Once the bubble pops, I start asking the old questions all over again. Is God really taking care of me? Am I really making progress in my recovery? Am I totally focused on loving myself, rather than looking for love outside of myself? Can I ever trust myself to leave my co-dependencies behind me, once and for all? Can I trust significant others with my innermost feelings and intuitions, even when revealing them will make me out to be a fool?

I've never enjoyed that "pick yourself up and dust yourself off and move on" feeling, when realization sinks in and what looked promising vanishes into thin air. Maybe I should take that kind of event as a signal that deep down inside, maybe unconsciously, I'm still looking and hoping for some external person or thing to save me from myself and my problems. I stop trusting God and start trusting all the false gods that never deliver on their false hopes and promises.

I suppose trust is the whole reason for addictions in the first place—something or someone promises to be better for us than we believe God can be. It's easier to trust in the tangibles rather than the intangibles. To escape the trap of constant self-awareness and pain, we desperately cling to whatever addictive agent we can literally get our hands on, promising a way out of self, a way to numb the pain, a way of forgetting, even if just temporarily.

Someone said to me recently, "I am a runner. I run away from my problems instead of facing them."

I, too, am a runner. All my life I've run from myself and my fears. All my life I've hoped and prayed for a way to escape the responsibility of dealing with life. Maybe we are all runners.

Recovery has taught me the safety of trusting God rather than someone or something. It is safe to trust God, even in the dark, when I can't see the next step. It is safe to trust God when I am afraid and don't know what to do next. It is safe to trust God when the pain is too great to bear for a another minute—yet another minute somehow passes. It is safe to trust God when the only tool left to me is to simply trust God some more. But for some reason, I have to be reminded to trust God, over and over again. Maybe that's the reason there is so much suffering and pain, to remind me where to place my trust.

Let me then always run to God, who consistently delivers on the promises of real inner peace and serenity and safety, despite the outer turmoil.

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