The Grief Club

I had just come from the court house, where I had expected to hear a judge sentence the man responsible for the death of dearest one's brother. As I emptied my pockets for the officer on security duty, I shared with him my reason for being there. He got this look on his face, then hesitated, before telling me that the sentencing had happened two days earlier. He knew because he had been in the court room to hear it. There aren't words to decribe the sick feeling I got in the pit of my stomach. How the police had given us the wrong date for the hearing is something still hard to accept. I wanted to take the phone message from the Staff Seargant and play it for the whole building to hear. WTF? In my mind being at the sentencing was going to bring closure. How was that supposed to happen when the hearing had already taken place?

We waited for someone to officially find out what the sentence had been. When they told us he had received 2 years less a day for pleading guilty to impaired driving causing death I teared up, turned and walked around the corner. While dearest one and youngest son spent some time talking with the officers I leaned against the brick wall and cried. Even though it's been nearly three years since my brother-in-law died, there was something about hearing the sentence that brought reality right smack dab up in my face. He really was never coming back. And the pain of his death felt as fresh as the day I saw his covered up body on the ground.

There was not a lot of time to deal with the feelings that day. After a shared meal with extended family, one where we were all subdued and numb, dearest one and I went our separate ways. I had a list of things to do before I went on retreat later that day and he was off to help youngest son move the rest of his belongings home. On the way to my chronic pain and fatigue group meeting I stopped at the library. Before I went in I sat in my van and told God that I had until 4 o'clock to deal with my feelings as after that I was going to be part of a retreat team whose focus was to serve others for the next three days. My head felt so full and I was as far away from being able to focus as a person who's lost their glasses. As I walked into the building it felt like the grief of the morning was settling deep within me. I spent a few moments talking with the librarian and as we parted I told her I had come in to see what was on the new books' shelf. She glanced over at it and said, "Not much."

Among the "not much" turned out to be a book called The Grief Club by Melody Beattie. Its chapters cover all kinds of grief from the death of a loved one to the adjustment of having a chronic illness. A bit of hope was renewed in me as I held the book close and made my way to the check out counter.

At the beginning of my weekend, the retreat team gathered in the chapel where we were given a piece of paper in the shape of a cross. We were asked to write on it anything that we needed to let go of in order to be free to serve others that weekend. I scribbled all the pain of the morning onto that little piece of paper. As I sat and meditated I got this mental picture of my brother-in-law resting his head on God's shoulder. Then these words came into my head, "Hope, this is the only place he has ever felt fully loved. He is safe with me. Let him go and be at peace." And the mental picture stayed in my head long enough for me to embrace it.

This morning I finished reading The Grief Club and the final chapter had so much to say to me. Before I quote a chunk of it below I need to share that one day last week I told God that I was ready to forgive myself. That whatever purpose beating myself up had served all these years, and I wasn't sure it served any good purpose, that it was time to let go and move forward. I told God that I didn't know what it looked like to live in that forgiveness and I wasn't even sure I had the courage to, so I prayed for the courage to have courage to walk in it. That is my prayer for the man responsible for the death of my brother-in-law too. And I have the feeling I'm supposed to go tell him that in person. Lord, have mercy.

"I watched a movie about a husband and wife who were wrongfully convicted and spent fourteen years in prison. When their sons grew up, they freed their parents. It was a true story. I cried so hard watching it. I didn't spend a lifetime in prison, but I know what it feels like to be imprisoned by guilt. It dominates you, runs and ruins your life. Like Marge said, "Guilt is the gift that keeps on giving." If feels like it lasts forever. If you even start to feel happy, you wreck your joy. You don't stand up for yourself. You let people walk over you. Who am I to say what I want? you think. You don't believe you seserve peace. "That's my punishment," you think when anything bad happens. God doesn't love me You not only have pain from the loss, you have pain from believing you deserve to lose what you don't have. It takes courage to forgive ourselves."(emphasis added)~ Melody Beattie in The Grief Club

Ya Think?

Jackie over at Life in the Canadian Desert nominated me for a thinking blogger award. The Thinking Blogger Award is an effort to build a network of blogs linked together outside of the usual search engines.

Here is how it works (sort of like a meme):

1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that tickle your grey matter. [I have grey matter? I thought it was all black and white! :)]

2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme;

3. Optional: Proudly display the 'Thinking Blogger Award' with a link to the post that you wrote.

When looking at all the blogs I read and trying to decide to pick five is just not fun. But pick I must so here goes:

1. Ragamuffin Rambler. Reading Steve's blog encouraged me to go back to AA. His honesty and self reflection challenge me to do the same.

2. Inner Dorothy. Sue's Sunday prayers are a comfort. Having spent all my church time in circles where women pastors were a no no, reading Sue's blog challenged me to examine that thinking. I've since come to the conclusion that there is a necessity for both men and women in every area of life in order for there to be balance. Some days I wonder what the Vatican would look like with women cardinals.

3. The folks over at the Boar's Head Tavern make my brain hurt some days. I'm no theologian and before reading over there I had no idea of the difference between a Calvinist and Reformed Christian. Hell, they might be the same thing for all I know, still. But I do read there regularly and feel like I'm eavesdropping (which suits my curious nature just fine). What I like about their conversation is that it is a conversation and not a hit-you-over-the-head with my right opinion kind of thing. Lots of grace and humour and thinking to be found there. And even when they disagree with one another they will readily drop their weapons of choice to support and pray for one another. I often wish the honesty with which they exchange ideas could be found in church foyer conversation.

4. Peter over at Another Country has made me do a double take on my previous views about the United Church of Canada. I was an elder in that Church once upon a time and distanced myself from it quickly when I went the fundamentalist/evangelical way. And I kept my biased viewpoint up until I started reading his and Sue's blogs. Since then I've found lots I can embrace and the stuff I'm not sure of yet is held in that place of tension we all have about other Christians who see things differently than we do. It no longer is as scary to me to acknowledge that place of tension as it once was.

5. Look at my sidebar to see other blogs I read. It's not an exhaustive list because I've been too lazy to update it.


The blogs I picked were done purposely because they challenge me on previously held perspectives. So much of my thinking has had an overhaul since entering the blogsphere. What I once was so sure of has taken a shit kicking. That's not a bad thing. I used to dismiss anyone who came from a church tradition I didn't agree with. Life was simpler that way. I didn't have to think. But it messes with your head when you see someone from another tradition loving so purely, in such a way that you know you are not. And all the right thinking in the world doesn't seem to cut it anymore. I came from a church culture where right thinking was thought to be the goal. And I readily absorbed what others told me was right thinking. The trouble was that I kept shifting from one "right thinker" to another because none of the right thinking was transforming me. By the time I began reading blogs I was already wary of anyone who proclaimed to be a right thinker when it came to faith.

