No worries, each person has their own unique understanding of their "Higher Power". That's why the 12 step programs use that "Higher Power" concept, so that we can all feel a sense of community even though we are all so different in that area.
Here on SR we try to maintain that respect for everybody's uniqueness, but with 80 thousand members it can get a little "wild" sometimes
Goodness, how could you not? Dealing with addiction is a nightmare, the damage that it does to everyone in it's path is a horror. That's one of the reasons there are 80 thousand people on just this one website, and there are thousands more websites dealing with the same issue.
I also feel battered and broken. I have my own share of hardships, much like everybody else. I lost my marriage of 20 years to this disease. Along the way I lost some small businesses we had invested in during those 20 years. I managed to start over in a new town, made new friends, got a new career started, then the economy killed that and I ended up moving across the country.
I developed an ugly disease that is slowly damaging my internal organs. I had surgery to help with that and ended up with brain damage. I have a cyst growing in my brain from that fouled up surgery and found out a few months ago that now there is an aneurysm as well. I have developed a bad case of osteoporosis from the medications I take to fight all of the above, and I am losing my teeth.
Couple weeks ago the doc told me some of that damage to my insides has weakened my abdomen and now I have a large hernia that needs to be repaired. Some days I truly wonder if this body will make it to the night.
Yup, I feel battered and broken. Big time. Some days I feel way tired and just like you said, my faith gets very shaken and very weak.
Then I look around me and I see that life continues. I am living in this new town and they have some flocks of geese that refuse to fly south for the winter. In the morning on my way to work they circle around making all kinds of noise. The skies have been clear now and again and I can see the stars. The same stars I used to look at when I was a child runaway, sleeping with the dogs in a junkyard.
I go too meetings and I see people reaching out to each other, and here on SR I see hundreds of people every single day taking time out of their lives to help others who are in pain.
My HP has not given me what I want. I wanted a simple life, to grow old with my soulmate, enjoy the company of friends we had made over the decades, watch our kids grow up. Nope, that's not what I got.
Instead I got a different life. I have made a lot of new friends, thru SR and through meetings in the places the lousy economy has taken me. I have seen small, beautiful things like geese flying overhead, snow on the trees and dunes in the desert. I did get to see our daughter grow up and have a family of her own, a very happy, normal family with no dysfunction and very few hardships.
I have had the opportunity to continue to live in spite of my slowly decaying health. Although I am in physical pain every day I do manage to hold on to a job, a place to live, and socialize with people once in a while. I have been able to share my own "Experience, Strength and Hope" in small ways and see that others have found a bit hope in my words.
No, I did not get the life I wanted. Instead I have been able to make a difference in the lives of a few other people. I have lost a lot of very good things, but the fact is, I did have those good things to enjoy.
I have learned that nothing lasts forever. No matter how good. For me, the secret to happiness that I have learned from my HP thru all this "life" I have been through is that the secret is in the small things. No _thing_ lasts forever. The feelings, on the other hand, now those I can keep forever. The feelings of having been a good husband to a wonderful lady for many, many years. The feelings of having been a father to a young woman, a son to charming Irish mom.
Those feelings are the gifts my HP has given me. Still, the greatest gift of all is the deep, deep sense of humility from having witnessed thousands upon thousand of people who are themselves battered and broken reach out to give hope to perfect strangers they have never met, and never will meet, simply because it is the right thing to do.
I did not get what I wanted. What I did get is completely different. Even though I feel completely broken, I realize that just because I feel that way does not mean that I am. I can still enjoy watching the geese, the stars, the snow. I am learning how to want what I got.
Someday soon when "the fat lady sings" I will be able to look back across the vast arc of the heavens and realize that, on this single mark of time I was given, I got the best ride ever. Not the ride I wanted, not at all, but without a doubt a ride worth living.
seek, I am truly sorry you feel like I do. I know how hard it can be. Perhaps if you do what all the rest of us are doing, hold on for just one day. Do the steps, or see a therapist, or whatever form of recovery you choose, just for one day. Take a minute to look at all the beauty that is in the world in spite of all the hardships in the world.
Just for a minute. That's all it takes, hang on just for a minute. You will make it thru and find your strength again. There are 80 thousand people here on SR doing exactly that, and we are all surviving, overcoming, and learning how to enjoy life again. You can do it too, and watch us all cheer you on and encourage you while you do the same for us.
Mike
