Near Death

Recovery is the nearest you get to death without doing yourself in.  Much earlier in life you try some drug or behavior in order to change your feelings, escape a feeling, feel better, or at least feel differently.  Eventually, you use your drug to escape all feelings.  You seek oblivion.  All feelings, all life, is beyond your threshold of pain.  This is the bottom beyond which is death or recovery.  You kill yourself or you seek help.  Usually fear is what energizes people to make the call.  I don't tell people that recovery is a "spiritual" program.  They freak out with such a word as spiritual because religion has done such a bad job of it.  I tell them that recovery is an alternative to death.  I appeal to the fear factor.  Translate all this to the area of prayer.  We try to escape whatever we think is "prayer."  We are all spiritual people when normal.  So we have to find an abnormal way of living to escape the natural pull of prayer.  To avoid all prayer (foxhole prayers excepted) is to court a slow death from within.  We will all die on the outside eventually, but dying on the inside is optional.  People in recovery have chosen the better option.  Are you in need of recovery?