Which might sound strange to some because I eventually ended up Catholic. Since becoming Catholic I have been reproved repeatedly for distancing myself from any part of my previous church experience. I've been encouraged to embrace what has formed me and made me who I am today. I've also been encouraged to take a a more ecumenical view. I have never been so challenged to actually live out the gospel instead of just talking about it. I see how badly I do that and yet have more hope than ever that I can live it, even if in small ways. I believe that the Eucharist is what transforms me.

What has hounded me throughout my journey in blogland is the thought, "But look at how they love one another." Whenever I see people truly loving one another I know Jesus is present. And that happens in places and situations I would have previously dismissed. It seems rather ironic to be nominated for a thinking blogger award when blogland itself has been such a huge part of me becoming a thinker.

The lack of comments on my resurrection journey series of posts has me feeling that OMG I just bared my soul and the silence makes me want to scream, "Beam me up Scotty, quick." You see, somethings never change, like my insecurity that I'm invisible. I wonder if there's a blog award for that?

Resurrection Journey Part Six

Read parts one, two, three, four, and five.

Things Break by Tobin Marsh

This side of the resurrection
In the brokenness, defeat and sorrow
Is where lie all the deep lessons of my life.

Nothing wants to be broken,
And yet everything must be broken.
To never break is to lie stagnant and eventually die.

Things break.

I break now and again.
Picking up the pieces can be an act
Of profound faith.

~via

The following is an excerpt I wrote to only daughter:

"Saturday afternoon (Easter Vigil) I was sleeping the sleep of the dead when [youngest son] came home from his girlfriend's. He went to your dad and asked him directly (get your kleenex) if I had something against him. This opened the way for your dad to confess to [youngest son] how wrong he had been to make him his confidante as a kid and the burden he had carried because of it. He also shared my feelings with him and how I had held it against him instead of against your dad that he had this place that was not his to have. [Only daughter], the weight of the world fell off your brother's shoulders when he realized that he was okay as a person and there was nothing wrong with him. That my feelings of hostility - that he has rightly felt all his life - had nothing to do with him per see....that he wasn't defective. Your dad told [youngest son] how the anger and hostility on both our parts should have been directed towards him instead of at each other. It was a good healing talk.

I was asleep when they were talking and [youngest son] came into the bedroom and woke me up. We had a gut honest talk and to have to admit to him my feelings of hostility was very humbling. It is as if everything is set in the right order finally and we can begin to heal and have the relationship that could have been possible from the beginning. When he left the room I turned over and just cried. So humbled that God would answer our prayer so quickly and felt so unworthy when I know there are parents who pray for years and nothing changes. I am teary all over again just typing that.

And so there you go. We had our own resurrection morning in this house. I am so grateful that this got brought to the light when [youngest son] is only 19. Keep it in your heart so that you have courage to face this kind of stuff sooner rather than later in your own life.

It doesn't mean [youngest son] doesn't still have a hard road ahead of him to heal but the journey has begun with a big road block removed. Without your dad admitting his sin in response to me admitting mine [youngest son] and I could have tried and tried for years to get to a better place and nothing deep would have been accomplished. Your dad being a big enough person to admit his place in it was key. He owned what was his to own and the truth of that has set something free. I do know that I feel secure in my place with him for the first time. No longer competing with [youngest son]for his heart. I hope that makes sense. It most likely does as you are an intuitive person."

There is nothing more I can add to this part of my journey. I feel like I wrote this series of posts from a detached place....I don't think there are words for how painful the journey was through this and I have no wish to go back and relive it. I'm just glad to be on this side of it.

Resurrection Journey Part Five

Read parts one, two, three, and four.

"I told dearest one that I had to be okay with being where I am in this, without forcing a change that would end up only skin deep. This is something God will work out in me as I'm open to his scalpel. And as much as I hate pain, there can only be beauty in seeing my and youngest son's relationship heal and become what it's potential has always been."

So I went to Good Friday service and the refrain "For the sake of your son, have mercy Lord." cut to the quick. It echoed in my head the rest of the day. That evening our little church community came together to pray the Stations of the Cross. The responses to the Stations were painful and I made my way through them with tears running down my face. Dearest one was silent beside me for most of it and I stood there thinking, "Oh, he's thinking this is all rote prayer and a bunch of hooey. That's why he isn't saying anything." How wrong I was. Later I shared with him my thoughts and he told me that praying the Stations of the Cross touches something so deep within himself that he is unable to speak.

Afterwards the Sacrament of Reconciliation was available for any who wanted it. Dearest one and I both went. Neither of us knowing the other was going to confess the brokeness of our relationship with youngest son. Throwing ourselves at the foot of the cross, asking God to do what we could not.

"So I went to Reconciliation last night with all this on my mind. Confessing my lack and asking for the grace to overcome. His mercy is my only hope. My only safe place of refuge."

And I ended my journal entry with these words from my big book:

"And acceptance is the answer to all my problems today. When I am disturbed, it is because I find some person, place, thing or situation - some fact of my life - unacceptable to me, and I can find no serenity until I accept that person, place, thing, or situation as being exactly the way it is supposed to be at this moment....unless I accept life on life's terms, I cannot be happy. I need to concentrate not so much on what needs to be changed in the world as on what needs to be changed in me and in my attitudes." ~ p. 449 Alcoholics Anonymous

Resurrection Journey Part Four

Read parts one, two, and three.

During Lent I realized that somewhere along the way my lifetime of wanting my mother's approval had disappeared. When I read only daughter's words about her visit with youngest son:

"We talked one evening about our mother. He used some of the exact phrasing that I had used in counselling three days before. It was a comfort to us both that we have the same problems with the same woman. It helped us to see that it isn’t in our heads. That the problems are real and solid because someone else felt them too."

I wondered if I had only transferred my need for approval from my mother to my children. I can so easily make every thing in life all about me. It takes no effort to do so. I took this latest realization, my musings about wanting my children's approval, to God and ask God to do what I cannot do for myself. I have no control over whether they ever get to the place of being okay with me. But being okay with myself, that is something I desire. As I wrote this all in my journal I ended it by quoting from my big book:

"Selfishness - self centeredness! That, we think, is the root of our troubles. Driven by a hundred forms of fear, self-delusion, self seeking, and self pity, we step on the toes of our fellows and they retaliate. Sometimes they hurt us, seemingly without provocation. but we invariably find that at some time in the past we have made decisions based on self which later placed us in a position to be hurt." ~ Alcoholics Anonymous p. 62

I went to bed on Holy Thursday unsettled. Trying my best to let go of it all. All the turmoil had me digging deep in various resources to keep my head above water. The scalpel of truth was going to cut even deeper but thank God I didn't know that beforehand.

Dearest one told me the next day (Good Friday)that youngest son had told him that all he wanted from me was to hear me say I was proud of him. That all I seemed to dish out to him was criticism for his choices, nagging him for his lifestyle. I sat there and listened to dearest one and thought to myself, "I can't say it."

