The Crash That Woke Me
We acknowledge the results of our efforts – a spiritual awakening – commit ourselves to sharing the gifts we have received and recognize that living a spiritual life is an ongoing process.
They talk about 'spiritual awakening' like it's a gentle sunrise, a warm glow of awareness. But I didn't wake up because I heard angels singing. I woke up because I hit a wall at full speed. My strategies stopped working. My control collapsed. Everything fell apart, and in the wreckage, I finally opened my eyes.
The 'results of our efforts' looked like disaster before they looked like recovery. The awakening was the pain—the raw, undeniable truth that I couldn't live this way anymore. It wasn't transcendent; it was desperate. It wasn't graceful; it was a crash.
This is the paradox no one warns you about: spiritual awakening often begins with falling apart. The life I'd been protecting so fiercely had to collapse before something real could grow. The crash wasn't the failure—it was the wake-up call I'd been ignoring for years.
Al-Anon is teaching me that living a spiritual life is ongoing and often messy. It's not a mountaintop experience I reach and stay on. It's crash, wake up, rebuild. Crash again, wake up again, rebuild better. The awakening isn't a destination—it's the willingness to keep opening my eyes even when the view is painful.
I will look at my current struggle and ask: 'How is this bringing me closer to help?' I will thank God for the crash that forced me to seek support, trusting that this rock bottom is a solid foundation upon which my new life is being built.
