When I was in the hospital last year, something meaningful happened.
I requested to be able to talk to the hospital pastor, and he visited me.
He asked me why I was in the hospital, and listened to what I tried to make a sincere and heartfelt confession, although I’m certain that the explanation I gave sounded more rational than honest.
He asked me something that I still hear to this day, over a year later: “Aaron, are you sure that you’re not struggling with Pride?”
I answered in the affirmative, but at the time I didn’t really know what he meant.
After over a year of reflection, and some of the spiritual experiences I’ve been having recently, I’m beginning to understand.
Frustrated that everything wasn’t just fixed after my two years of sobriety in AA in 2017-2018, after four times doing outpatient support groups at recovery centers, after being in therapy for over 25 years, I was beginning to think that Recovery just wasn’t going to come to me.
I couldn’t see that part of what was stopping me was a lack of Humility. That I thought I could “figure it out.” That I thought that because of the fact that I’m frankly a very weird person, somehow I was too unique for any of these methods. That I needed something uniquely suited to my particular circumstance.
A nurse gave me something I could work with. “Aaron the steps are just tools. You are an autonomous man. Just use the tools.”
This mixture of humbling and Grace is beginning to take shape in a real way.
My megalomaniac rants are becoming fewer and fewer. I’m learning slowly to live in service to the greater good, as far as I can being so isolated.
Writing can still be a tool for me — for introspection, for communication.
But most of all for honesty — the thing with which I need to be radical, humbling myself as best I can all the time always.
It’s hard, but I’m beginning to see how it is my point of access to Grace.
Aspiringly,
Aaron