Losing Its Charge

It feels like it should be midnight. It's been a day. I've been talking on the phone this week with a newcomer to AA. I picked her up this morning and took her to my home group meeting, her first outside a treatment centre. Weird how being strangers and having sobriety in common helps cut through so much in a nanosecond. We chatted easily for not knowing one another, connecting on many levels. That was a gift today. I feel drained tonight. I wasn't prepared for that.

I realized this evening that I've chaired every meeting I've been at since the beginning of December so it's no wonder I feel like I need a chance to share at a meeting. I never put that together until I was talking with dearest one tonight. It means I need to be picking up the phone more and making some connections and dumping the crapola rattling around in my brain where someone else can help me make some sense of it. The committe is getting crowded in my noggin.

I only realized about 5 minutes ago that tomorrow is Sunday and that means it's my day of being not only away from the internet, but away from the computer altogether. I wonder when that will get easier. I often picture other people and their morning routines. Do they get up, go brush their teeth and then make their way to the kitchen and make coffee? Do they have a shower, get dressed, make their bed and then go make coffee? What do other people do that provides a sense of security and routine to their day? I get up, head to the kitchen, make my breakfast, take my meds and head to the computer where I eat my breakfast and start writing a post while I catch up on your blogs. I've been doing that daily since July so to make a detour feels strange. Even the energizer bunny does a double take when I don't go into the office on Sundays. She looks at me like she's trying to give me a discreet nod of the head that says, "Um, in here sweetheart, you made a wrong turn." Lord love her.

I need to have a conversation tomorrow with someone about uncomfortable, in your face kind of stuff. Circumstances haven't presented themselves to have this talk - I've been waiting 6 weeks already - and tomorrow I need to do a bit more on my part to make it happen instead of being relieved when it just doesn't seem to be the right time and maybe, yes definitely, next week would work better, thank God. I've gone through it in my head how to approach it in a civilized, none accusatory way. But the hard stuff still needs to be said. And I have an obligation to more than myself to clear the air. On top of that, I see Fr. Charlie on Monday and I promised I wouldn't bitch about this person to him again until I'd had that talk. So I don't know if my motivation is anything more than wanting to bitch about them, or whether I'm seeing that I have a responsibility that extends farther than being happy that the opening to talk hasn't fallen in my lap. Did I mention I'm not good at confrontation? Let me rephrase that. I'm only good, if you can call it that, when it's prompted by strong emotions and knee jerk reactions. When it's calm and civilized and done with a dollop of sanity, it loses its charge. Well, that clears it up somewhat for me. I plain old miss the drama. I can see this post is one where I'm going to paint myself right into a corner if I'm not careful.

So I'll change the subject.

Here's a quote from my favourite recovery author:

"Life work is always about learning to respond to the events in our present life with the emotional intensity appropriate to the event and not with the emotional intensity that was appropriate to tragic situations twenty or thirty years ago........Serenity or living in a state of recovery is all about letting yesterday be yesterday and today be today. Recovery is training ourselves by practicing daily disciplines to act in the present as the present and not from the emotional stance of a thousand past yesterdays"

Lordy, Lordy, have mercy.

Letting Go Of The Rope

This story is from Destination Joy. You can read more from Earnie Larsen here.

"Marilyn is over fifty years old now. She grew up on a farm where the girls were as expected to toss bales of hay and fix tractors as the boys were. Marily could outthrow and outwork any of her brothers. She did it to attract her father's attention, but it never worked. Her father only wanted sons. Her original sin was being born female.

She walked off the farm decades ago, but looking at her hardy, rough exterior, you know the farm never left her. Marilyn's ancestors were all alcoholics, including her father. She married an alcoholic and drank addictively herself for twenty-five years. Fifteen years ago, she found a shaky sobriety. She was dry and grateful but far from peaceful. Marilyn relapsed often in those first years. She'd plow ahead with her program, then be so overtaken with feelings of inadequacy, sadness, and rage she couldn't stand it. After relapsing, she persevered by continuing to work the Steps as persistently as she worked on the farm as a child. She truly was grateful; she just wasn't very peaceful. Somehow, the terrible wounds of her abiding sense of rejection, failure, and inadequacy from her youth never left her. She couldn't shake the broken-glass feeling of never having been accepted or, as far as she could tell, loved by her father.

But then the divine father she calls God came and got her.

