The big mess called “me”

I read this story today with my sponsor out of the book “Drop the Rock”. It is written by Joe McQ about stripping away.


“I have a pretty rocking chair down in my office. When I first bought the building,someone had run off and left the chair behind. There wasn’t anything else of any value, but there was this old rocking chair. It was jus a horrible-looking mess, painted black, with one of the rungs broken out of the back of it. I decided I’d keep it, thinking maybe one of these days I  might put it together. Quite a few years went by, and it just sat in the attic. Several times some of the guys tempted me to throw it away; in fact, I’d find it around by the dumpster and I’d bring it back, saying I was going to look at it one of these days.
I finally got the old rocking chair out of the attic and into the light downstairs so I could really see it. And as I began to look at it, I saw that it was a really fine chair. I got some paint stripper and I began to strip it. I stripped all the paint away and found that it was solik oak. I took the old raggedy botton that had been covered over many, many times with different cloth and tacks, and I tore it off and threw it away. There was one broken rung and I made an identical one by bending one and putting it in there.I sanded and refinished this chair.
Finally I took it to the upholstery shop. I asked the man there how much it would  cost to put a nice white velvet bottom in it. He looked at it and said, “I’ll be glad to put it in there, but before I fix it,
I’ll offer you $350 for that chair.” That beautiful, valuable chair was always there. It was there all the time. That chair has always been beautiful since the day the furniture maker made it. And that’s the
way I am-and you are-with God’s life inside us. God made us this way-beautiful and valuable.
Like the rocking chair, over a period of years, I covered myself up with all sorts of things and made a big mess. The steps of this program have enabled me to uncover, discover, and discard. It’s a program of getting rid of the things to get down to what we want. It’s not a program of getting anything. It’s a program of getting rid of things: uncovering, discovering and discarding.”

I had spiritual experience while trying to read this through my tears. Asking God each morning for the willingness to be willing to do His will, to strip the mess down to the beautiful woman He designed me to be. Like peeling back the layers of an onion, He has shown me the change after each layer is stripped and thrown away! I am beautifully and wonderfully made and am exactly where I am suppoed to be.

The tequila part of the title and the drinking it to escape my mess, has just been the beginning of my
new journey. I drank to escape, pain and emotional pain. I wallowed in my own self pity and downed the tequila to drown out my miserable self and into oblivion. I drank to drown out the things I would hear in my head. As long as I passed out, I would feel nothing. But by morning all the guilt and self pity would come back to me. I was on a lot of medication, any of which by mixing with alcohol should have killed me.  I hated my life, myself and loathed the person I had become. I had hidden most of the drinking from my kids, but my parents watched me walk the “walk of shame” every time I visited and drank. Mom, Dad and my sister had finally had enough on my last trip of 2017. They staged an intervention and we had a “come to Jesus” meeting. For the first time in my 59 years, my response was not “yeah, but”, it was “I know, you’re right”. I could no longer find any excuses to give them. They were fearful I would be dead soon if I didn’t stop drinking. I promised them I would go to meetings and work the program. My last drink was on 11\7\17!

The first time I walked into a meeting, I was shaking and crying. A man met me on the porch and
introduced himself to me. He was to become my first true friend in my new life, I did not have any
 real friends in my alcoholism. My life was a mess, a mess I had made. I thought this program was to get me to stop drinking, but it is so much more.

I’ve been told it takes what it takes and sooner or later I will get there! More later
k