I'm coming to believe that at every moment I am given exactly what I need to grow. Wherever my feet are is the exact right place for my highest and best good. The experiences that bring joy and happiness and the experiences that bring pain and suffering are all by the grace of a loving universe to help me see the truth of what I am, a spiritual being having a human experience.
I didn't used to think this way. Back before I stumbled through the doors of Alcoholics Anonymous when something "bad" happened, I wondered cynically how a loving God allow it? And what about all the poverty, cruelty and killing in the world? The only answer I could come up with is that it was punishment for my/our so-called sins. Somehow, I/we had it coming.
I suffered with the belief that I was in charge, that I was the doer of my life, and if there was a problem, there was always something I should have done differently. Since I thought I was in control of outcomes, I beat myself purple with the whip of my own self-hate when things went wrong.
The program of Alcoholics Anonymous has given me a new pair of glasses. Today I'm beginning to see that life is neither good nor bad, it is simply Life. I am not living life, I am being lived. I continue to set myself up for suffering anytime I think life should be different from what it is at any moment.
As proof that life knows what it is doing, I have the disease of alcoholism. If I didn't have this deadly disease, there is no way I would have been willing use the steps to begin to see life differently. I could not have arrived at the place I am today from where I was. My alcoholism is grace, my recovery is grace. It's all grace.