Blog for April 10th 2023
Complicated Simplicity
Have you ever figured something out that you thought was incredibly complicated and then thought, “well this is so easy, what was I worried about?” It’s like, once you see how to do something, it’s so easy, but before we know how to do something, it seems very complicated. Like driving. When you are a kid and watching adults drive it seems like a whole lot of moving parts and rules. Not so easy.
Once we are trained and have practiced enough, we are expert drivers and wonder why we ever thought this was so difficult. Recovery is also like that. As I watch a loved one, from afar, going through the early stages of detox and coming to terms with their disease, I wish I could reach out and let them know that getting clean and sober isn’t as hard as they think. It just seems like it when you are still in the grip of your disease and despair.
I want to tell them, “Surrender! Just let go and let God”. Why do you hold on to such misery?” We could say that to a whole generation of people who are actively killing themselves one day, one drug, one drink at a time. This makes me think back to my active addiction. Why did I do it? Why did I use to oblivion? Staying in that same misery that I see them in now. Why?
I have done a lot of inventories in my thirty-eight years clean, and I came to recognize a long time ago that I had way too much fear, doubt, low self-esteem and anger in me. I didn’t really recognize it at the time, but working the steps and doing inventories has revealed those feelings and issues to me. I just kept stuffing them and ignoring them.
In retrospect, I see how simple it was, how I could have identified those feelings and got on with it. But instead, I complicated matters by delving deep into addiction to relieve my problems, these hurtful feelings. The feelings of inadequacies are the worst because they can linger and come back to bite you in the butt many years into recovery. I believe these are the kinds of feelings that take people back out. Especially if they have chosen not to work a program: Like- work the steps, have a sponsor, and go to meetings regularly. They take a simple program and complicate their lives by not working a program.
I think some people complicate faith and a belief in their Higher Power too. The main point is to love. First, love God and then others, simple huh? But not so for many, some people have so many rituals that I think they forget the main point in the process.
Relationships are the same way; all we need to do is love each other. I think that requires being honest and truthful and faithful, but some want more. They make a simple idea of togetherness and loving each other turn into a battle for respect, obedience and make it a contest as to who is the best one in the relationship. Very sad.
I remember when I was a teenager and I would go shopping for a new outfit of some sort, I usually found what I wanted in the first fifteen minutes, but to be sure it was the right one, I’d spend another two or three hours looking at everything else! And you guessed it, I’d go back to the outfit I had found right away, why did I have to complicate the simple act of buying an outfit?
But heck, I even see people in restaurants and fast-food places complicate the be jeepers out of an order! It’s really kind of funny, but not funny. Ha!
Keeping it simple is my most favorite program slogan. It’s a life slogan. Kiss, as they say in the program, I call it, “Keep it Simple and Slow”, because I was always rushing about too. Lol, not so much anymore.
So, all I can do for our loved one that is on the edge of surrender is to pray them into it. I sure don’t want to get in the way of God’s work, but boy it’s hard not to jump in there. Because I know both sides of this coin, I feel I could be of some help, but if they don’t want my input, it would just serve to complicate a simple solution. They are in God’s hands.
Question of the Week: Have you ever complicated a simple matter?