As she talked about this experience, her tired, rough face changed. A light of innocence appeared. It was as if a child was emerging, fresh and innocent. For Marilyn, this experience came in the form of a dream. In her dream, she was a child living on the farm. She was holding one end of a rop that went over a bar above a deep well. The other end of the rope dangled above the open mouth of the well. That end of the rope held a huge, stinking, fetid mass of something, she said. The obvious thing to do was to let go of the rope, and send it far away down the well. The problem was she couldn't let go of the rope. Something beyond her control demanded she dutifully hang on to the rope. Then the most amazing thing happened. Her father, who had been dead thirty years, walked up to her, put his hand on her shoulder, and said, "It's okay. Let go of the rope, Sweetie." And she did. With tears in her eyes, Marilyn told us one of the fondest memories she had of her father. She couldn't remember the circumstances, but for whatever unfathomable reason, her father had called her Sweetie. It only happened once, but she never forgot.

No matter how big the enemy or how powerful the affliction, there is one answer greater than any obstacle that can stand against it: the connection with the God of our understanding. The God who comes and tells us, as he did with Marilyn, it's okay. Let go of the rope. Every day, every hour, one day at a time, stage by stage and step by step - let go of the rope.

I cried the first time I read this passage.
Good, healing tears.
Which reminds me that a nun once told me that tears are a form of prayer.
I cried some more when she told me that.
It's hard to hold onto a rope when it's wet with tears.

Of Presence and Presents

It seems like such an old pattern, one that's been mine since childhood: I'd rather go looking for distraction than be present in this moment. Distraction was the fuel that kept my addictions alive and growing while I was dying spiritually and relationally.

Distraction, being stuck, avoiding this present moment, all came to a head yesterday. Next week I'll be turning 46 years old. Last year on my birthday I decided to gift myself with no more binge eating. One day at a time, sometimes one nanosecond at a time, by the grace of God and my willingness, it continues to be a gift. I've often pictured my binge eating self as a ravenous animal tearing away at flesh, out of breath and still not satiated. I've certainly wanted to go there this past year. For today I ask God to help me choose not to.

I've been mulling over for a few weeks now what this year's gift will be. Centering prayer is the answer that's kept coming to me. Centering prayer places me right smack dab in today. One on level I see that as a huge gift. On another it seems like torture. Which is why I keep mulling it over, hoping another answer will appear. Yesterday as I went to do Yoga though, I decided that centering prayer would dovetail quite nicely at the end of my session. So I set my pocket timer for 20 minutes and began.

I cried from beginning to end.

From my journal:

"The tears just kept coming. First of all that I'm being called to this kind of prayer ~ that it will be my birthday gift to myself ~ as I acknowledged that I start to sob. The safest place ~held in God's embrace ~ feels so scary of a place to go. So I told God that. I cried out, "Daddy, I'm scared."
Then I got an image of one of my prayer candles, lit within me. Acknowledging the Divine presence within me I saw it expand and fill my being. More tears. What people have been commenting on ~ my peaceful countenance, my brightness, my radiance, is all His doing. His presence within me shining. Like a firefly who simply glows because that's what it's created to do. All I can do is surrender to God and being illuminated happens despite me. I can stop striving.
Then came whispering into my heart, "intimacy is found in me." And I laid there and sobbed and thought about where I've been looking for that intimacy. In that moment I knew that true intimacy flows out of my intimacy with Christ and that when it's present it's because Christ is at the core of it. Otherwise it's a false intimacy. In Him, With Him, Through Him.
The phrase "Merciful Jesus" kept coming to me. With Reconciliation tomorrow how else can I approach Him?"

Then today, as I met with Fr. Charlie, came more clarity into why distraction remains such an attractive option. One of my recovery heroes, Earnie Larsen has a phrase, "Who's driving your bus?" by which he means, whenever you find yourself reacting to someone, or a situation, what age are you? Is it your 5 year old self driving the bus of your life, the teenage self or your adult self? Where are you reacting from in that moment? My little girl self survived childhood by looking for distraction. It was a necessary tool back then. Back then. When I resist living in this moment I am letting my little girl drive the bus of my life today. Realizing this doesn't magically fix anything but it does give me a new awareness. It makes choice possible.

During the Sacrament of Reconciliation today Fr. Charlie emphasized two things:

God loves you as you are.
God's graces are being poured over you.
Know this.