The Smile that shines through Tears: Growth in Recovery and Grace

I was looking back to last year's Facebook entry and found tow quotes that I can add to today.  

" Patience is needed with everyone, but first of all with ourselves." –St. Francis de Sales  

  

" It IS EASY ENOUGH to be pleasant, when life flows by like a song, But the man worth while is one who will smile, when everything goes dead wrong. For the test of the heart is trouble, And it always comes with the years, And the smile that is worth the praises of earth Is the smile that shines through tears." Worthwhile. by Ella Wheeler Wilcox  

 

I reflect on these quotes for I find recovery isn't about perfect days.  It is about finding the strength to walk down an imperfect path as an imperfect self -- and still choose hope, faith and a trusting smile. 

 

As I entered recovery, I believe recovery would come quickly if I tried harder.  I quickly learned that one of the first lessons in recovery was that impatience with myself was its own kind of self-centeredness.  Bill Wilson reminds us that spiritual progress, not spiritual perfection, is the goal.  Patience with ourselves is one of the highest forms of humility.   

 

Moreover, just to complain about our troubles produced little solution to them.  However, acting as if and carrying a smile redirected old habits of "poor me" to habits of faith-based defiance were smiling through tears keep me sober. 

 

Even though my recovery at times does not feel like a blessing, it does provide me with the evidence that a power greater than myself does care about my life and is there for me in all troubles.  Bill Wilson also has said that our troubles could become are greatest teachers if we let them.  We learn to navigate intuitively it the various storms of life. 

 

Spiritually we learn that God's strength is made perfect in our weakness.  When I reach the end of my patience or when my heart breaks of loss, this is when there is room enough to allow grace to flow in.  Smiling through tears is not about faking it -- It is about trusting that I am being embraced by a beautiful power that will not let me fall.   

 

If you are in a season of struggle right now, remember patience with yourself is not laziness, and smiling through pain is not denial.  They are signs of a heart that is healing, a soul that is growing.  Keep going.  Keep smiling. You are becoming the person you were always meant to be. 

 

Supporting thoughts 

AA Recover thoughts 

"We are not saints.  The point is, that we are willing to grow along spiritual lines." AA Big Book p60 

 

"We have found that God does not make to hard terms with those who seek Him.  To us, the realm of the spirit is broad, roomy, all inclusive; never exclusive or forbidding to those who earnestly seek." AA Bib Book p 46 

 

Just as Bill Wilson taught patience through pain, so too do the scriptures teach us to endure with faith and hope. 

"My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness."  2 Corinthians 12:9 

"Wherefore, e of good cheer, and do not fear, for I the Lord am with you and will stand by you." (Doctrine and Covenants 68"6) 

From the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I find the following thoughts. 

"Patience is not passive resignation, nor is it failing to act because of our fears. Patience means active waiting and enduring.  It means staying with something and doing all that we can." Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf ("Continue n Patience") 

"The joy we feel has little to do with the circumstances of our lives and everything to do with the focus of our lives."  President Russell M. Nelson, "Joy and spiritual Survival"