Accepting Life As It Is

Surrendering Control

I’m learning that peace is not found in controlling everything around me. It is found in learning to trust God in the uncertainty.

Father, if you are willing, take this cup away from me. However, not my will but your will be done. Matthew 26:39

I have two grown children whom I love very much. Unfortunately, they both live in another state, so I don’t get to see them as often as I would like. We talk a couple times a week, usually through text messages, and most of the time I am the one who initiates the conversation. Before recovery, that would have really bothered me. My thinking was very all or nothing. “If they won’t call me, then I won’t call them.” Or, “Why do I always have to be the one reaching out?” But through recovery I am learning to accept relationships as they are instead of demanding they happen on my terms. I am learning to stop rejecting people simply because things are not happening the way I want them to happen. That is what my sponsor says is learning to live in the gray. It is somewhere in between the all or nothing thinking that used to consume me.

Before recovery, I saw almost everything as black and white. Things were either right or wrong. Good or bad. Safe or unsafe. I liked certainty because certainty felt safe to me. If something fit neatly into a category, then I knew how to respond to it. I knew how to control it. Or at least I could plan and be ready in case things didn’t go as planned. It made me feel safe. But life rarely works that way. People are complicated. Relationships are complicated. Emotions are complicated. Things don’t always go as planned. Doing a fearless moral inventory has forced me to start facing the uncomfortable truth that much of life happens somewhere in the gray.

The gray makes me uncomfortable because I don’t know what will happen. I don’t know how to protect myself. I don’t know how to be prepared for or avoid potentially being hurt. Accepting the gray requires trust. It requires patience. It requires me to accept uncertainty instead of rushing to fix it or force it into a category that makes me feel better. Which I now do, although usually reluctantly. One of the things I have discovered through step work with my sponsor is that many times my attempts to “help” or “fix” people were not as selfless as I made them out to be. A lot of it was driven by my own need to feel in control. If I could manipulate and control the situation, calm the conflict, or get the outcome I wanted, it gave me relief. What I have learned since is that my need for control was really giving a dopamine release in my brain. That release temporarily soothed my anxiety and discomfort. It made me feel better, so I sought to feel better again. It was my addiction. I was trying to feel better by managing everyone and everything around me. That realization was hard for me to admit, but by staying honest with myself in my recovery I am learning to face my motives realistically instead of staying in denial about them.

Working through the steps has helped me realize that emotional sobriety or behavioral change is not found in controlling everything around me. It is found in learning how to live honestly, peacefully, and faithfully even when things feel uncertain. I still do not like the gray. I do not like not knowing what is going to happen. I do not like feeling unprepared or out of control. But I am learning how to accept being uncomfortable instead of trying to escape it. I am learning that as I relinquish control God is present in the gray ready to help. And strangely enough, by accepting the gray areas of life, I can now see and appreciate the vibrant areas of life that are full of color, depth and complexity. And that is the gift of recovery for me.

Prayer

Father, help me to stop fighting reality and demanding that life happen on my terms. Teach me to surrender the gray areas of my life to You. Help me to stop trying to control everything around me. Help me to trust You when I feel uncertain, uncomfortable, or afraid. Amen.