Many people living in one day at a time recovery find themselves shuffling a deck of spearmint playing cards. When we deal these cards to ourselves or others we want them to smell good and be pleasant to our taste. When we have been in recovery for a while we know such cards are a fallacy as to what life and recovery are all about. Life and recovery often take more work than we have the ability to do by ourselves and often when we get a dose of real recovery it leaves a bad taste in our mouths. Those who help us might tell us that recovery and life are often difficult, and we need to learn to accept its truth which is it is what it is. They know it, others know it and we need to know it. When what it is is hard to do they will tell us that we need to do what needs to be done to understand what real recovery can be all about. Real recovery is about remaining abstinent through difficult times. Other recovering people will help us with getting through difficult times, and when we get through such adversity we stop shuffling our spearmint playing cards. We trade them in for grace with the gratitude of a person who was drowning and were rescued by the reality and experience of others who had been drowning but had been rescued by the reality and experience of others who had rescued them. The grace we receive from others is reality and it is a part of the inextricable bond between recovering people. We will have plenty of good times. We find recovery mostly good enough, sometimes worse but often better. We need not think otherwise. It’s reality. Peace.
