Any lengths

I just recently started answering calls for the AA central office once a week.  Interesting stuff, I tell you.

 This morning I received a call from a seventy-one year old man who wanted to get sober....but he wanted to go somewhere 'clean'.  Meaning, to a facility with high sanitary standards.  He had apparently had a bad experience at a detox center recently, hygiene wise and is now back to drinking while trying to find a more acceptable place to.

"I have a clean fetish," he explained as I referred him to an agency which might know more than I do regarding the conditions of individual detoxes in town.  He took the number I gave him but relayed that he had called an agency once before only to be taken away from his hotel room by ambulance, leaving his car containing all his belongings which almost got towed.  Finally, I took down his number and told him I'd have someone with more knowledge call him back.

I know what I wanted to say to him.  I just didn't know if a man of that age cared what a girl of my age had to say.  Especially since it would have fallen under the category of 'hard sayings'.  I would have told him that he needed to quit being so persnickety and get to a hospital.  He could either live in what he referred to as the filth of the institution for thirty or so days and remain truly clean for the remainder of his life or he could keep making excuses and continue living in his own stink, so to speak, of alcoholism.

I found out later, he was asked if he was willing to go to any lengths.  If he was sick and tired of being sick and tired.  And he accepted those questions well.

That's what we alcoholics usually need.  To be reminded that we're not doing so great on our own.  Do we want help or not?

And I got to thinking about how we all make so many excuses for ourselves on any number of things.  We hold onto our character defects, our bad habits, our minor or secret addictions, waiting for just the right rosy circumstance to come along and save us. But we usually end up blocking ourselves from both help and the path that God wants us to take.  And for how long? How long do we waste, complaining that outside conditions aren't to our liking, while inside we rot from our own uncleanliness?

Yeah, these are hard sayings.  Hard questions.  But at a certain point, we have to be willing to ask ourselves if we're sick and tired of being sick and tired.  If we're finally ready to go to any lengths.