Archive for September, 2010
Let’s chat about gratitude for a moment.
Late last week I received some pretty rotten family news, the kind that initially takes your breath away and causes your hand to involuntarily cover your heart. My family has endured a lot in the last year, particularly the last two months and from the looks of things, we will continue to traverse a rocky landscape.
I suppose each of us is learning what we’re made of and how deeply we can dig when extreme digging is necessary.
After I took the phone call delivering the news, I did some online research and then called my sponsor.
I said, simply, “I don’t know what to do.”
Her immediate response was threefold: Pray, find gratitude in the situation and then trust that everything that needs to happen will happen. In other words, let God be God.
My sponsor is a wise woman. I realized in that holy instant from a grace-filled conversation, the thing that may be my greatest lesson in this 30 Days of Presence. Every life trial and tribulation boils down to trust and determining just how big our (my) belief in God is. And if I discover my God isn’t big enough, which usually is the case and is discovered through severe obstination (yes, I just created a word), then I need to make my God bigger.
Jabez asked God to enlarge his territory. And Philippians 4:6 reads, “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God” (Philippians 4:6).
Where does gratitude enter this spiritual picture? There was a time, years ago, when anything related to a higher power, or anyone who suggested that I pray, would have caused me to mentally roll my eyes while quickly taking my leave of the person or idea.
Yes, my family is going through tough times. I’m sad and worried and want to clutch all of them tightly to my heart.
We can’t know why bad things happen to good people. But God does know and for tonight, in this moment of presence, that’s good enough for me. Peace and blessings to my loved ones.
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I once heard a long-timer say that staying sober would be a heck of a lot easier if he didn’t have to deal with people.
There are times I agree and admit that staying sober would be easier still if I didn’t have to deal with my feelings about people. Having people in my life tends to mess with my serenity. Handling my feelings AND my populated world? Please, on those days, can’t I just stay in bed with my cat?
I used to drink because of my feelings and because everyone I knew misused them. I was so sensitive–the artistic types usually are, and are justified in drinking, right? Doesn’t that further the creative process?
In reality, I just thought I was sensitive and easily hurt. I only thought I drank because of my feelings.
Most of the time I drank because I had allowed my feelings to become facts.
I’m still not good with the whole feelings thing. Some days I want to hide–either by running away from a situation or by withdrawing behind a stoic wall of indifference. Stockpiling facts and building a case around why I’m justified to feel however I’m feeling becomes a full-time mission.
On other days, I make a choice to postpone my feelings. I get overwhelmed trying to separate facts from feelings (or is it fiction?). So I avoid the feelings and lose myself in something until (invariably) such time when the feelings erupt in a torrential outpouring of (usually) snot and tears.
I become a sniveling mess and (always) feel better when the crying jag ends.
Yep, that’s me. All or nothing. One extreme or another.
Here’s what I’m learning, though: Regardless of how I deal with my feelings (or don’t), I make things one hundred times worse when I judge them, when I beat myself up over them, or when I assume they are facts.
The bottom line is feelings don’t keep me sober or get me drunk. Ditto for people, facts, situations, destinations, ultimatums, abominations, hybernations or the United Nations.
I stay sober because I don’t take that first drink. I don’t get drunk because I haven’t had a first drink.
Life is messy sometimes. Feelings suck sometimes. And I am often surrounded by lunatics.
Doesn’t matter. There’s another grizzly long-timer who says in every meeting he attends, “Hallelujah, I’m sober today.”
That is what matters.
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The month of September marks the 21st anniversary of the observance of national recovery month. Tens of thousands of men, women and families are celebrating recovery from alcohol or drug addictions.
Count me as one of the masses honoring the blessings and benefits of recovery. I am grateful for a month designated to celebrate and educate Americans about the incredible hope and miracles of recovery.
For those of us who “do the deal,” September is the public month of recovery, while we grind away one day at a time, month after month. Sometimes it is a grind. Earlier this week, I blew most of my 30 Days of Presence agreements wide open. After a confrontational conversation with my significant other, I was forced to painfully admit that a direct correlation exists between my indifference to my meetings and obsessive activity, whether mental or physical.
In this case, my obsessive behavior was like a dog pawing the ground to find the buried bone. Fast and furious, starting out with hope and excitement. But when the bone didn’t readily appear, I dug harder, with more intensity and growing frustration.
