RECOVERY – the Cost of Desperation, the Blessedness of Patience

DESPERATION, truly, when it is fully fledged, has no conditions attached to it. It is fully prepared to go where it needs to — by faith, alone — to avail itself to recovery.

Of course, we can do anything if we are desperate enough. And I make these comments in relation to positive desperation; not the variety of desperation that compels us to commit crimes to support habits.

We don’t design conditions if we are desperate enough.

Conditions are not something we are willing to put in the way of our recovery. We are willing to put our backs into the work ahead and to fully trust those who, for this season of our lives, make the rules.

When we have sunk down below, below we must go in our climbing back to life.

Rock bottom experiences of life are only destined to come once in life. If we will not learn something of the humiliation of such an exercise, life will have no problem taking us deeper! The moment we deny we truly have a problem is the moment when we give God’s enemy even more license to sink his claws into our flesh.

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I learned through my AA days over a decade ago, that, sponsors would say, “With all the earnestness at our command, we beg of you to be fearless and thorough from the very start. Some of us though we could find an easier, softer way, but we could not.”

Desperation is at the core of many successful ventures. To achieve the goal of recovery we must be so single-minded, one day at a time.

When we are desperate we don’t say to God, “I want this… I want that.” The humiliation of the demands placed on us match the humiliation we find ourselves in. Only as we steadily prove ourselves to be serious — as we successfully traverse the days, weeks and months of our recovery without backsliding — do we earn the privileges specified within the rules. When we prove we can play by the rules, then we earn the privilege of graduating to a place where we self-regulate — where we make the rules, ourselves.

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The very dear cost of desperation removes the right of options. Conditions are not something we have the luxury of when we have scraped the bottom of the heap. But patience combined with desperation is where recovery has traction.

© 2015 Steve Wickham.