(To catch up with what’s happening, please read the previous post, “I Want What She’s Got”.)
Just as I opened my car door, she said, “Before I agree to do this, I think you should know that I’m a born-again Christian.” What in the world could that have to do with anything? I didn’t want to talk about religion. All I wanted was some HELP. But I really liked her in all ways. I liked the way she was handling her own life, her kids, and especially the practicing alcoholic in her life. She had serenity, good suggestions for finding peace in the middle of life’s storms, and always a caring smile. I figured if that had something to do with this “born-again” business, whatever in the world that meant, I wanted what she had.
Our phone conversation went something like this: I don’t know how to tell you this…I don’t know what I’m going to do…but…I think I might be pregnant. I listened for her reaction and was relieved that I didn’t hear her gasp or choke or scoff. She didn’t even offer sympathy, which I probably didn’t need anyway. She said, “I see” which was her way of saying, “Okay, let’s examine all aspects of this situation, find the positives and negatives, and then map out a plan, prioritizing the steps to be taken.”
She taught me, through everything we went through together over the next few years, how to handle anything life threw at me. She wasn’t shocked that I had actually had sex, and had done it in the stupidest way possible, without birth control, and with someone I didn’t plan to spend the rest of my life with. She was a foster parent and had seen it all. She also knew that if she wasn’t painfully honest with me, I would repeat the same mistakes over and over again and end up a miserable person forever. Through her loving, but firm guidance, I was raised up to be prepared for anything.
Once when I was so upset about something that would be paramount in any young lady’s mind (I’ll give you a hint…it involved another guy, and I’m sure he was more important than the last one I had cried over!), I called her looking for immediate relief. She was so wise in establishing boundaries and responsibility in our relationship. She let me know that she was watching a movie with her family. It would be over in 20 minutes, and she wanted me to call her back then. In the meantime, she said, she wanted me to figure out what I was going to do about this problem!!! Can you believe that? She blew me off! I was a bit miffed. If I knew how to deal with it myself I wouldn’t have called her in the first place!
I spent the first several minutes pacing around, mad at her for being so…gruff…so rude…so…..right. I had to decide what I would do now. I was going to call her back shortly and what would I tell her? That I was angry and hurt because I depended on her to solve all my problems and relieve my of every ounce of pain? That I was still upset and needed her to talk me through it? No, I cracked down on myself and decided that I had acquired enough coping skills up to this point that surely something I had learned would apply to this situation. Let’s see…One Day At A Time? “I can do anything for one hour that would appall me if I thought I had to do it for a lifetime.” Yeah, that kind of made sense. What about K.I.S.S (Keep It Simple Stupid)? I could admit that I might be making a bigger deal out of this than it really was. Didn’t Step 3 say, “Made a decision to turn our will and our life over to the care of God…”? Maybe I could try doing that now.
That wasn’t the last time I called her wanting help. Another time her response was, “I can tell you what Al-Anon says…” There was a flip-side to that coin…something she wasn’t going to tell me unless I asked. What was she getting at? I asked if the Al-Anon answer was what she believed, or if she thought there was another way. She asked if I had a Bible, and for some very strange reason I did happen to have one on the shelf. She told me step by step how to get to the Book of Matthew in the Old Testament (the second half of the Bible), the 6th chapter (she explained that chapters were the bigger bold numbers), verse 25. She told me to read it out loud clear to the end of the chapter. I couldn’t believe what it said! This was Al-Anon stuff, right there in the Bible! From then on she had an open door to suggest more of the same to me. She spoon fed me right into Christianity.
Tags: love, Christian, born again, Bible, Alcoholics Anonymous, AA, Al-Anon, sponsor, alcoholism, boundaries, responsibility, anger, one day at a time, kiss, Matthew, religion, Al-Anon and the Bible
