Control is an issue for me.....

....as I want control over many, if not all things in my life. I see myself as someone that has the answer. I'm willing to question many things. Even those things I really know very little about. I still want someone to explain issues about those things and then I can make the best decision. So when it comes to me giving up control of my life to a Higher Power, I am very unsure about that. I do believe in a Higher Power. I do believe that a Higher Power is focused on good, not evil. Yet, I want to believe that I know the answers to my problems and issues. I want to believe that I can read something and apply it to my life in a positive way. Yes, I've had a difficult time doing that over my life. I've pretty much not done it. I've found that this change creates pain in me. Pain that is related to emotions, desire, fears, intimacy and much more.

But it talking with my therapist yesterday about this control issue, she brought up an interesting point. In the depths of my addictive behaviors was I ever in control? I have to honestly answer "No, I was not. I was and still am powerless over my addiction." So I'm left to ask myself who was in control. My wife says no one was in control. Others would answer that my Higher Power was watching over me, making sure my life didn't spin even further out of control. It's hard to process that train of thought. But if I somehow didn't come to some sort of reality check in my addiction, I would have gone deeper and deeper into the abyss. I was fortunate that I didn't go deeper and was able to find some help.

So if my Higher Power was watching over me, why would he let me delve down into that horrible hole of an addiction? I believe he didn't. I believe it was me that lead me into that place. I was not spiritually centered so I was left to wander on my own. I was without a compass. Especially not a moral compass. So making negative, short term decisions were very easy for me to make. After a few years of making these short term decisions, it became much easier, almost second nature, to make more short term, negative decisions. It became an ongoing circle of negativity that kept perpetuating itself. I wouldn't like where I was or what I was doing, and would decide to make a change. The change would not be a change for good necessarily, but change. I would approach it in a positive way but in reality was only changing my surroundings. Nothing of significance was changing. Different day, same issues.