The Moon is Beautiful

4:30 in the morning.  It is nice and cool outside, I can see the quarter moon from my back porch over Georgia Highway 67.

A year after Natasha died, I decided I didn't want to be crazy any longer.  Coincidentally, it was also at 4:30 am that I had this epiphany.

I started going back to Alanon meetings.  At last night's meeting the topic was acceptance.  Halfway through the meeting, I shared that, so far, we had been talking about acceptance in terms of alcohol and the alcoholics in our lives, straight from the first step.  But I was thinking about the Serenity prayer.  In the first third of it, we say God grant me the serenity to accept the things we cannot change.

Acceptance is a gift. And it is a gift that we constantly have to ask God for.  I quit asking after Natasha's death.  It was too painful to revisit that everyday, sometimes many times in one day.  I felt I would be better off just struggling through.  It was not that I thought I could do it better on my own, I just didn't think I could do it at all.

That was kind of like turning up the radio, rolling down the windows, flooring the gas pedal and taking my hands off the steering wheel.  As much fun as it is to do that, it never ends well.