We’re all different, and I can’t tell anyone else’s story or anyone else’s truth, but I am blessed to come here and have a place to tell mine.
This is my truth—the truth that it has taken me many years in recovery to finally believe:
Conscious contact with God is the only thing that turns me aside from acting out.
Another truth:
Conscious contact with God only comes when I desire it enough to ask for it;
only when I open my mind and heart to perceive it.
When I open my mind and heart, I begin to receive thoughts in the form of words that come into my mind, or as impressions that are more like visualizations and pictures. You know, the kind of moments where you say, “Oh, I see!”
And then there’s the communication from Him that comes when other people share their truth—in books, in the scriptures, over the pulpit, in meetings, on billboards, even! Or through snippets of dialogue from movies or from song.
Once I open my mind and heart to “conscious contact” with God, I begin to be aware of multiple “communications” that hold the witness of Christ. This is not a coincidence. All come from Him.
When I journal, I allow myself to slow down enough to listen and to ponder, to think deeply and honestly in response to what I am “hearing”. That is why journaling is such a powerful tool of open communication with the Lord. For many years now, the pages of my journals have been filled with recorded conversations between myself and both Heavenly Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. The greatest wisdom I have ever shared with anyone else has been lifted from those words of wisdom that were first given to me through the Spirit, and then recorded in my journals, as two-way communication, coming to me from Them.
I thank God every day of my life for the 12 Steps. Studying them, pondering and writing about each one of them, is exactly what began to open my understanding to how close and kind God really is in our lives—even when we are still acting out. I have come to know when we reach out for help, doing anything even as simple as going to a meeting, or reading someone’s sharing on a blog, God reaches back to us. Even in our half-sincere attempts to connect with God, He is willing to meet us in our need and begin to lead us out of our addictions.
~Colleen H.
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