Breathe Easy

For the past three months, on my morning commute to work, I have been hitting the same wall over and over again. Do not worry, my car has survived the trip every day with ease. However, my poor nose has taken a beating day after day.
     
Every morning Monday through Friday I travel on I-40 East towards Midwest City and every morning my poor car hits a “wall” of a very fragrant aroma. The first couple of trips I assumed my car had somehow come across the carcass of a skunk or some other small animal and the smell would soon dissipate. And the smell would go away for a while, but every morning it would come back again.
       
After the first couple of weeks of these smelly episodes, I was starting to become annoyed because I thought someone needed to do something about the decaying body that was causing this potent tang. The next couple of months I figured there had to be a nearby landfill or factory of some sort because the stench only penetrated my car after the first seven to ten minutes of my drive. The weird thing is that the smell always seemed to be around the same part of the city near the Agnew exit.
       
Finally I called my husband one morning after cruising with my windows down and I began to waft in the all too familiar stench. I asked him what it could possibly be. “Stockyard City,” he told me.
All along I had been driving right next to a very large cattle-trading arena and did not realize it until someone else brought it to my attention. My “denial” of the issue, trying to ignore it and make excuses as to what could be causing, prevented me from reaching out sooner to discover the root cause.
       
I will be honest: it was almost a year after my first visit to Celebrate Recovery before I decided to truly face my denial and seek help for my addictions. The constant rationalization of behaviors and inability to acknowledge faults prevented me to seek help when the “stench” of my compulsions continued to hit me in the face.. It wasn’t until I fully committed myself to God and to my recovery that I was able to reach out and ask for help.
     
With the help of my sponsor and accountability partners, I was able to acknowledge my own denial and accept that if I continued to take that same path of denial then I would continue to drive into the same wall of cologne. Instead of aimlessly driving into the fragrant aroma of denial, with God and my forever family, I can roll up the windows in the car, turn on the A/C, and breathe easy.

Grateful Believer,

Gabby