As It Is

It's been an interesting week for my program. My husband had to serve his week of jail time as part of his sentence for the DUI/accident. We live 400 miles away from the scene of the crime, as it were, so he had to travel there to go to jail. All told, he was gone about 9 days.

I didn't know what was going on with him when he was there. It turned out he was unable to call me because they didn't allow calls to cell phones, and we don't have a land line. I knew that he would have called me if he could, so the lack of phone calls from him indicated to me that he wasn't allowed to call. Still, without the reassurance of his voice telling me he was okay, I had to work hard not to worry. That doesn't come easy to me.

About all I could do was tell myself, "I'm not in control." It did help. I was very busy with school during that time, even had a class over the weekend, so there wasn't too much down time to really get into a good codie worry fest. And when I did have time, I was able to enjoy it. It has been a long time since I regularly had private time to relax, so I went for hikes and runs, went out with friends, and read. Sometimes the thought crept in that my husband wasn't having nearly as relaxing a time, and I would worry again. "I'm not in control."

I've been reading a book called "The 12-Step Buddhist" by Darren Littlejohn. I've gotten to the part on Step 1 where he describes meditating on "as it is." We have to learn to accept everything--life, people, situations, our thoughts--as it is. It isn't just addicts and codependents--everybody is in some degree of denial of things as they are. We all think we can change other people or change the future, but all we have is the present moment. Failure to accept others and ourselves as we are simply perpetuates our own suffering and denies us the lessons of the present moment. As a program friend recently said to me, "You are exactly where you need to be right now."

"As it is" has become a useful mantra for me. It helps calm me and reminds me that I am not in control of very much at all--really just my own actions. Especially when I spin out of control about the future, afraid that things in my life are inevitably going to go in a direction that I fear, saying this to myself helps remind me to stay in the present and realize I can't control others or the future.