Have you ever had one of those days where you woke up and just felt like putting the covers over your head and not going anywhere for the rest of the day? Unfortunately, with the level of physical pain I am currently having to endure, I often experience days like that. But on some of them, God seems to work in strange ways to keep me going on this path of healing and recovery from the toxic life I once lived.
A few days ago, I awoke with such a severity of bodily pain that I spent that entire morning and a good part of the afternoon in incredible anguish and despair. Even after doing my normal spiritual maintenance routines, I felt no better. After a lengthy conversation with my spiritual teacher, I was given a few exercises to try that she hoped might help reduce some of the pain levels I was going through that day. One of which dealt with communicating to my parents through prayer (given they were no longer alive) and letting them know I wouldn’t accept anymore the low vibration patterns of living and behaviors they passed onto me. The other homework assignment was simply just to do some deep breath work in silence.
While both seemed to help reduce some of that anguish, especially with the tears that came up in my conversation with my parents, I still felt like Gloomy Gus and decided to get out of the house. I went first to a local coffee shop where I got myself something to drink and worked on my blog site. Upon leaving, I had already decided to go to a random local meeting that I had never been to before. While I was walking to my car, two young gentlemen at a table propped outside asked if I would help them with a donation to the drug and alcohol rehabilitation program they were part of. I gave them my support without hesitation and took a few minutes to tell them that I was actually heading to an AA meeting myself having been in recovery for eighteen years now.
By the time I got into my car, I already noticed I was feeling a slight bit better emotionally. Once I got to the meeting, I introduced myself to a few people that were already there and found myself a seat. When the coffee was ready, I approached the table where it was at and grabbed myself a cup of decaf. A nice woman introduced herself to me as the coffee maker and asked if I was new to AA. I promptly responded to her that I had been around for a while having just celebrated my 18th year of sobriety but that I was new to her meeting. What happened next I could only say must be God.
She shyly asked if I was willing to lead the meeting for that day because she had not found a speaker. My first sponsor always told me to never turn down a request such as that because it may be God working in my life, so I didn’t. And just over an hour later, after I had shared my journey to recovery and listened to all the people who had raised their hands during the open discussion, I felt amazingly better, as compared to how I started the day. Many people in that meeting room had approached me after it had ended to let me know how much they had connected to my story and thanked me for showing up and giving them my service. Some said it was exactly what they needed to hear with what was going on in their life lately.
Between my conversation with those two young gentlemen who were just beginning their journey of recovery and my being asked to lead a meeting I had never been to before, my attitude had completely changed for the better. While the level of my physical pain may not have reduced from both of those things, I had developed an attitude of gratitude which hadn’t been present for most of the day up until then.
Often I don’t truly understand much of what is going on in my life lately with all these levels of pain I continue to go through on most days. But there is one thing I do understand, and that is sometimes God has mysterious ways of helping us to keep going, especially when we think we’re down and out for the count. I’m grateful for each of those mysterious ways when they happen and will continue to do my best to realize that God may not be helping me in the way I think I should be helped, but God sure is helping me in the way I probably need to be helped.
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson