stones in the road

I just came here from a blog that really blew me away this morning... This girl's honesty... her struggle to keep it together a day at a time really took me back to when I got here... Check her out here: my new friend

She was talking about noticing that when she used, it messed with her attitude and her emotions. It sounded to me as if she was having an epiphany. I was commenting how these epiphanies we have early on (at least it was like this for me), are like big stones on the road of recovery we're travelling. At first, when we first come to the realization there's a problem for some of us, myself included the first big stone in the road seems impassable, blocking the way. But with the help of a guide or two in AA, we find our way round that boulder of denial or perhaps the rock of our own inability to give up or surrender. It seems to me that after that, the stones tend to be less dificult to get over or around, but still needing the help of this guide (sponsor, fellowship, HP) to navigate the epiphanies (stones, both "good" and "bad"). But, as we grow through recovery, they (the stones) seem to flatten out, even growing smaller... more frequent in the path. Some even simply line the path, there for us to look at and enjoy as we pass, the larger ones perhaps reminders... At some point, they seem to become a mosaic of various little epiphanies, life experinces, that we can skip across the pond to others as we walk, or point them out to the people who are struggling on their own path. I recall on my first 5th step, my sponsor brought a pocket full of these pebbles, mosaic tiles from his path... They were the same ones I was trying to move or negotiate on my own, but somehow his were smaller. They made mine smaller by comparison as well...

That's the beauty of this program, everyone's stones are different sizes, colors, shapes and they appear in different places along our paths... When we share these epiphanies, they diminish in stature and, quite often become the pebbles and small stones we can safely walk upon, trudging the road of happy destiny, to borrow a phrase from my fave chapter in the Big Book.

Today, I had an epiphany! Thanks to my new friend in recovery!