When Pain Exceeds Fear

I've been telling my sponsor for months that I'm ready to work Step Six on my resentment toward my mother-in-law. But every time she asks me to examine it I find reasons to postpone. I'm not quite ready yet. I need to understand it better first. Maybe next week. Until yesterday when my resentment poisoned another family gathering and I finally felt the full cost of clinging to it.

All this Step asks is that I become ready or willing to have God remove all of my defects of character. Become ready or willing. I thought readiness would arrive through understanding or spiritual growth. But it arrived the same way I came to Al-Anon - through hitting bottom. I didn't come to my first meeting because I suddenly understood alcoholism as a disease. I came because the pain of living the way I was living became unbearable. I needed a new emotional bottom.

Yesterday's family gathering was my bottom with this resentment. The bitterness in my mouth. The tension in my body. The way I poisoned the whole afternoon for myself while she remained oblivious. The pain of holding onto this resentment finally exceeded my fear of letting it go. I don't know who I'll be without this familiar anger. But I can't carry it anymore.

If I'm stuck between Steps Five and Six, I can write honestly: What is this defect costing me today? What am I afraid will happen if I let it go? When the cost finally outweighs the fear, readiness arrives not through force but through pain that becomes teacher.