Humility - Gain Through Consequences

September 15. Hello world, big & small. My adventures have taken me many foul & great places alike, many times there were memories. Some have been forgotten & some come along as things jog my brain a bit. Along with memories came some consequences, for those times I lacked spiritual actions & thoughts. Most of those consequences I have served the punishments for, from what I have experienced the thing that has lasted is change. Changing my behaviors, attitudes, and even my thoughts to become the person I am today, working towards lasting Sobriety & growing Spirituality. One of the consequences of my terrible living was delayed, through the mercy & wisdom of the judge who sentenced me well over one year ago. The department of transportation in my state requires that anyone caught with a controlled substance must undergo a 6 month suspension of their driving privledges. The judge & representative of the state were both compassionate & helpful in hearing my pleas back then. I had asked to keep my license so that I could establish myself in the sober community, to make a life & build a support group which I could rely on to help me get by without transportation. They heard my calling & granted me an additional year of driving to do so. That year is over & today I had to hand in my license for the required 6 months. Oh how humbling life can be. In the time I was granted immunity from that suspension I have joined many groups in the sober community, doing service work for many of them as I was suggested I should do by my fellow sober members. I started a business in jewelry sales that require me to venture further than my own back yard & need me to transport the merchandise to & from for security reasons. All this & more is now at the mercy of others, much of my life is now conditional to the assistance of others.

This is as humbling as it gets, perhaps the moments when I could not stand myself & could not bear the sickness brought on by my intoxicating actions was worse, I may never know. I have had to go from begging for help, to standing a little more on my own two feet, back to begging for help again. I am grateful for my loving family who helps me along this journey, if not for them my begging would be much more evident than it is. In my old alcoholic ways I would be thinking about this in a different way, saying "How can they do this to me? After all I've done to straighten out they still screw me over like this?". But that is what my alcoholism wants me to do, think negatively on this scenario & drink or drug over it. I will not give it that satisfaction, I must instead take this valueable lesson & grow with its passing through my life. I have relied on many to help me through the past year & few months of my sobriety, never so heavy as I do now that today has come. I have already burdened my mother during difficult times in her own life to take me to secure legal ID & paperwork in the absence of my license. She has her own battles to fight with my grandmother being ill in the hospital. I just need to show my appreciation in as many ways as I can learn how, because my family's love & assistance is as pertinent as the guidance of others in my spiritual self improvements. My father has worked his entire life to support all of his children & his wife, as well as others whom he has had the joy of loving along the way, and he continues to help me long after a normal son would have taken ahold of his own.

Consequences can teach us humility, that is for sure, but we need to be of the spiritual mind to see this. If I were still in my active addicion, none of the mercy, love, or assistance I have been shown by others would come through as humility. It would instead be felt as though it were entitled, I know because I have lived both sides of this scenario. Sitting in a jail cell, behind lock & key the night that the event that caused this suspension to occur, I had no mind for the humility of the consequences to come. I only could imagine how I would deal with the sickness & the hole in my soul that would come on in the morning if I did not get out. This is how bad it can get, this is what addiction is all about, filling that hole because we are incomplete & spiritually ignorant while we suffer through life. To those that would say we chose this for ourselves, we did not. Just as I did not choose to be humbled today, nor the ability to see it for what it is. The bad that was our lives back then is just as necessary as our growth & vision for spiritual things today. We would not have lived without it, many of us would have found a way to stop living if we did not have those drugs or drinks to fill our lives up, we were empty & lacking what it took to survive any other way. It is the pain, the loss, and the CONSEQUENCES that work us over in our lifetime, the end result is HUMILITY in our lives that causes us to seek out a solution that lasts. Today for me that solution is the 12 Steps & all the fellowships that adopt them contain. Of course there had to be a director behind me finding all of this today, behind the humility, the judges, the 12 Steps & the people whom have carried the message to my ears & helped me practice them in my life.. that director is my Higher Power. Another miracle in my life, one that is also a lesson, a simple consequence resulting in humility & spiritual growth. Thank you all involved, it will all be over in good time... One Day At A Time. Good Night.. Good Morning.. <3 Jimmy