"Suffering is a face-to-face encounter with something you don't want to face. It's your resistance against truth. Against reality. Against the very truth that would liberate you if you would only face it. Suffering is nature's attempt to help us face illusions we don't even suspect we harbour." ~ p. 88 in Praying Naked by J. Francis Stroud, S.J.

I seemed unable to separate youngest son's choices from himself as a person. The realization was not pretty. Especially since I have no problem doing the separating with other people. I sat there and thought about all the times I have sat in an AA meeting and been amazed at how honest people are and how comfortable they seem with what is. I wanted that. But I didn't know if I had the courage to actually live it. I saw for the first time how important it was for me to simply be where I was at on the journey instead of trying to pretend the truth wasn't the truth.

"It was humbling to admit this to dearest one, it doesn't make me look very good. But it helped him understand why youngest son doesn't feel my support. I told dearest one that until a change happens in my heart there is no point in anything coming from my mouth. I said youngest son would recognize the change in my spirit without me saying a word so that when the time comes for me to say I am proud of him it will ring true. God, what a journey. How hard it is to be willing to face myself. But there really is no other way."

Until Monday

I'm going to be away from the computer until next Monday. The rest of the ressurection journey story will have to wait until then. Tomorrow morning we go to court and find out what the sentence is for the man responsible for my brother-in-law's death. Tomorrow afternoon I have my regular chronic pain and fatigue meeting and after that I am away at a women's retreat until Sunday night.

Resurrection Journey Part Three

ReadPart One
ReadPart Two

You can imagine the stress level in our home. It was sky high. Youngest son was barely talking to me. None of it more than surface level and of that, very little. His arm was healing but I had no clue what was going on inside him. He was waiting for a call back from a counselor he had seen in the past, whom he trusts.

I finally felt secure in my relationship with dearest one. I felt like I finally was in my rightful place. Our opening up to each other; me about my hostility, and he, about his part in it, healed something on a deep level for me. So deep that when I went to share with him a few days later how I felt changed by it I couldn't speak for the tears.

Then one of my other kids said something that felt like a slam against me. It wasn't, but I was too hyper aware of my failings to discern that. And I was angry all over again. I could feel myself curling inward, into that safe ball of flesh where there is less of me to be exposed. I am nothing but a fucking failure went round and round in my mind.

That happened on Holy Thursday. A time when dearest one and I had planned on going to the service together, planned on washing each other's feet, spending some time together in Adoration. When dearest one got home from work, a difficult and stress filled day, he was exhausted. He had forgotten all about church. He chose to stay home with youngest son. I was devastated. I drove out of the yard with tears running down my face, muttering that religion was women's work. Oh, poor me.

While I was driving out the yard youngest son cynically said to dearest one, "She sure spends a lot of time at church." And dearest one told him it was not only life giving for me but had saved my life and until he had walked in my shoes to stop knocking it.

I went to Holy Thursday services feeling like there must be a disconnect between my inner and outer life. That maybe I was deceiving myself that any transformation was taking place at all. Here is a journal excerpt I wrote about that night:

"During Adoration last night I saw Mr. K. sitting in front of me and I thought about how devout he is about his faith. How rigid he is in his ideas about it. Thought about how his kids are nominal at best, absent at worst in their own faith. I sat there questioning myself. If my inner and outer lives were also that disconnected. Mr. K. likely has no idea how his devout life does not translate into every day action. I had to sit there and wonder if mine was like that. There was a time last night when I thought that perhaps no one will ever really know how deep my desire has been to be transformed. Maybe it will never translate into my daily life. And as I sat there and reflected all that came to me was that I was to trust. And when I questioned Jesus as to what that looked like it was as if he put his finger to his lips and said, "shh..shh" and closed the door. Trust meant not being concerned with what came next."

Resurrection Journey Part Two

Read Part One.

When I first went back to AA last summer I was continually amazed with how comfortable people were with where they were at. They were having a bad day? Oh, well. They kept doing the next right thing, knowing that however they were feeling, whatever their feelings towards another person, it was more important to acknowledge what was than wish to be in a different place. The thought of being like that alternately scared me and had me longing to know what it was like. I was still hung up on image and ego and wanting a nice pretty picture. As I went to more and more meetings I realized if I didn't learn how to get honest I was going to get drunk.

Three weeks ago youngest son took an exacto knife and made 13 cuts down his arm. His girlfriend made a frantic phone call to dearest one asking him to come there quick. When dearest one got there youngest son was sobbing and sobbing. The pain of where he was at pouring out, the pain too deep to keep inside anymore. Within an hour youngest son took a leave from work, packed up enough stuff to see him through a few days and moved home. Dearest one and I had been praying for a long time for youngest son to hit bottom but never in our wildest dreams did we think bottom could take the form of 13 slices down a forearm.

When someone asked me how I was doing with it I realized I felt detached and I wasn't even sure I was detached with love. The second evening home youngest son was telling me something when I interjected my thoughts. He looked at me and a slice of pain crossed his face. "Mom," he said, "That's one of the things you need to learn. To (shut up) and listen." Oh great, I thought to myself. I haven't learned a fucking thing since he moved out a year ago. This is the same conversation we were having before he moved out. Transformation, nada.

Before too many days I realized I was feeling downright hostile towards youngest son. It's times like this when I try to distance myself as far as possible from the feelings. I mean what mother with a child in crisis, feels hostile above every other feeling? I prayed for courage to sit with the feelings.

And the root of the hostility surfaced. When youngest son was born I nearly died. Dearest one stood there holding our newborn son watching the code team work on me and thought to himself, "I'm going to be the single dad of three kids." And a bond took place in that moment between him and youngest son. A bond he has always been proud of. A bond that meant his heart turned in an unhealthy way towards youngest son. In a way that I resented. In a way that left me feeling like I was always in competition with youngest son for dearest one's affections.

I knew as I sat with this that the hostility was not new. It was the source of the beneath the surface tension between me and youngest son ever since his birth. I went to dearest one and was honest about how hostile I felt towards our youngest son. How, with youngest son back in our home, I was scared that dearest one would turn his heart from me towards him. And dearest one, for the first time since youngest son's birth looked at me and said, "That bond between me and youngest son is unhealthy. It has damaged every relationship in this family. I promise you I won't turn my heart away from you towards him." And he owned what was his to own in the equation and I felt secure that his heart was turned towards me for good. Dearest one talked about how the hostility I felt towards youngest son should really be directed at him. That youngest son had never asked for that bond, for the role of being confidante to his father. That the anger youngest son felt towards me really belonged to him, too. That both of us had paid the price for his misplaced affections while he had been able to look like the nice guy. And dearest one was scared that admitting the truth would mean he would lose his nice guy image. What neither one of us remembered in that moment was, "You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free."
...to be contiued.

