Promises

Just a few days, really, after planting seeds, little sprouts began to come up in my garden. Here are the beans










Here are some radishes














Here are the squash, melons and cucumbers










Here is the corn














Here is the tomato and pepper bed, all planted with young plants that are already looking pretty vibrant and happy in their new digs












I find myself going out to the garden several times a day to just stare at it. It seems that everyday something new begins to sprout up. It's amazing to me that all I did was to put together some good dirt, add water and seeds and voila - vegetables! I don't know why I shake my head in wonder and almost disbelief. It has happened just as nature and all the gardening books have always promised. All I had to do was follow the steps of putting together a garden. It was a lot of work, I will admit, and maybe that's why although I've always wanted a garden like this, I never quite got around to it before. But because this year I took the steps I needed to take to get the garden established, the impossible dream of growing fresh, organic vegetables is becoming a promise fulfilled right in my own front yard. Granted, there's still a lot of growth yet to go, but each day, I see more progress.

Last Tuesday night at the big book study meeting at our church that I attend each week, we got to the paragraph that states the step 9 promises of AA (step 9 is when you make face to face appointments with people you have harmed or resented in your life and make earnest amends for your past behaviors toward them.) The paragraph says:

"If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are half way through. We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness. We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it. We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace. No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others. That feeling of uselessness and self pity will disappear. We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows. Self-seeking will slip away. Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change. Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us. We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us. We will sudenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves."

What amazing promises! They must seem like an impossible dream to someone in the throes of addiction. I know that about 20 years ago, when I was at my lowest point in life, living a life sorely affected by an alcoholic, I would have read such promises and shaken my head in disbelief. Freedom? Happiness? Having no regrets? Finding serenity and peace? having no more feelings of uselessness and self pity? The fear of economic insecurity will leave me? How could any of that ever, possibly come true for me?

But as amazing as such things would have seemed before I started my healing journey, I have since learned that by no means are these extravagant promises. I've learned that when I accept and acknowledge that my life has become unmanageable and take the first small step toward recovery, then the next and the next, always seeking progress rather than perfection, things do change. What is most important is to admit that "God is God, and I am not God." When I began to move forward in that kind of humility, I found that at some point when I paused and looked back, I saw very clearly that my life was no longer the same sad life I was once living. And I realized that the promises had actually begun to come true.

Go to the lumber store and get boards to build some boxes. Get some good compost. Mix it with peat moss and vermiculite so it will soak up lots of water. Put it in your boxes and separate it into sections. Keep it moist. Add seeds. Build trellises for the climbing plants. Protect the beds from animals. And you will get vegetables.

Turn your life over to God, trust God will take you better places than you can take yourself, allow God to remove those bad habits or reactions or life strategies that are not working, and trust God has better ways for you to be. Make intentional amends for your past errors and live a new way, and you will find a freedom that you never thought would ever be possible.

Again from the Big Book: "Are these extravagant promises? We think not. They are being fulfilled among us - sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. They will always materialize if we work for them."

God certainly promises us wonderful things. And wonderful promises like these are certainly worth working for.