance in my life today”. Somehow, because of where my thoughts are today, it turned out to be “as it is”. When my thoughts stray, I let them, as I generally write about what I REALLY am thinking and feeling today.
My writing on balance in my life will have to wait for another day, another thought process and more time, lol.
Wishing you all a great day and now to figure out what kind of title I’ll call this writing, even though I feel it’s incomplete. My thoughts tend to wander when writing and if I get off track, excuse me please. It must be the “age”, lol My memory and attentiveness just isn’t what it NEVER was.