Resurrection Journey Part One

"Freedom is the acquired power of the Spirit who lets nothing hinder it from fulfilling the will of God." ~ Foundress SSND Blessed Theresa

I copied this quote down last October when I was at a journalling workshop. I learned journalling techniques that day that scared the crap out of me, techniques that bypassed my inner censor resulting in words on my page that flowed from that deep place within....the place I normally have a gate across. One technique was to record a conversation on the page with someone. To let the Spirit guide you and just write whatever came into your head. A few weeks before this workshop I saw a piece of art which showed Jesus holding a sign that said, "Take courage, I have healing in store for you." I chose to journal a dialogue with Jesus. The following is part of that dialogue:

Me: "I am scared to have this conversation with you Jesus. How full and deep your love is for me and I have such a hard time accepting it."

JC: "My child, look at how I hold your face in my hands. Look at me. Why are you so scared? Haven't I said over and over again, "Be not afraid"? That means of me, too. I love you just as you are. Right now."

Me: "But how come I can't love me as I am right now? Why? My head accuses me, my heart wants to yield. That is wearying."

JC: "A man at war within himself grows more weary than when he battles another. Can you hold up a white flag of surrender towards your own waring factions?"

Me: "I know my own inner turmoil keeps others away. It's as if I say to them "can't you see I'm busy?" Some of them only wish to hug me and give me courage for the journey. Yet I resist all.

JC: "Did you not see my note to you? "Take courage. I have healing in store for you." Do you not see my face in every Eucharist you receive? I am trying in many ways to reach you, to assure you yet you wrestle yourself away. You long for comfort and beat my chest with your fists if I come too close. What is it you really want?"

Me: "I want to feel safe within the comfort of your embrace. I want to relax and breathe deeply of your love. Here I am. Help me be at rest with who I am."

JC: "Look in the mirror with me. Let me tell you what I see. You are a woman of courage. A woman of strength. A woman who may feel beaten up by life but who will not be beaten down. You are scared to reach out your hand and take the hand of that little girl inside you who longs to run and play as if she has no cares - who is carefree. She smiles up at you tentatively ~ with hope that you will come play with her. Trust Hope, trust that I am the author of all play, of all that is good and healing in this world. Remember how I showed you that I was the Good Samaritan tending to your wounds? Remember how you jumped up and ran bleeding down the road, your hands over your ears? How the tears flowed and how painful your gait was? I am in it all. The healing, the hurt, the play, the good. Remember when you look at me that mercy will always triumph over judgement. Clothe yourself in mercy."

Me: "Is that what you were tending to my wounds with? Drops of merciful oil and wine. Opening myself up to your healing touch means making myself vulnerable. That I won't be able to stand the pain. That is my fear."

JC: "Just come to me no matter what. Hold up your head and boldy approach the throne of grace. Oil and wine will flow and cover it all. Let me tend to you. I have healing in store for you."

This conversation unnerved me so much that I didn't open up my journal for over two weeks and it was another 3 beyond that before I picked up my pen again. I've been a little gun shy of writing in it ever since. Then during Lent, while facing the woundedness of my youngest son, I turned back to my journal to try and sort out my thoughts.

When I opened my journal I found my last entry had ended with this prayer: "God wrench away the veil before my eyes. Search the darkest corners of my heart. Give me the courage to do the hard work. Transform me."

And the courage, the searching and the transformation happened despite me. I am still in awe. More to come....

Resurrection Journey Prologue

You'd think my love affair with computers might have improved during my absence but no such luck!. Trying to sign in to my blog after nearly 6 weeks of not doing so was just as frustrating as the last time I tried. C'est la vie

Being away from this blog was very good for me. There were many times when I went to log off the computer and at the last minute remembered I had a blog that I could check. That's a tiny miracle in itself! For most of the time I did not miss blogging. Not having this as an outlet forced me to do more soul searching than I would have otherwise. I had to sit with my situation and my thoughts and wrestle with them. Sometimes it is easy for me to think I've dealt with something because I've written about it on here. As if words take care of everything. I began to journal again. I have no idea how far I've come, if any, in my thirst for feedback but I did learn I could survive without it.

If you remember Fr. Charlie challenging me to get comfortable looking at my body in a mirror just know that my latest revelation is that my body resembles a mini sumo wrestler. Somehow that is fitting considering how much wrestling has gone on within me lately.

Lent was a very fruitful journey for me. Pain filled and hopeful. Times of desperation and times of rest. Much, much prayer. There were two days when the local power company turned the power off for 4 hour stretches at a time to do service work on the lines. Weather permitting they said. I woke up to -21C only to find that lovely temperature qualified as weather permitting. Being alone in a house with no noise was very restful. No fridge humming. No furnace blasting. No TV and no radio distractions. It was good, even when it was cold.

We had lots of snow and the winter snowfall total is over the seven foot mark. No wonder then, that there are still several feet of snow on the lawn. Youngest son spent a few days last week riding the quad on top of the snow crust. Spring will come. We saw a few brave pussy willows today but there were too many feet of snow to wade through to reach them so we had to be content to view them from afar.

I celebrated 19 years of sobriety during Lent and 20 weeks of abstinence from sexual addiction. I came so close to losing that abstinence that I took myself off to Reconciliation and have felt swathed in a cloak of grace about it ever since.

Holy Week was the most stress filled, painful path I've experienced in a long time. I have much to share but need to clear some of it with a family member before I share the journey with you. I need to get it down on "paper" for our own family's benefit. To remind us in the tough times that there can be no resurrection without a willingness to carry our crosses and die to self.

I found this quote that captures part of the reason why I'm choosing to continue to post here:

"Miracles may show me the saint, they do not show me how he became a saint: and that is what I want to see. It is not the completed process that intrigues me: it is the process itself: for you see, my work is not to be a saint. Tell me what was churning in his soul as he battled his way up from selfishness and the allurements of sin to the great heart of God." ~M. Raymond, O.C.S.O. in Seeking God by Esther de Waal

I trust you want to know what churns in another's soul just as much as I do.

Twilight Zonish

Dearest one and I know that when we start swearing at a computer, it's time to turn it off. I understand why people are tempted to throw computers out of windows, I really do. I've repeatedly tried to log in to blogger today only to be greeted by a screen that pretends I haven't typed anything into it. I've been swearing up a storm all day.

This has been a full week. We started with our 25th wedding anniversary Monday. Tuesday dearest one had a job interview. Wednesday we met with friends. Thursday dearest one got the job. Today it was announced to his coworkers.

