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It’s been a really rough/tough year.  The bulging disc I have in my neck has caused pain that has pretty much taken over life.  It has been hard to do anything because the pain is so prominent.  Even writing here on the blog has been tough, as you can tell from my absence.  I have desires to write, but those desires soon gets taken over by the pain and I don’t want to do anything but make it go away.  I’m hoping that gets resolved soon because I really miss writing and doing other things that I like and finding new things that I don’t know that I like.

Some may not know this, but on Jan 6th at noon, I’ll be going under the knife.  A 45 minute surgery to perform a disc fusion in my neck.  I’m ready for it.  I’m beyond ready to get rid of this pain and get some normalcy of life back.  Including writing and everything else I’ve been wanting to do.

So, I’ve been thinking.  Scary, I know.  If you are just starting recovery and you feel on top of the world, let me warn you.  You are going to experience life’s hardships.

The first year of my recovery I can remember how great everything was.  I felt invincible almost.  It was a feeling like I had reached the pinnacle of life and I could handle anything that came at me.

During the second year, reality struck and life hasn’t been so easy.  Reality being that I’m not even close to invincible.  Situations ARE going to come up that I have absolutely zero control over.

Situations have occurred where I knew that I needed to listen to God and let him take control.  I’ve really struggled with those situations the most.  Mainly because I want control.  Even if I tell myself and tell God that I’m letting him have it, I can’t keep my paws off of it.  It’s selfishness, and us alcoholics thrive on it.  One hundred percent of the time, those situations don’t go away and often they get worse.  Still, I want control.  And it doesn’t help that I’m not real sure how we are supposed to let go of it.  So, I’ve been trying to figure that out within the last quarter of this year.  It’s a work in progress.

I’m so glad that during that first year of recovery I worked hard on my new foundation.  I’m glad that I had taken so much time recognizing that God is my rock.

I shutter to think how much different this year could have been had I not done exactly everything that I did during the first year.  I would be lying if I said that during this rough time I’ve never had a thought about alcohol.  There have been times where it would have been so easy to give in.  But, I thank God that I was given the chance to build my relationship with him.  It’s because of that, that I didn’t let any of those thoughts hang around and I didn’t act on any of them.

For your recovery’s sake, if you don’t believe in God, find your higher power and sink as much time as you can into recognizing just how powerful and wonderful and great it is.  I do pray that you will soon see that, that higher power is God.  For now though, just don’t do life on your own.

As I have been writing this, the “pink cloud” keeps coming to mind.  During my first year, I heard this cloud mentioned so many times and had no clue what folks were talking about.  Now, I realize that during part of that first year I was riding the pink cloud.

Because of HIM,

SC