Sunday, December 2nd, 2007
Several months ago, I led a meeting near where I live. I shared some of the emptiness and loneliness of my boyhood.
After the meeting, a beautiful young woman came up to me. I have been in that meeting with her for several years. I have grown to deeply respect her program and her ability to succeed as a wife and mother.
She said, ” George I am so sorry that when you were a boy, you did not get all the affection and nurture you deserved and needed. My prayer is, that as an adult, you will get all the hugs you did not get from your Mom. Here is one of them.”
She then hugged me like a mother would hug her five year old son. I was deeply touched, and I teared up.
At the same time, I felt a little discomfort. It was the disturbance I feel when my Higher Power is wanting me to see something I am having a hard time seeing. All that afternoon, I meditated on what it was I needed to learn. I finally saw it.
My mother’s name was Louella. As a boy, I tried desperately to win her love. I wanted her]to be happy with me. I was sure that if I tried hard enough I would succeed in winning her over. Even in my sixties, though my mom has been gone many years, I was still trying to find her love.
That meant that I had grossly undervalued all the love that has now so abundantly been given to me. Because the love was not from Louella, I unconsciously depreciated it.
I was hungry sitting at a banquet table. I was dying of thirst by a cold stream. I now understood that if I could surrender what I did not get as a boy, My Higher Power would be able to give to me my deepest heart desire. For me, to let go was the same thing as letting God. If I turned the losses of my boyhood over to My Higher Power, I could live my next years filled with love and acceptance.
At the next few meetings I attended, I told about the hug my good friend had given me and what I had learned. Then I jokingly said, “My solution was to have three or four of you woman change your name to Louella.” Everyone laughed. Then I said if yo are willing to change your name to Louella for me please raise your hand”. Four or five women raised their hand. Then I said to the hand up “Call your sponsor immediately” I have spent the last several weeks drinking in love. I have never felt so good.
George Caywood 