Just a few weeks ago dearest one was driving to work, talking to God about his job, his desire to get out of shift work. Dearest one prayed, "Make me an offer I can't refuse that doesn't include night shift." Oh, the balls it takes to pray so. That afternoon dearest one phoned to tell me that he had been approached that morning to apply for his boss's job. She had taken a transfer to another unit at the hospital and they would need a replacement. Never has a prayer been answered quicker than it was that day. It ranks right up there with the time dearest one sat in this yard that we now live in and told God, "I have no money for a down payment but I believe you are a God of miracles, so if it's your will that we live here, make it happen." Shortly thereafter the real estate agent phoned and said that the owner was willing to carry the mortgage for us.

Don't be mistaken, we are not of the name it and claim it mindset. Far, far from it. The name it and claim stuff makes me a bit sick to my stomach. It is so far from the cross of Christ. God is not some magic puppet that bends to our wishes as if we speak into a drive thru microphone and arrive at the fast food window to collect our order. All I know is that from time to time dearest one prays really specific prayers that God answers in a way that feels surreal and twilight zonish.

Dearest one is humbled by this latest answer to prayer and thrilled by the challenges of it coming to pass. To be in a job where all his life experience, especially the stuff outside of his short nursing career, is valued, is a gift. He starts next Wednesday. It means working 8am to 4:30pm Monday to Friday, with weekends and holidays off. We have spent so much of the last few years asking each other what day it was because dearest one could have worked any day of the week and the days tend to blur into one another after several 12 hour days in a row.

The next few months will be challenging for dearest one as he moves from what he knows and is comfortable with to the unknown steep learning curve in front of him. If you think of it, please pray for him. He is a man after God's own heart. He has been praying overtime for humility and wisdom. He has wonderful leadership qualities that have never had the opportunity to be honed quite like this. He has this quiet way of knowing that God not only loves him but likes him, too.

I have been trying to keep busy with things outside the house. Trying to make my world bigger so that I feel like what I am doing with my time is worthwhile. It isn't working. I don't feel like I have any more purpose than I did before the busyness. But I'll keep doing the community volunteering that I'm doing. Faking it until I make it. Hoping that I will wake up feeling worthwhile. There have been spans of time this winter when I've felt worthwhile. Then there are times, like today, when those feelings evaporate. Some days I think I am still mourning the empty nest. Other days I am mourning my loss of health. Most of my days are clouded in a fatigue that feels relentless.

Next week I start physiotherapy for an injury that is most likely a result of my connective tissue disorder. I don't remember injuring it. One day my elbow started to hurt and eventually I mentioned it to my doctor. No tennis elbow. No golf elbow. Just a weird collection of knots above my elbow. With a defect in my collagen - the glue that holds the whole body together - I can't afford to let an injury become chronic. The last time I did that, 7 years ago, I was left with an injury that still hurts when I sleep on that side.

Next week I also start a 12 week commitment to participate in a chronic pain rehab group. The week after we start house sitting for two weeks in town. I hope to get to many AA meetings in that two week period - it will be a treat to live in town and go to as many meetings as I can.

Three years ago we were a family using the food bank and collecting welfare. Life's circumstances had kicked us in the you-know-where and it hurt. A lot. I told the woman who ran the interfaith food bank that one day I would go into the churches in that town's community and share our story. I would put a face to the food bank user. I phoned her a few weeks ago and told her I was ready to share our story now. This coming Sunday I will be speaking at the United Church in that small town. A church whose people walk the talk and are among the most active volunteers with the food bank. I will share how humiliating it is to walk into a food bank and how difficult it is to think straight when you aren't eating a balanced diet. I will share how our faith kept us going and how I told dearest one how hard it was to struggle without the relief valve of an addiction. There are 7 or 8 more churches on my contact list and I hope to speak in those churches during Lent.

Some days I use blogging as an escape from doing the next right thing. Some days I use it as an escape from most everything. I've decided to take a break from blogging until after Easter Sunday. Other than email and bloglines I'll be silent between now and then. If you knew how hopeless I am at being quiet, you'd laugh. I will be back eventually. God bless you.

You're Still The One

"Like most people on their wedding day, we didn't understand that love is about embracing imperfection."~Rona Maynard, Chatelaine, Feb 2007

I was 19 and dearest one 21 when, twenty five years ago today, we stood before a Justice of the Peace, fumbled our vows (I said "awful wedded husband instead of lawful"), managed not to erupt into giggles and got ourselves hitched. We brought a 75 year old friend along to be our witness, not realizing we needed two. We forgot that we needed rings so my engagement ring was removed from one hand and put on the other. We have no wedding pictures because we forgot our camera. By the grace of God here we are today, not only lovers, but friends. If you click on the title of this post you'll go to a site that has the lyrics of the song we listen to often, especially today.

There's been a lot of living between then and now.

* Addictions,relapse and recovery,
* 3 bankruptcies,
* 19 residences, 2 provinces
* 5 pregnancies,
* 2 miscarriages,
* 3 full term babies.
* 17 surgeries,
* 3 rounds on welfare,
* 2 on food banks,
* 2 post secondary educations,
* 5 church homes,
* 4 denominations.

Numbers are incapable of telling the whole story. We are not defined by them, they simply chart our journey without describing the landscape. There can be beautiful flowers in the desert.

Gratitude for having reached this day and for the journey that has brought us this far outweighs all else. There came a crucial point where I was going to walk out the door because I was unwilling to embrace, or even recognize, my own imperfections while I was intently focused on dearest one's. All I can say is that God's grace met dearest one where he was at, despite my ultimatum, and the result was that he came home a changed man. Had that not happened, my pride and his would have seen us go our separate ways. We had two children 3 and under and I was pregnant with our youngest son. We still get teary when we think of how close we came to missing out on sharing the journey to today.

I don't even know where to start to tell the rest of the story. So I'll leave you with this verse from the book of James that says it all.
"Kind mercy wins over harsh judgement every time."

Sorting and Dealing

Yesterday I took my graced confetti post to my session with Fr. Charlie. Two hours later I had some direction after lots of conversation, some tears and some prayer. What I took away most from the session was that Fr. Charlie told me I needed to go buy a full length mirror. He said if I was wanting wholeness I needed to learn how to accept all of me, and that included my body as it is right now. He said that wholeness was impossible while I was putting myself into safe categories of what to accept and what to reject.

Had I known he was going to tell me to buy a mirror I would have left the post at home. But after my initial 'no fucking way' knee jerk response in my head I considered what he had to say. Fr. Charlie's not pushy. I could decide to never buy a full length mirror and he'd never mention it again. He trusts God to do God's work in me in God's time. Which makes it all the easier to actually condsider Fr. Charlie's advice. Accepting my body (ok, with clothes on it's doable, naked it ain't) isn't within my comfort zone. It felt like an act of faith to come home and put a mirror on my shopping list.

Then this morning I read this comment left by jim(who is my brother in the Lord but his comments always make me feel like he is looking out for me like a father does for a daughter):

"Hope...Go to here and read what is a long entry for Kdip, an article written by anonymous, and possibly one you may have encountered before. Volumes of truth, though, and would speak to you if you haven't."

