Missed Opportunities: Sometimes Our World is Out of Order Because We Aren't Focused on Moving Forward

"We keep on missing each other.

Our world's out of order.

All I see is missed opportunity.

Will we ever learn?"

Daryl Hall & John Oates (1988)

This morning I was driving toward Oracle to pick up my new pair of eye glasses. At an intersection, a man was sitting with a sign, like many homeless people do. The light was red and I was the fifth car down. I rolled down my window and waved some money, but the man didn't respond. The light turned green and we started moving toward the intersection. I still had my hand out the window for the man to grab the cash, but again he didn't respond. As I looked closely at him, he was writing something on the backside of the sign he held, and apparently never even saw me. It was a missed opportunity for him to receive help.

How many times in the course of our recovery have we experienced missed opportunities? Probably more than we realize, just like this man at the intersection. He never saw me and sometimes we never see opportunities to grow in our recovery; either because we are in denial and we aren't consciously seeing the red flags in front of our faces, or because we refuse to help ourselves.

There are many times when people need help and they're invited to attend my CODA meeting, but they decline. They may say they plan to show up, but they never do. Unfortunately for them, it's a missed opportunity to make their lives manageable, livable and even happy.

Of course, then there are the times that those of us who are already in recovery decide we can skip out on a meeting. And I'm not talking about "legitimate" times, like when family is visiting, or there's a concert we really want to see and the only possible time conflicts with our regular self-help meeting time. What I'm talking about are all of the times when we may be headed home from work, planning on going to our meeting, when instead, we say "I'm too tired. I think I'll just go on home." Or the times when we are at home and we're just too comfortable in our muck to get up and get ourselves to a meeting.

These are the times when we really need to force ourselves to go. We need to call on our Higher Power and say "Help me get my butt in gear!" Every time I have wanted to stay comfortable in my muck, or lazily miss a meeting, and then chose to go to the meeting anyway, something miraculous has happened. More often than not, I hear someone say something I really needed to hear. I may have heard it before, but it didn't previously sink in because the timing wasn't right; I wasn't ready to hear it. Now I was ready, and if I had missed the meeting, it would have been a giant missed opportunity for me to grow further toward wholeness and happiness.

Next time you don't feel like going to a meeting, push past your resistance. Resistance is always a sure sign that internally there is something we know we need to face and change, but we don't want to do it. I've learned change is usually more good than bad. And I've learned to walk through my resistance/fear by believing God has my back. Every time I've moved forward, I've found a better me-- and life-- on the other side.