Stumbling...

What do we do if we stumble, and what various forms does that take for those of us in long term addiction & alcoholism recovery?  "They say" that the road gets narrower.  How close to the edge can we go before running the risk of falling off the path altogether?

A dear friend struggles with gambling.  Long term sobriety, and a long struggle with this other killer. Does that mean that he isn't doing something "right?" Does that mean that his years of step work, of sponsoring men, of showing up for others, means naught?  I've known others who's dis-ease has taken the form of overspending, over eating, relationship addiction - all those ways that imbalance manifests in our lives.  Are they sober?  In recovery?  How narrowly or broadly do we define those terms?

For others, that stumble may involve the various ways we stray from whatever we define as Higher Power - busyness (which is often perversely rewarded in our culture), television (when something is called "binge" anything, it's a clue...) - the "lesser" evils that nonetheless serve to distract us from our centered place.

And what about those close-calls? Those there-but-for-the-grace-of god-go-I? For me, that came when my mother was dying. I was in charge of her morphine - of filing up the little syringes that she'd squirt under her tongue every few hours to help ease the pain.  One evening, several months into the hospice journey, I spilled some of the medicine onto my hand.  My alcoholism, on high alert as I walked through those painful days, whispered, "I wonder if you'd feel it if you licked your fingers?"  I wonder.  I wonder, and I consider it grace that I recognized that voice for what it was (fear, grief, wanting to escape). I said out loud, "I see you, you f***er. You can't get me that easy," and washed my hands at the kitchen sink.  And, I felt the stumble. I was acutely aware in that moment of losing my balance. With the excruciating pain of watching my mother die, I could just as easily downed a bottle of the stuff.

How have you stumbled? Where do you feel it when you are off the beam?  How do you find your way back?