At a recent recovery group, the topic for sharing was fear. This topic opened up a lot of honesty in the group as they poured their hearts out about what they currently fear. The topics ranged from being fearful of returning to the addictive life all the way to forgetting about God. Our testimony speaker, who gave us the topic, reminded us that we all have fears. As I listened to the struggles the group had with their fears, I was reminded of a quote from Marianne Williamson, titled Child of God.
I wrapped up our group sharing with reading the Child of God quote to the group and looked each of them in the eyes with the hope the words might penetrate their mind and soul. Many years ago, I memorized the Child of God quote and regularly repeated it to myself for over a year. I needed to learn the lesson contained in the words. But it took years before it manifested. And the lesson is that we’re not really afraid of our darkness. As addicts, we’ve lived through it. What we’re afraid of is being amazing, being beautiful, being good, loving, and compassionate. We’re more afraid of the strength and power of our humanity than we are of our weakness and impotence. It’s easier for us to stay in our mess and self-pity rather than to rise up and build a life of wisdom, love and selflessness.
It’s crazy when you really think about it. How can we be afraid of being our most amazing, beautiful self? I don’t know if there is an easy answer, but I think it’s because it’s been pushed out of us. The idea that we can be a thriving, contributing, compassionate human is pushed out of us through life circumstances and our own idea of self-worth. At some point in our lives, we stopped believing that we deserved everything good that God and life have to offer. Instead, we embraced the worst part of our humanity and dove right into it and lived it. Worse yet, we got used to it. We started to believe that our self-destructive life was the way it was meant to be for us. And we didn’t stop to think that it could be otherwise. Then something drove us to the point of being sick and tired of being sick and tired, and that’s when our recovery really began.
I’ve been on my recovery journey for over 20 years, and I still struggle with the fear of being my best self (of being brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous). I struggle with letting go of laziness and complacency and accepting the status quo. It takes mental effort to do the work I know God is calling me to do. I can sometimes feel the fear of being great wanting me to retreat back to complacency and comfort. There is a part of me that is okay with being “regular” in the sense that I don’t want to standout in the recovery community. I just want to be a part of the cog. But, I know in my heart that God wants more from me. He wants me to connect with more people in the recovery community. He wants me to go out and share my story of hope in Jesus and overcoming my selfishness.
In some ways, I’ve done a lot. In other ways, I haven’t done enough. What I know about myself is that I can do more. I always know that because God has blessed me with health mentally, physically, and emotionally. There are many people that can’t say the same, and if they were healthy I’m sure they would gladly step up to do what God calls them to do. So here I am, physically able, yet, I allow myself to hold back. Why? Because I’m afraid of stepping into a deeper level of God’s love. I know He’s calling me to it, I can feel it. And I’m tired of fighting His call.
Comments