Thinking about several things at once, here! Talked about “boundaries” at the Al-Anon meeting on Wednesday, then, the next day, the issue arose in discussion around whether or not to go and check on a group member because she had not responded to two txt messages from the hostess regarding our weekly group meeting. It has also been raised in connection with another group member’s health issues and employment situation, which also involves his financial situation.
Boundaries.
When do we just let people make their own choices and take responsibility for the consequences of those choices - rather than running around after them, making sure they are “all right”?
This continues to be a vexed question for me!
The reading from One Day at a Time in Al-Anon on p.86, contains a sentence which makes sense to me:
Acceptance ... means accepting the fact of a situation and then deciding what we will do about it.
Again, at http://alcoholism.about.com/cs/info2/a/blbud01.htm,
... everyone has the right to make their own mistakes, and learn from them, without my interference or assistance! The key to serenity is acceptance. But ‘acceptance’ does not mean that I have to like it, or condone it or even ignore it. What it does mean is I am powerless to do anything about it, and I have to accept that. I MUST accept it!
Something to do with the idea that churches are sometimes the very worst places for being enabled to continue in one’s own misery and personal disempowerment, simply because there is an idea that in looking after each other we need to do stuff for the other, stuff that the other could reasonably be expected to do for themselves!
Step One stuff!
We admitted we were powerless over alcohol - that our lives had become unmanageable.
I have no control whatsoever over what this group member or what that group member or what the hostess does.
But we do have a power, derived from God, and that is the power to change our own lives.
[ ODAT , p. 86.]
Where does praying for others fit in to all of this?
I suppose that depends on what I understand by the term “prayer.”
We seem to have inherited a notion that prayer is about asking God to give us what we want rather than releasing ourselves to God to do with us that which is God’s will for us. What is God’s will for my friends or my self at this moment? Perhaps that is what intercessory prayer is about? As individuals and as a group, each finding out what is God’s will for us, and then seeking God’s strength to do it?
The issue of boundaries must also come into this, I think. Something about each of us seeking God’s will for our selves and for each other and for the group - not about seeking to impose my will on another or on the group in the name of God.
This whole thing about trying to control what is not mine to control, and relinquishing that control I think I have or want to have. I am not God. I cannot impose my thoughts and feelings and decisions on another or on a group - especially a group that purports to meet in the name of God and to seek God’s will for us as individuals and as a group.
I can share my strength, hope and experience, but others are not obliged to take it all on board as some sort of Gospel truth.
Take what you like, what you can use, what speaks to you, and leave the rest.
There is still a place for reasoning things out in discussion with others, also, again with that idea of taking what you like, what you can use, what speaks to you, and leaving the rest.
Progress not perfection. So much good learning has come from Al-Anon! So many important life-lessons, life-lessons which are also echoed in the words and stories of the Bible!
God, thank you for what you are teaching me today, what I have learned from you in the past, and the lessons you have in store for me in the future, as I walk with you on my life’s journey. I have not always been able to hear what you have wanted to say to me, and yet, in your great love, you have continued to present me with opportunities for learning about you, about my self, about others and the interdependence of all things in my life, you have persisted with me in spite of my self, perhaps even because of my self. Continue to draw me to your self in love so that my life will be shaped and moulded by - and put to good use for the sake of - your great love. Amen.
