Meet Lucy. She loves our morning walk. She stares at me like she is watching a clock. She knows the routine. We have coffee, eat breakfast, clean the kitchen, make the bed and then we go on our 1.7 mile walk.
Once she sees my tennis shoes, she goes nuts. She dances sideways and tries to will me to move faster. But, the minute that I pull out her leash, she goes and hides under the dining room table. If I reach for her, she moves to the other side.
I think that at one time, we accidentally snapped the end of the leash onto her ear. It was so long ago, that I don’t even remember it. But, she has not forgotten.
And so every morning, we do a little chase around the house to connect the leash to her collar. Sometimes, when I catch her, she tenses up and yelps even before I’ve touched her collar.
A few days ago, I was so fed up with the chase, that I decided to just leave without her. So I went to the front door and when I opened it, she dashed past me, outside and sat waiting for me to connect her leash. For whatever reason, she allowed me to hook her up without incident. This morning, when I got the leash out, she ran straight to the front door. She has learned a new coping skill.
I thought about how smart our Lucy is because I’ve been looking at my latest attempt at a fourth step (Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves). It’s been a while since I’ve worked on it. But, time away has given me the clarity that I needed to recognize that some of the coping skills that I had acquired to survive the insanity of the disease, weren’t really helping me out anymore.
Like Lucy, they were causing me a lot of problems. My fourth step helps me to trace my problems back to things like fear and resentment. Most of the time, our fears never come to fruition. But, the fear that they could, paralyzed me. I’ve missed out on many things because of fear.
When I first considered the fourth step, I felt like I was being judged. Addiction is a stigmatized disease. That stigma keeps a lot of folks in hiding. I’d finally found the courage to come out and deal with our problems and now they were asking me to list all of my bad qualities. My sponsor said that it is a list of both my bad and good qualities. I thought that they were just throwing in the good qualities as bait to get me to make a list of the bad.
Time and growth have matured my perspective. Now, I see that an inventory is a tool for me. What things help me? What hinders me? This step is teaching me that the boundaries that God has put fourth for me are a means of keeping me safe–physically, emotionally and spiritually.
Growth in my program has shown me that God loves me and my loved ones more than I ever could. If I can be mindful of that fact in the midst of my examinations, I will see that He is merely helping me spot the things that are tripping me up.
He is hoping to help me find freedom.
If you have a loved one who struggles with addiction. Please reach out. Hiding keeps us sick. Please join me in looking for a new coping skill.