Friday, January 30, 2009

forgive me...

got an email and a phone call before my meeting last night... all the regulars bailed on me. i opened the doors, pulled out the literature. set up the table. read everything out loud. led the meeting. read step 5 from the AA 12 & 12 (oh man did i need to read that chapter, what a beautiful collection of thoughts and words!) and closed the meeting. alone. but what an complete blessing that meeting was to me. i was pissed and full of resentments heading into that meeting, but felt so full and alive afterward. i showed up. it's my recovery and i'm working MY program. not anyone else's.

i can't seem to get away from everyone looking to me like this is MY meeting all of the time. it wears really thin sometimes. i'm not sure what to do to stop this and get anyone else to step up. the woman who asked me to start this meeting with her is in major relapse. she still shows up to the meetings most of the time, but is so angry and bewildered as to why she just isn't getting it this time around. and i think that she is really angry at ME. and that makes me really bewildered.

when i read this today i think i got a clue. i think that somehow something got shifted on to me that shouldn't have been mine. i didn't ask for it and i don't think that i attract it, but i think it got put on me anyway, and that because i haven't picked up the mantle she is really pissed at me. anyway, i don't want the job, i'm not taking the job and i will continue to show up, one day at a time to work my own program.

these words of wisdom are from henri nouwen:

Forgiveness, the Cement of Community Life

Community is not possible without the willingness to forgive one another "seventy-seven times" (see Matthew 18:22). Forgiveness is the cement of community life. Forgiveness holds us together through good and bad times, and it allows us to grow in mutual love.

But what is there to forgive or to ask forgiveness for? As people who have hearts that long for perfect love, we have to forgive one another for not being able to give or receive that perfect love in our everyday lives. Our many needs constantly interfere with our desire to be there for the other unconditionally. Our love is always limited by spoken or unspoken conditions. What needs to be forgiven? We need to forgive one another for not being God!

3 comments:

Kel said...

some people have natural leadership and people skills which propel them into the spot where people look to or go to when they need guidance, leadership, support

it is a hard mantle to wear when one is in need of guidance, leadership and support themselves

is it your job to get anyone else to "step up"?
perhaps it is only your job to choose whether you will step up or down - and to be comfortable with the decision you make

i hope you know i could only write that from personal experience and pain - and the message in your post was as much for me as it was for you to blow off steam and process things...

funny how sometimes, another has to tell their story for us to finally see it is our story also

and that we do all need to forgive each other for not being God!

bobbie said...

thank you kel - you are right - i was venting. i was so pissed off for teaching people how to treat me.. ugh. i don't know how to break through this into something way more healthy.

i'm glad that this helped you, getting it out really prepared me for a very different retreat this weekend. kind of like lancing a wound and getting the poison out.

i so want to be supportive to those around me, but i am positive that i can't work their program and need to focus on my own. navigating this next stage is really taking me into learning about myself in a much deeper way.

Togenberg said...

I love that Henry Nowen quote. That we are not God! but there is a desire if not expectation of need-meeting which will not be met or not wholly. There is a lot to forgive, to grant, to let go of, to feed grace to.