Waiting for the Last Hiccup

We’re always changing, but who can predict the final result?

ONE OF LIFE’S blessings for us in the program is the lack of continuity we are presented with in times of struggle, those times when we aren’t where we were but don’t yet know where experience will take us. In the past, these times produced great anxiety for me, almost like waiting for the last hiccup.

Today, it’s okay to experience a time of waiting. It’s a time for patience, hope, peace, and trust, a time of knowing we are being reborn, shaped once again by the Master’s hand, not quite ready to be held up to the mirror of our own souls to see the growth reflected. Experience has shown us that the changes will be subtle; other circumstances in time will present themselves, and we will act or react differently; we will speak with a little more wisdom, walk a little taller, have a little more compassion for the sufferings of our fellowman, a little more respect for life and human dignity. We have come to believe by seeing past growth in ourselves, and the times of confusion and pain become easier.

It is like listening to Schubert’s “Unfinished Symphony”; the realization of the beauty of the music of life today becomes more important than the fact that the symphony is incomplete. We become aware that being “unfinished” is okay, that in times of turmoil and uncertainty, we need more than ever to “let go and let God” shape our lives, leaving the results up to him while we concern ourselves with living today the best we can.

In being willing to let go of life as it was and ourselves as we were, we learn to face painful change with courage. The miracle is that we can do this sober through the grace of God and the program, that we don’t have to drink today in order to cope. That miracle is renewed along with us.

Copyright © The AA Grapevine, Inc.