The spiritual lesson I learned from a skunk

When I first came to Al-Anon, I had little faith. Very slowly, I came to a spiritual awakening and accepted nature as my Higher Power.

I believe every person I meet—in every situation—has a lesson for me. More often than not, I find I need to ask my Higher Power for clarification as to what I am supposed to learn. Eventually, I catch on.

In January of last year, my brother was diagnosed with lung cancer. He died four months later. I had already lost a sister some years before. I struggled to accept the loss of another sibling. What I was supposed to learn from his death? I lost faith and felt sorry for myself. I wondered: why me?

I kept going to Al-Anon meetings and reading the literature. I came to understand: “Why not me?” Why should I be spared the pain of losing someone? Yet I still couldn’t figure out how to accept his death or what I was supposed to learn from it.

One day, while I was praying for clarification on the lesson I was supposed to learn, a squirrel got caught in my “catch and release” trap. (We have a squirrel problem at our farm.) As soon as the trap door closed, the squirrel forgot the food that had lured him in.

He scurried around the cage looking for an escape. He chattered and ran back and forth, leaped from wall to wall, hung from the top, sniffed, and bit desperately at the cage wires. He dug at the ground and tried to stick his paws through the mesh. He was literally going nuts.

I drove him to the relocation site and wondered if my Higher Power was trying to tell me that I was acting as nutty as that squirrel.

I went to a meeting and heard that same member say, “If I don’t get results from prayer, I ask again.” So I went home and asked for absolute and clear understanding of the lesson I was supposed to learn.

I set the trap again and decided to test my Higher Power. If the message was that I was acting nutty, then my Higher Power would simply send another squirrel to be caught in the trap.

Very early the next morning, I was outside and heard the door of the trap click shut. I expected to see a squirrel, but instead there was a skunk in the trap. Okay, the lesson was what? That I stunk? That I only saw things in black and white?

I decided to sit and watch the skunk, and pray for clarity. To my surprise, the skunk did not spray. He walked slowly around the entire inside of the cage, carefully sniffed up as high as he could, then as low as he could.

He slowly and methodically checked out every inch of the trap, then turned back to the bait and proceeded to eat it. He then groomed his paws and face. Then, he began reaching through the wires on the cage floor and pulled in grass and roots. He meticulously piled and pushed and formed the grass and roots into a nest. He then reached through the sides of the cage and drew in more grass and roots and added them to his nest. After working for about half an hour, he curled up in a ball, and went to sleep.

Clearly the skunk was making the most of the situation. He accepted his present state of capture.

I finally learned the lesson. I should be like the skunk, not the squirrel. My brother is gone, but I still have other family members and my Al-Anon family. I can make the most of it, get on with life, and do the best I can with the ones left.

By Audrey, Saskatchewan
The Forum, June 2010

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