Take a Flying Leap (of Faith)

Happy 2012!

Most of us, thankfully, have a good number of changing-of-the-annual-calendar events under our belts. For me, most years can be categorized in one of two ways: those I remember (post drinking) and those I don’t (obviously not post drinking).

The majority were pretty unremarkable: party in some fashion, watch Dick Clark’s Rockin’ Eve ball drop (or go to bed), then do the New Year’s Day thing with parades and football and blacked-eyed peas.

There are remarkable standouts–the bicentennial (that would be 1976 for you youngsters), my first sober New Year’s celebration at the end of 1991, a special ceremony in Colorado as the clock turned to 1996, the change of centuries, and my first Texas New Year (sick but still walking the beach in Galveston at midnight).

Some new years have been approached with eager anticipation, some with regret, some with dread, and some with all-in, full-on flying leaps of faith.

2012 is a Flying Leap of Faith year for me. I am butterflies-in-the-stomach excited because of the possibilities this year holds. All kinds of good stuff lie in wait for moi to uncover.

I love the number 12 (12 Disciples, 12 Steps, 12 Powers) and I figure with the number 2 in front of them, it’s going to be a double-time good year.

In honor of Flying Leaps of Faith, I offer these five quotes for the first Mindful Monday of 2012. Regular readers know that I encourage you to use them as you like, whether it’s one a day for each workday of the week or all five each day. It’s a personal kind of thing.

Read, savor, enjoy! Cheers to Flying Leaps!

We must walk consciously only part way toward our goal, and then leap in the dark to our success. — Henry David Thoreau

Leap, and the net will appear. — Julia Cameron

Sometimes your only available transportation is a leap of faith. — Margaret Shepard

Faith is walking face first and full speed into the dark. If we truly knew all the answers in advance as to the meaning of life and the nature of God and the destiny of our souls, our belief would not be a leap of faith and it would not be a courageous act of humanity; it would just be . . a prudent insurance policy. — Elizabeth Gilbert

When in doubt, make a fool of yourself. There is a microscopically thin line between being brilliantly creative and acting like the most gigantic idiot on earth. So what the hell, leap!  – Cynthia Heimel

(And an extra as my New Year’s gift to you):

First you jump off the cliff and you build your wings on the way down. — Ray Bradbury.

The Mindful Addict

Let me be direct.  You have to read this book.

If you have any inclination at all toward learning how to be more mindful or to change your life through any sort of meditative practice, you must read this book.

The Mindful Addict:  A Memoir of the Awakening of a Spirit.

Good news:  You don’t have to be an addict to enjoy the book.

There is a man named Tom who, more than 40 years ago, lived a dream-like existence.  He lived and surfed in 1960s Hawaii when free love and drugs flowed in equal abundance.

Tom excelled at being a surfer and a drug user, so much so that his world eventually became controlled by drugs and he crossed that invisible line many of us know so well.  The line between user and addict.

Many of you know that I too am a person in recovery; you may also know that while I never want to forget the person I was and the things I did when active in my addiction, my preference is to focus on recovery and the present moment.

Tom and I have that in common.  He wrote The Mindful Addict:  A Memoir of the Awakening of a Spirit as a means of sharing his journey.  Tom’s gift helps me keep this thought uppermost in mind (taken from his preface), “We just have to be present and constantly give of ourselves as we walk through our lives.  That’s how we truly discover that our serenity is only and always a breath away.”

I read his book months ago, although I can’t recall how I came across the title.  I’m a book pursuer of the hopeless variety (just as Tom says he is an addict of the hopeless variety) so there is no telling how the book came to me.

I’m pretty sure it was a spiritual gift.

I was intrigued the moment I began to read.  There are many differences in Tom’s path and mine (in terms of how we reached the point of sobriety) but from the beginning, he hooked me.

While it’s true that Tom writes beautifully from breath-taking locales (which makes my writer knees grow weak with appreciation), he also speaks in the language that is so familiar to another recovering person.  We call it the language of the heart, one drunk or addict to another.

But that’s not why I finished reading the book.  It’s also not why I’m recommending the book to all my non-recovering friends.

The reason I ask you to head to Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble or even Target is because, “I define sanity as living in a place of love, living in the present moment.”

Those are Tom’s words and could be written for any one of us.

