Um...Is That A Good Thing?

Yesterday, I ran into a woman I've known for about 8 years, but haven't seen in some time. We chatted for a while, then as she was making those "getting ready to detach from this conversation" moves - (patting her pockets for her car keys, zipping up her jacket) - she said to me, "You never change." Now, ordinarily, this wouldn't have registered much, but in light of my life in the last week, it was rather disconcerting. This feeling must have registered on my face, because she began immediately saying "Oh, I mean in a good way!" I smiled insincerely, but when she walked off, I immediately began obsessing over it. How could never changing be a good thing? In program terms, it sure isn't. Is this a message from my HP, to which I need to pay close attention? What did she mean by that? What do you mean by that, God? Why would you send her to me with this message? Did you send her to me with this message?

All my back and forth with it was exhausting and inconclusive, as these things always are - I'm the sort of person who wants some concrete proof before I'm willing to accept something, and, well, life and God don't give concrete proof, you "gotta take it on faith, man." as a friend of my youth used to say.

When I'm feeling relaxed and comfortable in my own skin, and my own recovery, I'm open and willing to consider just about anything halfways reasonable, (even if only for a short time, before deciding, nope, that doesn't fit with the program) - but let me be in a place where I'm anxious and wobbly and indecisive and (operative word coming up) afraid, and any suggestion, regardless how mild, that I'm not perfect just as I am, meets a barricade built up of all kinds of crazed and co-dependent thinking. You might have one of those barricades yourself; in my case, all the thinking seems to start off with two words - "Yes, but.."
For me, "Yes, but" means I haven't any open-ness to that suggestion whatsoever. "Yes, but" means I am dismissing it out of hand, shooting it out of the sky, long before it gets close enough for me to distinguish whether it's an eagle come to attack me, or a lark, to sing.

I've learned in Al-Anon, that whatever I am most resistant to hearing/seeing is that which I am most in need of studying carefully, for in it, lies a gift from my Higher Power. If I can overcome my own character defects long enough to take it on faith, and open the door wide enough to get a good look at it, instead of convincing myself that I can see it perfectly well through the peephole, if it would just back up as far as the street, a nice safe distance away.