It is well worth the read. This is the paragraph that brought tears to my eyes:

" You realize that it's time to stop hoping and waiting for something to change, or for happiness, safety and security to come charging over the next horizon. You come to terms with the fact that happily ever after is a process that begins with acceptance of what you cannot control so you can sort through and deal with the rest. A deep sense of serenity is born of this acceptance." (emphasis added)

Sounds like the serenity prayer, doesn't it?

God, grant me the grace to sort through and deal with the rest.

Graced Confetti

Bobbie at emerging sideways wrote a meme post a week ago called wonderful, glorious me where she listed 5 things she loved about her body. She left the meme open for others to consider themselves tagged. I sat at my computer screen and did a quick head to toe evaluation of my body and came up with one thing. My beautiful blue eyes. Everything else I might love about my body were dependent, in my mind, on being 80 pounds lighter first.

I was still thinking about that meme when I went clothes shopping this past Saturday afternoon. Just know that I'd rather go to the dentist than shop for clothes. I don't have a full length mirror at home and God knows I sure wouldn't be undressing in front of it if I did. But on Saturday I stood in front of one and took stock. Thighs the size of what my waist once was. A belly as big as when I was nine months pregnant. And all those dimples so far from my face were not a pretty sight. I stood there feeling disgusted with myself. I tried to just accept what was, reminding myself that I'm dealing with the food issues in my life. Or rather with the issues that masquerade as food issues and as a consequence, my fat body. After 26 years of yo yo dieting I no longer have a diet head mentality. I celebrate that. I do have more calm and peace than when I was still bingeing my way through life. Yet I stood there knowing I'd rather be dealing with all that from within a thinner body. The body, that when I'm in it, feels comfortable, like it fits yet screams at me for protection because its thinner self awakens so much sexual baggage. Baggage that lies and says my worth rests in what I have to offer sexually.

I blocked all those messages from my head and prayed "Help me be content even if I never get to see a thinner me reflected in a dressing room mirror". It's just as futile to think we'd love ourselves more if we stopped sinning as it is to think we'd love ourselves more if we were thinner. If I'm going to live this journey one day at a time I want to love myself now. It's easy to talk about the unconditional love of God for others. So hard, at times, to believe it for myself.

Before I went shopping on Saturday I went to my AA meeting. I asked God to help me open my spirit wide to receive the gift of story happening in the room. Stories of gratitude to anger and tears were shared and I felt blessed to be there. I don't think I've ever left a meeting without a renewed sense of hope for the journey. Without having witnessed a living testimony of what it looks like to rest in the unconditional love of God.

Yesterday at church I prayed for the grace to open my spirit wide to what God might have to say to me. I was still stewing over my disgust at my body and while Jesus may never have been fat, I know he understands what self loathing can do to a person. How crippling it can be. How it can spiral out of control and lead to destructive behaviour. I celebrate nearly 12 weeks of abstinence from sexual addiction today so God help me not numb myself into oblivion. Help me not seek that which will bring release from self loathing only to add to it when the numbing effect wears off. Help me accept where I am on the journey, disgust and all.

During the scripture readings yesterday, this line jumped out at me:

"But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me has not been in vain." ~1 Corinthians 15:10

I rolled those words around in my mouth like a sip of good wine. Sometime during the Mass I realized the disgust I felt about my body had been superseded by how beautiful I felt in my spirit. I don't know if I looked radiant on the outside but boy did I feel it inside. Moments like that are pure gift. I whispered to God, "I feel beautiful." And I knew what I really wanted was the beauty that radiates from a countenance that speaks of God's blush of grace.

You know how a person empties the pockets on their clothes before washing? Some days I feel like I'm collecting all those little bits of lint and paper like a bag of confetti....each bit a remembrance of the graced moments in my life. One day I'm going to the other side and I see myself reaching in my pocket and leaving a trail of graced confetti as I go.

So where does that leave me today? I'd still rather experience those moments from a body that was 80 pounds lighter. I doubt I'll care on my death bed what the scale says. I do know I care in this life though. I still can't come up with a list of 5 things I love about my body. But the hope lies in that I don't stay stuck in the self loathing when it hits me these days. I don't numb myself into oblivion trying to escape it. I don't do any of these things perfectly and for today I can rest in that. The grace of God meets us where we are. And how thankful I am that I don't have to be thinner, or prettier, or smarter, or sinless first.

Caught Ya!

An old fashioned wooden mouse trap did the trick, first try.

Once, Twice......

Speaking my truth feels foreign to me. Through my sessions with Fr. Charlie I've recognized my need to learn how. I'm used to trying to speak my truth and then feeling the need to defend it or tell the other person how skewed their perspective is for not matching my own. Giving voice to the truth within me is something different than that. It's telling my story without needing affirmation from anyone else. It's telling it for my sake alone. There's no emotional punch to it. There's no trying to make a point in order to change someone's mind. It's just saying what is.

Sounds simple, doesn't it? To date I have done it once in my life. Once. And I hang onto that once knowing what it felt like within me. It gives me hope that once will turn to twice and with every time I add to that, I will become a little more comfortable being me.

Today is my oldest brother's birthday. We're not good with birthdays in my family. As a child they were a big deal. The one day of the year I could count on that my mom would not fly into a rage. We got to pick out the colour of the cake and icing and presents were usually something we wanted. After I left home that all changed. I can count on 2 hands the number of cards I've received from my family in the last 25 years.

Quite a few years ago I started making a point of sending my siblings cards on their birthdays. My sisters and I talk during the year but there is no communication with my two brothers. Finding a card to send to a brother who you only speak to on his birthday is a challenge.

The brother whose birthday it is today has a sister-in-law who has the same birthday as me. I was friends with her as a teenager and we were delighted to find out we were born in the same year, same day. I've often puzzled over why my brother would not remember to call me on my birthday. His sister and his wife's sister were both celebrating. Surely he would remember? Nope.

That changed this past year when my brother phoned me on my birthday. I have no idea what prompted that call. I wasn't turning any big number (well a big number to some people but it didn't end in a zero!) I wasn't home when he called so he left a message on voice mail wishing me a happy birthday. Hearing his voice on the phone touched something deep inside me and the tears just spilled over. It had been close to 30 years since he had recognized my special day.

Before I went home for my parents' 50th wedding anniversary last summer, I told Fr. Charlie that I was going to tell my brother just how much that phone call meant to me. How his silence all these years made me think I didn't matter to him and how his phone call gave me hope that maybe I did after all. It was going to be a moment of speaking my truth for no other reason than I needed to speak it. For me.

