Recovery in the Bible (RIB)

WHAT IS FULLNESS OF LIFE?

 Recovery taught me that Life in the Vine means admitting that “I can’t, but God can, and I need to let Him.” Here’s an example of from my little life -- just one of many to show what can happen when I step out of God’s way:

It was way back in 1990, about three months after my husband had (finally!) entered the rooms of recovery. For twenty years of marriage, we been acting like Zelda and Scott, wild and child-free, determined never to be a boring, old, married couple like our parents, whose marriages were proper and (we thought) pedestrian). We lived in resort towns, racing sailboats with yachtsmen -- and drinking with the best of them. We had never wanted children because we, like Peter Pan and the Lost Boys, wanted to never grow up -- we had the idea that life inevitably turned into drudgery for those who became parents.

Imagine our dismay when I found myself pregnant at age 43 -- brand new in recovery. My reaction was the first line of the Serenity Prayer: I felt we needed “the serenity to accept the things we cannot change.” My husband, on the other hand, felt we needed to focus on the second line, saying we needed “the courage to change the things we can.” After a week of meeting with doctors, ministers, sponsors, and ultrasound technicians, it turned out to be the third line that we needed: “the wisdom to know the difference.” This baby was not something we could change. This child was God’s idea, someone He’d had in mind all along. And God used the Serenity Prayer to make that clear to us.

I had come home from the doctor, certain that this baby was God’s idea and that I was going to walk through this, with or without my husband, when the telephone rang. It was my husband, calling from a telephone booth at a rest area somewhere along the parkway. It was urgent, he said. He was literally shouting (which was uncharacteristic of this generally reserved and gentle man), "It’s the third line!" he was exclaiming into the phone. "It’s the wisdom to know the difference!" I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, but my husband went on. "This child is half mine, and I can’t walk away from him."

This is evidence from my past -- proof that when I finally admit “I can’t!” and surrender it to  God, I am walking where miracles happen, in Fullness of Life in Christ and by the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Today’s question: Have you a Divine Intervention to share? If so, please do!