Finally, after a dramatic and exhausted metaphorical “I give up,” I was now also angry that I didn’t have my bone and I had a very big hole.
I definitely was not present. But after the conversation, I was aware enough to admit that I needed to sleep and let everything we discussed percolate then either permeate or dissipate.
I woke the next morning earlier than usual and much to my surprise, reverted back to an old practice of saying, “Good morning, God,” as soon as I opened my eyes.
They say that acceptance is the first step, but if acceptance is not followed by action, it has very little impact. My action step was to start digging again, but instead of obsessively digging a hole, this time I pawed through papers on my desk to find my meeting schedule.
Such is the miracle of recovery for me, along with a promise come true: that I would intuitively know how to handle a situation which used to baffle me.
Happy Recovery Month. Please share your miracle stories. For more information about Recovery Month, log on to http://recoverymonth.gov/.
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My rules for living are much simpler now. This practicing presence business is kind of cool. One by-product is gratitude that the etiquette and activity of being in a relationship with another person is not only more simple (but not easy!), it is more healthy. Lessons from sins of the past . . .
I believe the truth I seek will appear when I demonstrate integrity in my life. The principle of “first, do no harm” is, for me, an impossible mission. My human ego and its accompanying drive to always come out on top prevents complete compliance with the principle.
Human fallibilities and frailties will be perpetual unwanted guests on my journey. Like my fellows in recovery, I sometimes engage in pre-sobriety destructive behaviors. Like the Big Book reads, I have been “a tornado roaring his way through the lives of others. Hearts are broken. Sweet relationships are dead.”
A few sentences later, these words are written, “The spiritual life is not a theory. We have to live it.”
For this reason, my gratitude list today includes the previously mentioned perpetually unwanted guests. I know they want to hijack my journey but my God is bigger than my ego and her tornadic pals.
Within the last year, I did do harm, massive harm. While I can’t change the past, I can be willing to let God point me to Presence.
My 30 Days of Presence practice is teaching me forgiveness. As I grow more comfortable being in the here and now, I find myself treating me better. Forgiving myself for harms done to others is an initial step toward living in integrity. Integrity leads to truth.
The spiritual life is definitely not a theory and it begins with peaceful presence.
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Happy 51st Anniversary, Mama and Daddy! This day is forever sealed in your hearts, impressed by that first official ceremonial kiss.
My practice of presence today stems from feeling their love. An enduring love it was, and one that fills me today with the hope of experiencing their “growing old together” kind of romance.
Some, like my brother and sister-in-law, begin their life-long journey at a seemingly impossible young age. Mom and Dad weren’t much beyond that age; in fact, Dad was two weeks shy of his 21st birthday when they married so he had to get written permission from his own father!
My bite from the love bug came decades past their young ages. I like to think Mom and Dad modeled nourishing, respectful and enduring love for me to emulate. I like to think that as their long-distance run together was drawing to a close, they passed the baton on to me as a metaphorical way to continue their journey.
My brother’s relationship exemplifies the transition between early marriage/young adult struggles and the middle, empty nest years, like our folks. I get to experience the late bloom of love, the fun-in-the-sun, frolicking kind of love as well as the quiet, reflective, count-the-stars-in-God’s-painted-sky kind of love.
In this moment of presence, on the 51st anniversary of their wedding, I am grateful for Mom and Dad’s legacy of love, for their dedication to the highs and lows as a couple and for their resolution to bring individuality to their union.
Mom’s passing simply means she is no longer in Dad’s moment-by-moment presence but I know he still feels her soulfully near. It’s written in the sweetness of his face. Her love comes through in the way he gently laughs as he recalls a fond memory. I still see her in his eyes and believe with all my heart that when he looks at me, it’s with a dual gaze, a combined vision of 51 years spent living in love.
I celebrate them both tonight as I reach for the phone to call Dad and ache for one more talk with Mom.
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In July of 2009, I had an epiphany. For about a month prior, I was emotionally distraught, increasingly depressed and having serious thoughts of drinking again (after 18 years of sobriety).
I struggled to wrap my arms around what could possibly be wrong with me. I had all the trappings of a good life, one others would love to emulate--great job, dream house, traveling for a living, a life mate . . . the list goes on. 
