More Than Entirely Ready
by Diane Bell
(Continued from Entirely Ready)
A year after separating from my husband, I began dating again and met an interesting man at a barbecue given by mutual friends. He worked in the computer technology industry and was truly fascinating to me -- for awhile. After a few months of once a week dinner and/or movie dates, I had heard everything I ever wanted to know about computers and had seen all the new movies I was interested in, so I began suggesting other things to do on our dates. I was grateful that we had not become sexually involved because it was apparent that eating and computers were the only interests we had in common, so I began making more plans with other friends to go dancing and visit art shows and concerts, etc. Of course, that meant that I wasn't always available for the dinner/movie dates. It seemed to me to be a natural demise to a "no future" relationship. Apparently he felt differently about it and followed me one night to a club where I was meeting friends to dance. When I first saw him, I thought it was a coincidence and greeted him with genuine pleasure and invited him to join our group.
His gruff refusal of my invitation should have been a clue that he was on a mission and that I was the object of his mission. I was shocked when he came onto the dance floor and demanded that I talk to him about our relationship. He turned me around to face him and he had tears in his eyes as he said, "You know how much I care about you, so you'll understand that it's out of love that I say that I'm extremely concerned about your drinking." I was speechless. It felt like he had slapped me and kicked me in the stomach at the same time. I had been drinking Perrier with a twist of lime all evening, for crying out loud, and I rarely drank more than a glass of wine with dinner on special occasions.
Fortunately he was still tearfully jabbering away. It gave me the opportunity to do a feeling check and figure out what was going on. I really wanted to throw my Perrier in his face. I felt so helpless -- what could I say on my own behalf in the face of such irrational insanity? Then I started thinking about what an admirable job he'd done voicing his concern. He had done so much better than I had ever managed in all the nasty confrontations I had initiated over and over again with every alcoholic in my life.
I was acutely aware that his inappropriate behavior, nestled between his lovingly concerned attitude and selfless demeanor was the mirror image of my own. I almost choked trying to subdue the hysterical laughter that was trying to escape at the irony of the situation.
Knowing that his misdirected concern was born of the best of intentions with no intent to hurt or harm me did nothing to lessen the hurt and myriad of emotions he'd set off within me. In that instant I became more than entirely ready for God to remove my critical, judgmental attitude toward other people and my need to fix them. I shook my friend's hand, while he stood with his mouth open, and thanked him for his genuine concern. I told him that he had helped me more than he would ever know and that I would remember him forever with gratitude for being an instrument of God in bringing me the awareness I need to change.
Now, I was sincere in what I said, but he looked at me like I was crazy (I think it was being called an instrument of God that got him) and made a bee-line for the exit without saying another word. I also never heard from him again. I'm sitting here grinning at God's wisdom in the choice of words He puts in my mouth sometimes. I stood there that night with tears of joy rolling down my cheeks, filled with gratitude and awe for the powerful, life changing lesson my Higher Power had orchestrated just for me. Since that time, I've never even been tempted to repeat my old behavior about someone else's drinking -- that's how effective the lesson was for me.
© Diane Bell
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