Anticipation

"Anticipation, anticipation, is makin' me late, is keeping me waitin'" - Carly Simon

Yesterday where I live was a stunningly beautiful day with temperatures reaching 80. When this happens in mid-March in St. Louis it is often followed by tumult. Summertime weather this time of year is simply a case of Mother nature messin' with us.

Like clockwork the clouds began rolling in late in the afternoon ushering in a cold front from the Northwest and a forty-degree drop in temperature. That evening, the weathercasters predicted rain, then snow, and a rain/snow/sleet mix with 50 mile per hour wind gusts. To ensure viewership for the remainder of the evening, locusts and frogs falling from the sky were also forecast.

We were anticipating the worst in St. Louis. At the very least I feared my little section of cedar fence due for repair this Spring would be obliterated by the sleet, the wind, locusts and frogs.

Earlier this morning the wind was howling and a companion light rain was being blown about in spurts, but nothing like what we had been convinced would be our fate this day.

As I am writing this and look out our living room window, the Sun is shining upon the neighbors front door across the street. The winds are calm. It is a beautiful late Winter day in the Midwest.

Mother Nature wasn't messin' with us this day. She was teaching us a valuable lesson.

Anticipation keeps us waiting, makes us catatonic, encourages laziness and plays awful movies and worse sequels in our heads. We stop doing. We wait. We fixate. We are habitually late for life.

Carly Simon's suggestion to "stay right here" is a call to remain in the moment, to seek and see, to live life to its fullest and not be constrained by convincing ourselves that what might be our worst nightmares will come to pass.

Thinking we can change what has yet to happen is insanity but something parents of addicts ponder too often.

We all do this, have done this. It keeps us mired.

Some of the possibilities are tragic to be sure. Most of those tragic possibilities will never materialize. When we react to what has yet to happen we become the mechanism by which the bad dreams can come true. We enable, try to "fix" and in doing so insult and belittle our addicted children.

The message is, "You can't and never will figure this out!"

We get in the way of their victories. We get in the way of our recovery.

GET OUT OF THE WAY!

We can give these awful movies and the predictably awful sequels to a Power greater than we will ever be. We can say, "Here!" to God, the Universe, the Great Creator, whatever Higher Power we can visualize. The burden lifted, we might just be able to move on and go forward with our lives. We can start anticipating great things for ourselves. We can hope for the same for our sons and daughters.

It's not our weather to predict. It's our lives to live.

Hold fast to the love we will always feel for our sons and daughters. By living our lives more fully we can be a beacon to all, including the children who gave us this gift of recovery.

"And stay right here, 'cause these are the good old days."

We can live in the moment embracing each joy and trial that comes our way. In time, we'll realize those little moments are what add up to miles in our recovery journeys.

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