Living in the present moment is the basis of B Here Today.

Being present to each moment, each mindful moment, is a spiritual practice that Tom chronicles beautifully.

One message is clear:  it makes no difference your age, race or any of your social preferences, if you desire a mindful way of life, it is yours for the taking.

To my way of thinking, is there a better gift we can give ourselves?

Which takes me back to the spiritual gift of The Mindful Addict coming to me.

Some time after I finished the book, a work colleague asked our staff to keep an eye out for any recovery-related books for possible inclusion in an upcoming podcast series.  I immediately zipped off an email recommending The Mindful Addict.

Our folks contacted the publisher, who located Tom, and I was asked to work with him in shaping the podcast.  We’ve begun a Facebook friendship and my life is enriched.

I wish the same for you.  Buy one for yourself and for your mindful friends;  maybe even your not-so-mindful friends.  And please let me know what you think.  I’ll pass the word on to Tom.

Gifts of a New Perspective

I recently gave myself a huge gift–that of four days completely off-the-grid.

I shut down my PC, my Mac, turned the iPhone alert noise off, packed a bag, boarded the dogs, loaded the car and drove 200 miles to meet up with my dad.

At first I worried about the things that were going undone; I get far too caught up in my own sense of importance. Then I struggled with the notion that I might be missing grand opportunities  by not checking my email.

How was everything functioning without my constant vigil?

And the flip of that question was, What does it mean that something is functioning without me?

Although my inventory work continually points out that I suffer from an overdeveloped sense of responsibility, I still have trouble admitting it.  Four days is a long time to be duty-less, after all.  What if somebody needs me–the distinct skill set that only I can provide?

Hanging out with my dad was a terrific antidote for my responsibility malady.  From the moment I saw him and he hugged me like only a daddy can, until we tearfully parted on the evening of his birthday, he had my full attention.

I quickly forgot about social media, blogging and other work details.  All that mattered was giving my father the respectful attention he deserved.

Yes, it took about 40 years to really become my dad’s daughter. 

I remember I was about 10 years into sobriety when my sponsor pointed out that I was finally learning how to be a daughter.

I bristled because of course in my grandiose mind, I was the best of daughters.

“That’s not what I mean,” she said.  “You did the best you could with what you had to offer at the time.  But now, you give time to your parents without expecting a pat on the back.  You show up.  You listen.  You actually give a damn.  You let them know that you love them unconditionally, in spite of anything they said or did in the past.  You’ve dropped all blame and you see them as people doing the best they can.  That, my dear, is what daughters do.”

Wow.  I was doing all that?

Turns out those actions propelled me 10 years into the future, which is now, and gave me the instinctive knowledge of how to be an even better daughter.

Apparently I’m doing alright at my job because Dad has called me twice since we parted to say he misses me and that he had a really great time.

I’d like to think that Mom is grinning with approval from her heavenly perch.

It’s been a long time since I set everything aside and re-prioritized my life.  As a result of those four days with Dad, I’m relaxed and re-purposed.

Time with Dad cleared my vision and shifted my perspective.

Are there recent events in your life that provided similar gifts for you?

Everybody Has a Verna

My 12-step group has suffered a major loss of one of its old-timers, a grand lady who impacted each person with decades of sober strength and wisdom.

Many of the “younger” group members are really struggling with the grief of her death.

I knew her only a couple of years–since I moved to the area and made the group my new home–but I received multiple blessings of serenity and satisfaction from her.  She exuded a peace that only comes from the comfort of being where she was.   Charla had a way of combining gentle tact with no-nonsense recovery.

She had quite a history of substance abuse–including clinically dying–that only the truly hard-core users can claim but all of us can understand.  Her allure laid in caring not at all whether a recovering person was a gutter bum or a society matron; if that person had a desire to be sober and wanted to sit in a 12-step room, that was all that counted.

I loved her for that belief.

Charla sponsored and mentored many women of all ages and stages in recovery.  While I was not one of those women, I do have the pleasure of seeing her legacy of recovery living on in the lives of her girls, many of whom will be stricken with sorrow for a long time to come.

I can relate to their sorrow because I had a Charla once.  Her name was Verna and she was the Grand Dame of my old home group in Missouri.