As I arrived to help get food ready for the anniversary party my brother was the only person in sight. I just about chickend out but I took a deep breath and told him how much his call had meant to me. How it had given me hope that maybe I mattered to him. In my family speaking so plainly about matters of the heart is a rare thing and I think my doing so caught my brother off guard. He simply said, "oh" and then our conversation moved onto other things. I wasn't looking for a response. I just needed to tell him what his call had meant to me. It was speaking my truth without any expectation on my part. I needed to tell him for my sake, not his. There was this deep contentment inside me afterwards for having done so. It is a contentment that I still can touch, one that gives me hope there is more contentment to come.

I don't know what went on in my brother's head as a result of that conversation but he made a point of finding me the evening before we left for home to see what time we would be heading out in the morning. He was staying 5 miles away at our cousin's home but he got up and made sure he was there in time to see us off. As we left my parents' yard I glanced in our rear view mirror to see every member of my family who was still in the neighbourhood, waving goodbye. I have never felt like I mattered so much as I did right then.

So tonight I will phone my brother and wish him a happy birthday. Maybe he will be out celebrating and I will leave a message on his voice mail, letting him know that he matters. I don't know if my call or my card make any difference to him but he is my brother and he does matter. And afterwards I'll be able to change my once into twice. With the grace of God I hope the number eventually gets so high that I lose count one day.

A Place Of Relationship

Entering Community

Jean Vanier

"When people enter community, especially from a place of loneliness in a big city or from a place of aggression and rejection, they find the warmth and the love exhilarating. This permits them to start lifting their masks and barriers and to become vulnerable. They may enter into a time of communion and great joy.

But then too, as they lift their masks and become vulnerable, they discover that community can be a terrible place, because it is a place of relationship; it is the revelation of our wounded emotions and of how painful it can be to live with others, especially with some people. It is so much easier to live with books and objects, television, or dogs and cats! It is so much easier to live alone and just do things for others, when one feels like it."

Source: Community and Growth

via

Walk In The Light

It's dark in here except for the light of the computer screen. That makes me think of my high school typing teacher and her endless advice of 'sit up straight', 'lift up your wrists' , and 'stop looking at the keyboard'. Thanks to her nagging I can type in the dark. She was a chain smoker who liked to get us going on an assignment and then she'd spend the rest of the class in the teacher's lounge, smoking. You never knew when she would come back in, the first words out of her mouth a piece of advice on how to improve your typing skills.

I suppose the only other creatures happy to be in the dark right now are the mice. They have successfully evaded the friggin trap for 3 nights in a row. Peanut butter didn't work, cheese didn't work. They even went so far as to leave their trademark all around the trap before they cheerfully went and investigated the rest of the kitchen. Dearest one told me tonight of a time his dad sat in a chair in the house and shot a mouse right under the dining room table. I can understand what frustration led him to do that, I really can. Cleaning mouse poop out of the crumb tray on the toaster gives me the creeps. How they get in there is a mystery to me.

Dearest one is sleeping, coming home so tired after another 12 hour shift at the hospital. The commute adds two extra hours to his day, so by the time he gets home he is ready for sleep. I am thankful for the good humoured people he works with, who make his day easier to get through. If you have a nurse in your life who is taking care of a loved one, a word of thanks would go a long way to brighten their day.

I went to see my friend yesterday only to find out she'd been transferred to a city hospital four hours away. That is not good news. It means she is unstable enough to need more specialized care. When she was admitted here her fever was 104F. When you already have a compromised immune system, infection can kill you.

Although dearest one works 2 floors above the one my friend had been on, it never crossed my mind to take the elevator up there and say hi to him. (No need to wonder where you get the 'it never occurred to me' syndrome, only daughter!) I was so focused on seeing my friend that I forgot he was working. He teased me that my hair wasn't even blond. I laughed. I always wanted blond hair.

This post over at Swept Overhas been hounding me, it's closing lines sticking in my mind: "(1) Silence is almost always wiser than speaking. (2) The only apologetic is love." Today's Mass readings included the love chapter (1 Corinthians 13) and it sunk in a bit further that love is more important than many other things I get hung up on. Almost anything else is easier to do than truly love on someone.
Including typing in the dark.

Hopeful Laughter

I don't know many women in AA. I'm the only woman who regularly attends my home group so yesterday it was a treat to have the women and men equally represented (6 of each!) There was such honest, beautiful sharing that I came away full of gratitude to be counted as one among them. I learn more about myself and my journey in an AA meeting than I ever do from a sermon. As I walked to my van afterwards I wished that my experience of church over the years mirrored what went on in that room. To hear people laugh with you as you admit your screw ups makes it so much easier to admit them. And they laugh because they know all too well that whatever you admit is part of their story too. No one pretends to be distanced from their humanity. It gives me hope that I can carry that honesty into all of my life. Hope that I can learn to simply be me, without apology, even when I'm in the midst of people who might judge me for it. When I meet people in AA who have learned to do that it gives me hope for myself. Every meeting I seem to learn a bit more about what is mine to carry and what isn't. I'm continually humbled and amazed at what isn't mine to carry. No wonder putting one foot in front of the other has seemed so difficult for me at times. I've been trying to carry my whole world on my back.

Of Trysts, Traps and Spoons

If I get any more spoonless today I won't be able to walk to the bathroom. Seeing how it's been 17 years since I last changed a diaper, today is not going to be the start of changing my own. Which is a roundabout way of saying it's a couch day today. Gotta save those spoons for the trek to the bathroom. I feel like a limp rag doll.

Yesterday was a full day in town. We ended up skipping our evening plans and coming straight home after buying groceries. I was in bed by 9 pm. I was hoping that sometime during the night the rodent who has taken over my kitchen would make its way into the live catch mouse trap I bought yesterday. With an empty trap this morning, I look at my counters and wonder what the heck could be more enticing than the smell of peanut butter? Ah, yes, the little bugger opted for the bleach scrubbed counter tops instead. Must be on a diet, poor thing. Argh!

I had a check up with the doctor yesterday and was oh, so proud of telling him I'd managed to walk a mile per day for three days in a row this week. Considering that three years ago I could only manage 75 seconds on the treadmill before my heart rate was over the top, walking a mile is a big, big deal. In retrospect maybe trying for a mile three days a week instead of three days in a row might be a better option. Trying to sort out the ebb and flow of my spoonsupply and mulling over whether 3 days in a row followed by a full day in town is worth a spoonless day today is an ongoing battle. Walking a mile does feel like a huge gift.

A very dear friend of mine is in the hospital. She's been there more than not since last Spring. It's been almost three years since she had a double lung transplant. She has been there for me every step of the way as I went from doctor to doctor trying to get answers to my health issues. I found her through the internet even though we lived about 10 miles apart back then. It turned out that she had the same cardiologist as me - the one who told me I was simply hormonal. She had doctors telling her to go home and get a life, insinuating that she was a hypochondriac. That took a toll on her and it's something we understand about one another - how that attitude on the part of doctors can make a person mistrust their instincts ever after. Both of us instinctively knew something wasn't right in our bodies while doctors dismissed us. In the end we both were blessed by the same doctor who listened and made things happen. By that time she was just about ready for the lung transplant. Her name is Karen if you would be so kind as to lift her up in prayer. I'm going to visit her tomorrow. She's so tired of fighting the fight to live. I can hear it in her voice. It scares me because she is such a fighter. She has a giggle that is contagious. And above all else she is full of gratitude for the journey. She knows every day is a gift.

