Synchronicity In Recovery, Unexpected Blessings
By Chaplain Steve Shewmake
Addiction Recovery:
The transition from a life of active
addiction/alcoholism to a recovery
lifestyle brings both difficulties and
unexpected blessings. Our old way of
seeing life often put us into the midst
of many frustrations when events didn’t
go as we had planned, when we had
planned. We wanted what we wanted,
right now!
In addiction recovery we have the
opportunity to learn – and to take to
heart – the lesson that some things
happen not when we think we are ready
for them, but when our Higher Power
knows we are ready. Sometimes our
desires and expectations coincide with
God’s plans, and we find it easy to talk
about living in God’s will. On the other
hand, there are times when our goals,
plans, and wants just don’t seem to be
going anywhere. Those situations pose
a much greater challenge to our
commitment to surrender to our Higher
Power. And then there are those
occasions when we feel we have
genuinely accepted that God’s plans or
timetable for our lives is not what we
wanted, and yet we try to resign
ourselves to being okay with life anyway
– and then we are pleasantly surprised
and amazed that God permits events to
unfold in a manner that graces us with
a blessing we never saw coming.
Many folks in addiction recovery talk of
“God-things,” meaning the little (and
sometimes not so little) unforeseen and
unexplained blessings that God has
poured out upon us and those around us.
These God-things are evidence to us that
our Higher Power is actively at work in
our lives. They are often understood as
minor (and not so minor) miracles.
During a difficult time someone we have
never met before says the exact thing we
needed to hear. A phone call comes at
just the right moment. Maybe it’s
something as simple as feeling the sun on
our face, or seeing geese flying overhead,
or watching a deer cross the road; timely
reminders from the natural world that
God is still in charge and everything will
be okay.
Remember those connect-the-dot
exercises we used to do as children?
Draw a line from dot #1 to dot #2, and
so on. Eventually a recognizable picture
began to emerge. Maybe that’s the way
synchronicity works. Synchronicity is
understood as the experience of things
happening in some meaningful pattern.
What we might have formerly dismissed
as sheer coincidence takes on new
meaning for us in recovery. Events that
cannot logically or rationally be
explained away are no longer seen as
simply statistical flukes, but rather as
experiential evidence that our Higher
Power is directly involved in our lives,
or in the lives of other people we know.
We learn to “connect the dots” and see
the pattern.
I can recall from my days in seminary
one professor explaining that the
method of teaching used by Jesus —
telling stories — is paralleled by the
experience of someone telling a joke;
either you “get it”…or you don’t. Some
people understood right away what
Jesus was getting at… others figured it
out later on, and some never did
understand what he was saying.
Maybe that’s also a reasonable way
to understand synchronicity in
addiction recovery. If we are open to see God’s
hand at work in the events of life, then
we will recognize that events work out
according to God’s timing and according
to God’s plans. If we don’t “get it,”
then life will continue to seem random
and chaotic. What a difference that
makes, not only in our attitude toward
life, but also in our attitude toward
addiction recovery! My hope is that we can all
take time to be open and reflective
about the events that happen in our
lives. Perhaps we will discover that God
has placed a pattern before us that can
provide us a newfound sense of hope
and encouragement (because we know
that there is purpose to those things that
happen in life). How much easier it is
to take life on life’s terms when we know
that our Higher Power is guiding and
directing things.
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