Baby steps, patience and uncertainty

[labug]

I'm posting this from Anne Lamott because she so gets it.

For all of us who by controlling think we're helping.

"...Then the ER doctor said, while stitching me up, that he'd read Traveling Mercies years ago, and that it might be a good book for his daughter. I asked nonchalantly if his daughter was going through it. His eyes filled with tears and to his horror, fell down his cheeks. He had to stop.
Grace met us right there. It meets you right where it finds you, but it does not leave you where it found you. It moves you toward breath; moves you towards things being a little bit better: wow. Grace WD-40. Grace is water wings. Grace makes you shake your head with wonder, and laugh and cry.
I said to the doctor, "This is your lucky day. I just had 28 years clean and sober. I am your daughter's new BFF." Now the daughter is in rehab, but the big story is that the doctor is in a rehab program for the families of alcoholics, who tend to have TINY psychotic control issues. I said to him, "Get off this poor girl's back. Your help is not helpful, except to help keep everyone sick. This is HER hero journey: you don't get to run beside her with juice boxes, Chapstick, and your control freak ways. If your help was helpful, she would not be in jail."
This had never occurred to the doctor, that he had a disease of Good Ideas for Other People.
I do, too. Now we are in recovery for this disease together. I put him together with one of my close friends,... who is also in recovery for these tiny control issues that make people just as miserable and mentally ill as the addicts and alcoholics we try to fix and save and rescue. "

We never know what lessons other people need in their lives.