Surrender

One of my favorite daily meditation books is The Language of Letting Go by Melody Beattie.
The entry for June 17 summarizes quite nicely where I am in my journey.

June 17


Surrender

Master the lessons of your present circumstances.
We do not move forward by resisting what is undesirable in our life today. We move forward, we grow, we change by acceptance.
Avoidance is not the key; surrender opens the door.
Listen to this truth: We are each in our present circumstances for a reason. There is a lesson, a valuable lesson, that must be learned before we can move forward.
Something important is being worked out in us, and in those around us. We may not be able to identify it today, but we can know that it is important. We can know it is good.
Overcome not by force, overcome by surrender. The battle is fought, and won, inside ourselves. We must go though it until we learn, until we accept, until we become grateful, until we are set free.

Today, I will be open to the lessons of my present circumstances. I do not have to label, know, or understand what I’m learning; I will see clearly in time. For today, trust and gratitude are sufficient.

In my last post I posed the question, "Am I a sex addict?". I surrender. The answer is yes. I have used sex in an addictive fashion. I am now trying to remedy that by being a member of yet another 12 Step program. And it's going quite nicely, thank you.

The really great thing is that in addition to halting, for today, my harmful sexual activity, it has also greatly improved both my AA program and my life in general.

A couple of days ago, Java commented on my last post. She asked, "Why do you not write more often?" Java, I really don't know. I have had plenty of inspiration over the past six months but have just failed to put fingers to keyboard. For the first year or so of blogging I posted a couple of times a week. I don't know what happened after that. I could speculate, but that's all it would be. I'm posting today, and I hope I post more in the future.

Java went on to say, " I haven't read much, just these few posts that are on the first page. I'm curious about you, your life, your choices, your convictions (not in a legal sense), the whichness of your why."

Let me try to satisfy that curiousity.

Me: I'm a 45-54 year old male, married for almost 30 years, alcoholic, sex addicted (but still getting used to surrendering to the fact), not entirely straight, married to a woman, father of two.

My life: Trying to figure out how to live the rest of my life...my spirituality, my sexuality, my life.

My choices: Some good: (getting married, staying married, getting sober, asking for help in staying sexually "sober", and lots of others). Some bad: (drinking excessively even when it quit working, "keeping" a boyfriend on the side for a couple of years, telling my wife I needed to move out to figure out my "gay" thing, having sex behind my wife's back, and lots of others).

My convictions: I'm having trouble summarizing this, but among my convictions are believing that each of us has part of God inside us and that we are all yearning to connect the part inside us with God, and believing that spirituality is personal and different for each of us, and that it's really harmful to try to instruct others on their spirituality unless they have asked.

The whichness of my why: The whichness of my why used to always be "me." I am now trying to turn it into "you."

Later.

Flip