Faith & Roses

Twelve Step meetings. Literally folks from all walks of life; varying ages and races and genders. Differing lengths of clean time. Folks in “housing”, recovery houses; mental housing, whatever. On maintenance medication or 100% drug free. We all matter. We all are a part of the Recovery that happens in our meetings.

The Fellowship provides a temple, a home, a safe harbor, a classroom. A rest. And an exercise. A place of learning: how to tell the truth and how to listen. Developing the honesty to admit my need for a Higher Power. My need of others. Shaving down the self. Stripping away the fantasies that my mind, will, and emotions would have me live in.

Providing the open road of reality: the present.

…and I pause. I have not really chosen to accept friend’s invitations; I can see that I actively choose a kind of privacy, maybe for lack of a better word. A necessary or inviting and somehow healing solitude. Me and the Angels. Me and the true witnesses. The forces and Spirits that were with Mom in this realm and who walked with her, so easily and naturally, through to the next.

I feel I am sitting, moving, and being with them. They are leading me. Prompting me. Revealing to me. Holding me up. Preparing me for the next moment, and the one after that and the one after that. And I accept willingly and faithfully with trust that the path before me is one of moments. Outside of time here. Having very little, if anything at all, to do with “here.”

I feel almost as if I am following along to be shown what cannot be seen “here,” or experienced “here.” There is nothing to settle; nothing to pack up and store. No more tasks of any kind. Simply acknowledging those that are all around me, caring for me. Smiling at me. Holding their hearts and hands out to me.

I am grateful for those who care. Those who think of me and recognize, if only for a moment, that I am on this journey at all. I am quite astonished, Higher Power, at seeing only a sparkle of your presence. Thank you for always giving me what I need: no more, and no less.

Thank you for unexpected comings and goings. For ‘Nanda, my cat, who is so sweet and soft. I never really saw her coming. I absolutely love not being able to see what God is doing. It’s the most wonderful, invigorating aspect, for me, in this moment, of your gift of faith. Faith is so beautiful.

More will be revealed. NA