Does Your God Test You?

...'we have found a loving, personal God to whom we can turn.'

The reading today is all about life on life's terms.  I heard that phrase so many times in the past few years that I never really heard it.  Until recently, when I began experiencing it.   This is where clean time does not equal recovery.  Experience equals recovery, working the steps bring about experience and let me tell ya, I have some experiences.  Most of which are not blooming with success.

Each time I was presented with the opportunity to use after I began working a solid program I got pretty angry at my God and to show that anger    I...... you guessed it...... used.  Boy, I showed her, didn't I ?!....

 This had to happen a few times before I began to understand Life on life's terms and that my God was not testing me when these situations came up.   The last time using presented itself to me I was so aggravated that the universe would allow this travesty to occur in my life, because this time I really did want to get clean and was working a hardcore solid program... could God not see that??    How could God challenge me this way and knock me off course again?  Was God not a loving god meant to protect me?  Then why was this up in my grill again??  Oh ya, I was pissed right off!

Sitting in a meeting one night, stewing in some self pity about this new test in front of me, I heard someone share.... 'Life hasn't stopped just cause you are clean now'.  Life on lifes terms echoed in my head like being yelled from the top of the Grande Canyon.  Damn.  Those stupid light bulbs blinded my brain again.

 It's not a test that I am faced with the opportunity to use, it's just life and I need to deal with it cause life will always happen whether I am ready for it or not.  There will always be people who use, there will always be liqueur stores, there will always be party's that an invite will find its way to me... because thats life of a normal person.  Isolation is not an option for me anymore.

Back to the serenity prayer I trudged.  Step one found it's way back into my hands as extra reading at the end of the night and my program peeled a new layer of the onion.  The process never ending just getting easier I guess.  This time I didn't use and I have built a more solid trust in my higher power because she walked me through it and I didn't reach out a bitch slap her for the perceived challenge.  Recovery is not easy, the first year is a gift and then the work begins... learning a whole new way to live.

So Just for Today I will have faith that my Higher Powers will for me is good, and that I am loved.  I will seek my Higher Powers help in times of need.

Thank you for letting me share, I am a recovering addict named, Arial.