3.7.2024 Letting Go and Letting God…
From my journal:
My Lord God,
I woke up a little bit ago…I know I am having vivid dreams but they elude me when I wake up.
I pray I remember You and Your ways first today. It’s been so long since I turned to You, Your word, yet I know you are still with me.
I leave a message for the Maine Board of Nursing, to self report my struggles. I don’t have to, but I know I need to. I never practiced under the influence, but I need the accountability. And I know it’s the right thing to do. The BON calls me back and they are so supportive. It’s not punitive at all…she makes it clear the program is for nurses who are struggling, and is to support them instead of punish them.
It’s now 9:17 AM and I read the Daily AA Reflection, “The Key is Willingness”.
“Once we have placed the key of willingness in the lock and have the door ever so slightly open, we find that we can always open it some more” (12 Steps and 12 Traditions, page 35).
God, let me, allow me, help me to give up my pride and self-will to you. You say this is the only ingredient absolutely necessary to solve all my problems today. I am humbled this is the only ingredient necessary to solve all my problems today, sufficient enough to allow you to enter and take control of my problems, my pain, my obsessions. Help me realize my level of comfort is in direct relation to the degree of willingness I possess at any given moment to give up my self-will, and allow your will to be manifested in my life. With the key of willingness, my worries and fears are powerfully transformed into serenity.
I write this, and go about my day, making a list of the day’s meetings. I’m craving connection with other humans who are, and were in the same boat I am in. I soak up the words and advice, including “What would Sober Woman do?” when confronted with decisions and I’m feeling like a little girl. They tell me drinking and drugging creates a hole, and I need to decide what I’m going to fill that hole with to prevent a vacuum of negative vices. And finally, (this one really hit home for me), “Give yourself permission to obe Big Jen, Adult Jen.” So many times I feel like a little girl wearing an adult body, and this is when I panic and start to spiral. Maybe it really is time to put my big girl pants on and learn how to adult in a healthy mindframe.
Little did I know that by the end of the day, I would have found the perfect apartment close to the hospital and the BARN and gotten an amazing lead for a job that I would love, working in a detox center, helping others like the nurses that helped me back in 2019 when I went through my own alcohol detox. Mine was a week of Librium and sleep. So much sleep.
It’s now March 8th, and the rain has been replaced by sun. My three days sober yesterday is now 4 days, and I feel…good. I’ve just reached out about the job, and somehow, everywhere I turn, God is opening doors and I am at peace.
I can’t remember the last time I’ve felt this much peace.
