Being involved with the recovery community or in recovery yourself, you have probably either said this phrase or at the very least heard it.
I remember when I first started hearing it I thought, “Yes! I know that grace is the only reason that I am here!” But then sometimes I would hear in meetings that so and so relapsed, “but by the grace of God go I”. I would think to myself, “yeah that’s true, but why did that happen to them?” I had begun to question the legitimacy of that statement. It came to a head when a female, who had been a resident in the program I worked in at the time, was reportedly found dead in her apartment. She had allegedly been in another relapse. That was obviously troubling, all deaths are. But that wasn’t what troubled me the most. What really got me, was that she had reportedly died in an upright position beside her bed, on her knees in a “prayer” posture. The more that image came into my mind, the angrier I became. I thought, “so what about grace God?!! Where was her grace? What did she do to not deserve the grace? Better yet, what did I do to get it?”
Anger and guilt, that was about all that was in me for several days. This was one time I didn’t want to talk about it with anyone else. I just wanted to understand and I wanted that answer to come from my own Creator. One day it just did. A very clear thought entered into my mind. “What made me think that what happened to her wasn’t grace? I mean, who was I to say what grace was or was not. This female, I knew to chronically relapse. I had heard some people who had known her for a long time state believing that she was one of the “unfortunates” that the Big Book referred to, that was incapable of being honest with her self.
So, how did grace apply to her? Well, what came to me was this. She had reportedly suffered most of her life with addiction and the inability to stay clean. What if, in that prayerful position, God as she understood Him, gave her grace and relieved her of her suffering? It was difficult for me to grasp that initially, but as years have passed, I have come to believe this. It is just so easy to put God into a box and define Him in strict terms with many boundaries. In reality, I believe my Creator to be infinite, endless and without boundaries. Like a lot of people, one might think that prison would not be an answer to prayer, but I have talked to hundreds of inmates who would say with utter conviction, that indeed it was an answer to prayer and that they would be dead if it had not have happened! I have talked to many a homeless person, who had once had numerous possessions in their in their life, only to lose it all, including their families, due to their addiction. Those same people would look me in the eye and would also say with great conviction, “I’m so grateful for that, because I wouldn’t be where I am today if it had not have happened”
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In my own life I have heard those very words come out of my own mouth, when someone would say, “I can’t believe you can be so happy after all that stuff happened.” So in conclusion, I found that grace is a word without boundaries and it comes in many forms. Why grace is one way for one person and a totally different way for another, well, I think that is just God’s business.
…………………..Rebecca B.