Acceptable Insanity
From the outside, I was a typical businessman. I lived in a new house in the suburbs with a wife, two young children, cars, a dog, a cat and a close circle of friends and family. In reality, I was living under the thumb of many compulsive behaviors that I couldn’t stop running from which ended up ruining my life. Inside, I must have known that something was wrong, but my two greatest loves, denial and rationalization convinced me that my actions were perfectly normal under the circumstances.
My primary compulsiveness was around money, which I never earned enough of to cover the needs of my family. I raced between scamming people and scamming businesses. While I was kiting and bouncing checks, I was dining in fine restaurants and compulsively buying things I didn’t need and couldn’t afford. I bounced so many checks I was thrown out of one bank after another. I would shoplift from a store and then buy something. My rationale was that I ended up paying wholesale which was acceptable insanity.
I fooled the utility companies until they got wise and disconnected my services. I then had to lie to my family to explain why there was no electricity, why the phone was disconnected and why our car got repossessed. Eventually, it caught up with me. My wife discovered my insane mechanisms, my lies and then threw me out. I had nothing left to lose. I hit bottom.
It was then that my best friend suggested going to a meeting. I went. Everyone was talking about their credit card problems, which miraculously I didn’t have. I thought to myself that I couldn’t relate to anyone and that this wasn’t for me. After the meeting, I got into my car to leave and suddenly, for no apparent reason, started to cry really hard. I couldn’t understand what was happening. When I finally calmed down I realized that something really big had just happened to me. I needed to attend these meetings!
From that moment on my life began to spiral upwards. I immediately stopped stealing and lying. Miracles occurred for me on a daily basis. I knew I had found the answers. As I attended more meetings I began to recognize more and more of the compulsive behaviors that were controlling my life. I found that through the program’s steps I was able to release myself from the powers of these behaviors as they lost their grip on me one by one. I finally could begin to live a life of sanity.
I went to meetings and even started my own meeting closer to home. At the meetings I attended I saw that people would get stuck in their recovery process turning their life over to a higher power. This frightened some, fearing that they would lose their free will and turn into some kind of God robot, unable to think and act autonomously. Nothing is further from the truth. For me, it was an easy choice. I had made a terrible mess of my life trying to run it on my own. Asking for help outside of me was the easy and logical choice. From being the big boss and running the world to answering to a boss and embracing humility was a huge relief!
That was twenty years ago. Since then I have prospered immensely. Today I have zero debt and own a few real estate properties with no mortgages. I travel the world and live a full and rich life. My marriage has survived and is loving and strong, all due to surrendering to a higher power. I learned the secret of perceiving the creator’s directions by intuitively knowing which paths are righteous and which paths are wrong. As I continue to follow the right paths that the creator shows me my life continues to flourish. When I make a major business decision and my colleagues feel strongly that it is the wrong choice, I have learned to trust that as long as I am following the path that the creator shows me, it always works out.
I believe if you can find the courage to surrender to a higher power, your creator will love you and want you to prosper and be happy. Once that force is in you, everything begins to get better. Surrender, humility and forgiveness will change your life forever.