Verna and Charla were opposite in their drinking stories.  Where Charla was rough-and-tumble, Verna was a genteel lady.  Both, however, were tough as nails and had hearts as big as the number of newcomers they could hold.

Verna was my grand-sponsor, meaning she sponsored my sponsor. 

She was mother, grandmother, friend and confidante all rolled into one and when she died as so many of us do, of lung-related illness, my world cracked.

My group didn’t know how it would go on without Verna sitting in that chair on the wall, right underneath the Princess phone. I lost count of how long that chair sat empty meeting after meeting out of respect for her memory.

But we did go on, especially after other old-timers reminded us that Verna wouldn’t stand for hero worship.  Yes, she had been around for decades, had touched hundreds of lives, but in the end, she died no better or worse than the rest of us.

It may take a bit for that reality to catch up with these good folks in Texas.  Charla’s passing is too fresh; their grief too raw.  For many–and rightly so–Charla was family and there is little worse than losing a close family member.

I suspect that Charla would agree with Verna that hero worship has no place in 12 step rooms.  Maybe I’ll have the opportunity to help in learning that lesson.

After all, that is the experience, strength and hope that I have to share.  While I don’t have the history with Charla that all my other group members do, I did have my Verna.

Sooner or later, if we stay sober, everybody has a Verna.

Do you?  How did he or she impact your life?

Forgiving (Yourself) is Living!

If you’re like me, you think a lot about forgiveness and you work hard to forgive other people for their perceived wrongs. 

I say “perceived” because when I get all resentful and righteously angry over somebody doing me wrong, I forget that the somebody in question is doing the best he or she can do in the particular moment that the great injustice toward me occurred.  And even if the offender is not offering me her best, who am I to judge?  I’m not skipping around in her shoes.  For all I know, there could be a sharp-edged rock lodged in her Size 9s that is causing her general pissiness.

Forgiveness is everything to me as a sober woman and as a godly woman.  It is one of the greatest gifts I give myself and also one of my biggest challenges.  If only I could more regularly practice the affirmative statement in today’s Daily Word. 

I forgive from my heart and enrich all my relationships.

But my heart has been crushed too many times . . . so it can be easier to stay angry instead of letting go of the resentment and loving instead.  In my 12-step work, we say, “hate the disease, love the alcoholic.”  Can we not transform that statement into “dislike (I REALLY dislike the word “hate”) the behavior, love the person anyway.”?

Even writing that last sentence makes my left eye twitch.  There is a person in my life right now that I really don’t want to love.  Today the best I can do is bless her when I think of her and ask God to help me with the forgiveness thing.

God knows I need help.

If only I could flip a switch and make the entire ugly mess disappear.  No can do, though, but I can say a prayer.

In fact, I can say (with as little or as much feeling as I want) the world’s shortest prayer of surrender:

Okay, God, whatever. 

The Surrender prayer helps me eliminate my biggest threat to forgiveness:  myself.

Forgiving myself for my behavior is the worst.  I have to stop second-guessing, beating myself up and in general mistreating myself when I harness the Resenting Me horse.  I have to stop allowing harsh words that describe me come out of my mouth.  I have to eliminate “o-u” words from my vocabulary–words like “should, would, could” and “ought.”

The biggest piece that I have to stop?  I have to stop allowing myself to believe that there is nothing I can do because there is.

I can make a decision and then take action.

The six-step action looks like this:

1. Surrender (with the world’s shortest prayer or any other you choose).
2. Pray the second coolest prayer I know, “Please show me (fill in the blank).”
3. Become willing to receive direction (or maybe action step 2.5 is to become willing to be willing).
4. Forgive myself or another.
5. Say a final prayer of thanks (hard to remember to do when my arm is pulled from its socket trying to pat myself on the back for a job well done).
6. Celebrate!

Oh yes, I’m a huge proponent of celebrating these not-so-tiny victories.  Why go to the trouble of improving ourselves if we can’t dance a little jig afterwards?

Are you dancing or simply dreaming of forgiving someone or some event?  It matters not to me because I have my own messes to clean up.  But I do hope you’ll consider putting the six-step process in place the next time you find yourself resenting and/or intensely disliking someone in your life. 

They’re there for a reason.  What if that reason were simply to teach you forgiveness?

Hmmmmmm . . . as always, let me know your thoughts and opinions.