I hate to leave you with the un-loveliness of yesterday's post, so let me tell you what happened after I got done writing it. I was feeling miserable. Obviously. And when I am miserable, I tend to look for answers outside of myself. This is good and bad. It's bad because, sometimes, the answer is really inside of me and my actions and I just can't cut through the crap enough to see it. It's good because, when I cannot see through the garbage inside of myself, then the answers WILL come from an outside source until I'm ready, once again, to see the truth. It's all good. Inside or out. God places the answers wherever we can see them.
I met with a group of people last night. I didn't want to go. I wanted to stay home and feel sorry for myself about having to feed my daughter poison for the next five days. But, I went anyways, and one of the topics discussed was surrender. And I thought, "Yeah. Yeah. I get it. Surrender to the action of feeding my daughter food that will make her sick for the next few days. It's GOD'S WILL, and God wonders why he's constantly questioned...," the sarcasm just oozed out of every pore of my skin.
Then, it became my turn to talk, and I remembered something that I hadn't thought about in years. I talked about when I first quit drinking and the 'one day at a time' surrender that process required. I talked about a wedding that I didn't go to, which was held at a church camp I used to go to. Everyone was going to be there. Now, keep in mind, there's really no way for me to explain how I felt about these people, or how I still feel about them. They were more than important to me. However, this particular church was okay with alcohol, so I knew there would be drinking at this wedding even though it was at the camp. I had just stopped drinking and I just couldn't see how it would be possible to get through it sober. It just about killed me, but I had to surrender it. I didn't go.
I didn't go into much detail about it last night because, frankly, a lot of these people were strangers and I didn't feel comfortable. That's a very odd reaction for me because, generally speaking, my life is open book. I just don't care to hide much stuff anymore. So, it's usually all hanging out there for anyone to see and I don't mind. The only time I hide something is if something's WRONG with it.
On my way home, I got thinking about it. I began to question whether the decision to not go to the wedding was actually a surrender, OR if it was just plain, old-fashioned, self-centeredness. It just didn't sound right. I surrendered the wedding of a girl I grew up with, avoided friends that had been very important friends, and sacrificed being there for a moment in time that will never ever happen again. "Something's definitely wrong with that," I thought. That intrigued me, so I thought about it for a long time, and the answer dawned on me sometime around midnight. Missing the wedding was not the right decision.
You know what? As I go along, I don't know that I become less self-centered. I like to think I do, but I don't. All I do, is become more aware of the depth of my self-centeredness. This is why all this self-searching is so incredibly important right now. If I don't look at it, don't acknowledge it, then I'll never move past it.
It was selfish to not go. I thought I'd made a decision that saved me from drinking, but it was really a decision based on fear, based on myself, and that took no one else into consideration. I don't know that any of them actually noticed that I was gone, but that's not the point. I'll always know I was gone. Also, NO ONE would've held a gun to my head and poured beer down my throat. The 'not drinking' thing was my problem, not theirs. Furthermore, it set up a chain of events that allowed me to, systematically, cut these people out of my life one by one. Oh man...ugh. Self -searching sucks sometimes.
Life is not all about avoiding pain and discomfort. True surrender, sometimes, means doing something I don't want to do, just because it's the right thing to do. So, I'm feeding Isabel gluten today even though I really DON'T WANNA. It is painful and I don't know if it's the right decision or not. But, I do know that God knows what he's doing. He puts the answers where I can see them. Also, I'll always be able to say that I tried absolutely EVERYTHING to get Isabel help. And I know that's the right decision.
