If he is not interested in your solution, if he expects you to act only as a banker for his financial difficulties or a nurse for his sprees, you may have to drop him until he changes his mind. This he may do after he gets hurt some more. If he is sincerely interested and wants to see you again, ask him to read this book in the interval. After doing that, he must decide for himself whether he wants to go on. He should not be pushed or prodded by you, his wife, or his friends. If he is to find God, the desire must come from within. If he thinks he can do the job in some other way, or prefers some other spiritual approach, encourage him to follow his own conscience. We have no monopoly on God; we merely have an approach that worked with us. But point out that we alcoholics have much in common and that you would like, in any case, to be friendly. Let it go at that.
Working With Others
pg 95
Pain got me here. A lot of pain. If I could have done it for them, I would have, but I couldn't. I had to be in a lot of pain and lose pretty much everything. My last relationship before I got here ended with me running into a church sitting through a spanish speaking mass, and when that didn't work, I went to the liquor store and called an ex boyfriend. That worked-until it didn't. That relationship ended because I couldn't let go of another ex and he found out about it. I hid my drinking from him but I think he caught on when his bottle of liquor were half water...LOL!
I loved him and his son, as much as I was capable at that time. I didn't love, I used. I used them to make me feel safe and wanted. I hoped he would marry me and deliver me from myself-but he didn't, and now I see how he had protected his son from me. His son loved me and I would have destroyed both of them if he hadn't let me go. That pain was maybe the worst I had felt in my life up to that point. That or anything anyone said or did wouldn't have stopped me from drinking. No human power, including my own, could get me on the path of recovery. I still needed to do the path of destruction and pain until I ran out of road. Trying to convince me wouldn't have worked. I needed to run out of road. I needed a bottom. I needed God to do for me what I couldn't do for myself otherwise I would quit drinking the moment it started becoming a thing that brought on negative results.
I don't know why God decided to get me sober when and how he did, but I am grateful not just for the grace, but also now for the experience that led to the final separation from alcohol. How else would I know what peace, joy, gratitude, contentment and serenity feels like unless I had experienced the hell of hangovers, despair, hopelessness, discontentment, ungratefulness, selfishness, complainer, user, parasitical consumer of everything, including people, dis-eased and dis-orderly....Yeah, I don't miss it.
I am learning what Love is and it certainly isn't what I thought. My new way of experiencing love doesn't involve me taking or giving too much because I am secretly trying to obtain something in return. God had to change my heart in that regard. There is no way I, at that time, could have known how to love, and I absolutely forgive myself for that. Now I actually have to practice the real definition of love as it just didn't come natural to me because I was always in survival mode or wanting my way mode.
Love is patient, Love is kind. Love does not envy, Love does not boast, Love is not proud. Love does not dishonor others, Love is not self-seeking, Love is not easily angered, Love keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. Love always protects, Love always trusts, Love always hopes, Love always perseveres.
Love never fails.