500

Today marks 500 days of sobriety!  So I am going to make a list of 500 things....yeah, right.

Although I could make a list of atleast 500 things that I am grateful for since this journey began...I will spare you. 

(And no I don't count the days...I have a handy little app that does that for me...)

My first real sober day (March 18, 2012) was horrific. I thought there was no way I would experience many more.  It was the strangest feeling.  I hated it.  And then when I got to treatment, and heard that true sobriety meant no mood altering substances, ever...I just knew there was no way. Count me out.  But that is because I was thinking about how I was going to do it.  I was focused on what I was letting go of instead of what I was to grab onto.  And to me,  sobriety =  willpower.  

But as I am growing in my relationship with God, sobriety is taking on a whole new meaning.  Sobriety by definition is: to make or become more serious, sensible, and solemn.  And the gospel does that for me.  Yes, the absence of drugs and alcohol attributes, but Jesus Christ and his gospel really sobers me. It is changing me. 

My heart has been made new.

"And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh." (Ezekiel 36:26)

Sobriety means letting the love of Christ control me rather than drugs or alcohol...

For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died;  and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised. (2 Corinthians 5:14)

And I better keep my eyes on him.  

Because the minute I give my wandering heart a chance, it is all about me and my flesh again. 

Getting clean was the easy part.  Because once I entered into that real relationship with Jesus, he quickly made it known that he wanted all of me and that nothing was off limits to him.  And true surrender means not resisting him, but letting him really change me.  Letting him sober me has been the most joyful, yet painful process.  

I am thankful beyond words on my 500th sober day to know the source of my sobriety.