Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.

Matthew‬ ‭26‬:‭41

It’s hard to be a part of something when I’m lifeless and unwilling. It’s hard to accept help when it’s only condition is that I am willing to pass it on.

My initial state in early sobriety was predominately made up of a kind of flabbergasted uneasiness that rooted me to my seat and provided me with a nauseating fear of being found out, kicked out or left out.

Without the willingness to put my hand out to others, I expected through something akin to divine intervention to be selected for friendships.

Without the fortitude to bend my stubbornness to true confession, I hoped to wake from this bad dream and prayed that all would pass me by rather than that I’d be changed.

Without the wherewithal to begin cultivating relationships, I sought out the fast forward button in hopes of skipping to a time where I might be more adjusted to the workings of life.

I failed for a while to see that discomfort approaches everyone in different ways. But, indiscriminately, it washes over everyone in some way.

The task was not meant to be surmountable. And I kept thinking I had to figure it out like a puzzle.

This is an impossible puzzle. Impossible if we are alone.

It’s often more attractive to believe this and to keep trying of our own accord rather than except help. This is especially true when the help prescribed is of a spiritual nature.

Spiritual things tend to worry if not terrify us. I grew up inundated with discussion of spiritual matters, and yet it was a simple matter of desensitization for me to turn spiritual truth into existential terror.

Belief has been a fluid dynamic. When the pressures of life have built up, I’ve sought relief through belief. The concentrated moments in time where this has been needed have given way to longer stretches of normalcy.

But the flow of the spirit remains ever present. And in the normal days, like today, I try to turn my thoughts toward it. Acknowledging that I am moving—allowing myself to be moved along the beam.

God, help me take the action necessary to stay in the stream of the spirit.