Well, it's almost time for my regular dose of Family Feud. The funniest answer I've heard lately on that show was when asked to name a road sign that described their love life one man answered, slippery when wet. His wife turned brick red.
I'm still chuckling over that one.
Let's hope the mice don't have a tryst of their own before they give in to their cravings and enjoy the peanut butter in the trap.

Your Heart Is Greater

75 years ago today one of my favourite authors, Henri Nouwen, was born. This past week I read a book by Michael Ford called Wounded Prophet which takes an intimate look at Nouwen's life. Different pieces from his books are quoted throughout Ford's book. Below is one from The Inner Voice Of Love that spoke to me.

"You have been wounded in many ways. The more you open yourself to being healed, the more you will discover how deep your wounds are...The great challenge is living your wounds through instead of thinking them through. It is better to cry than to worry, better to feel your wounds deeply than to understand them, better to let them enter into your silence than to talk about them. The choice you face constantly is whether you are taking your wounds to your head or your heart. In your head you can analyze them, find their causes and consequences, and coin words to speak and write about them. But no final healing is likely to come from that source. You need to let your wounds go down to your heart. Then you can live through them and discover that they will not destroy you. Your heart is greater than your wounds."

Industrious Bits Of Wisdom

If the calendar didn't say January I'd be betting Spring was right around the corner. They are forecasting above freezing temperatures all week. How weird is that? January is often our minus 40C month. Seeing how we've had snow on the ground since October maybe we're getting a taste of Spring so we can hang in there for the long haul. Whatever the case, I'm enjoying it. In fact later on today I'm going to build myself a snow man and a snow angel. I used up the last of the carrots in the stew that's cooking in the crock pot but I'm sure I can think up some kind of snowman nose that will do.

Before I get to do that though I have to finish up the cleaning I started this morning. Those darn mice have had a heyday in my pantry and in the midst of my cleaning up after the little buggers I found outdated soup cans and bags of rice with little holes chewed in them. So owing to the industrious nature of mice I'm finding a little of my own. This is the cleanest my pantry's been in several years. I'd say thank you to the mice but that would be taking things a little far, don't you think?

And why stop at the pantry? I cleaned off the front of my fridge, glanced at the top of of it and cleaned that off too. I've written before about my habit of collecting bits of paper with notes written on them. Who would have thought the top of the fridge could yield such bits of wisdom as this one:

"With some people, however, the best possible choice they are capable of making is, in fact, the worst possible choice they could make."

I don't know whose blog that comes from (these days I always write the blog on the back of the piece of paper) but it sounds like it could come from either this guy or that one.

I like that quote because it helps me forgive myself for my most regrettable decisions. When you know better, you do better. Today I can better accept that it doesn't happen any other way. I have a hunch some of my regrettable decisions were influenced by the list below which was on the front of my fridge.

"The following are some of the characteristics, agreed upon by one Al anon/Acoa group, that result in problems in our lives.

1. We became isolated and afraid of people and authority figures;

2. We became approval seekers and lost our identity in the process;

3. We are frightened by angry people and any personal criticism;

4. We either become alcoholics, marry them, or both, or find another compulsive personality such as a workaholic to fulfill our sick abandonment needs;

5. We live life from the viewpoint of victims and are attracted by that weakness in our love and friendship relations;

6. We have an overdeveloped sense of responsibility and it is easier for us to be concerned with others rather than ourselves. This enables us not to look too closely at our faults, etc.

7. We get guilty feelings when we stand up for ourselves instead of giving in to others.

8. We became addicted to excitement.

9. We confuse love and pity and tend to 'love' people we can 'pity' and 'rescue'.

10. We have stuffed our feelings from our traumatic childhoods and have lost the ability to feel or express our feelings because it hurts so much;(DENIAL)

11. We judge ourselves harshly and have a very low sense of self-esteem;

12. We are dependent personalities who are terrified of abandonment and will do anything to hold on to a relationship in order not to experience painful abandonment feelings which we received from living with sick people who were never there emotionally for us.

13. Alcoholism is a family disease and we became para-alcoholics and took on the characteristics of that disease even though we did not pick up the drink;

14. Para-alcoholics are reactors rather than actors."

It's good to look at that list today and find some of those numbers not nearly as front and center in my life as they have been. Below is number 15 which I made up myself.

15. I found I was uncomfortable engaging in play as an adult because my play enviroment was too unpredictable as a child. I learned as a child that adults could start screaming at me, beating me or dishing out other painful consequences if I wasn't on guard to stop playing and become a mini adult before they walked in the room.

This month I have spontaneously played with bubbles, drawn with my Spirograph, had a snowball fight, and enjoyed a tractor ride. This afternoon I'm building myself a snowman and making a snow angel.
Let's see if the mice chew holes in those babies.

Of Mice and Men Part Two

Good thing dearest one doesn't have heart problems. He just opened the cupboard to retrieve a different pair of dish washing gloves only to have a mouse jump out of the pocket of an apron hanging on the cupboard door. Mystery solved. Because of my cat allergies we won't be able to invite one of our feline friends to come dine but mouse traps are on the top of the shopping list.

Of Mice and Men

Dearest one had a great pair of rubber gloves he'd been using when washing dishes lately. Because of an influx of mice leaving their trademark all over our counters, we've been washing our dishes with a bit of bleach in the wash water, making rubber gloves necessary. The mice somehow climbed on a shelf way up high and chewed along the one side of his gloves, rendering them them useless. I look at everything else in the cupboard they could've concentrated on and it's hard not to think they had this little conference and decided to go after the gloves in an attempt to thwart our housekeeping efforts. The little buggers.

I Am So Much More

This afternoon while I was waiting for my assessment with the Occupational Therapist, I dug out my favourite waiting room book. There are 31 chapters to this book and I numbered them off so that whatever day of the month it is, I read the equivalent chapter. Here is part of the 17Th chapter:

"The first quality that strikes when one looks into the eyes of a child is its innocence: its lovely inability to lie or wear a mask or pretend to be anything other than what it is. In this the child is exactly like the rest of Nature. A dog is a dog; a rose, a rose; a star, a star; everything is quite simply what it is. Only the adult human being is able to be one thing and pretend to be another. When grown-ups punish a child for telling the truth, for revealing what it thinks and feels, the child learns to dissemble and so innocence is destroyed. Soon it will join the ranks of the numberless people who say helplessly, "I do not know who I am, " for, having hidden the truth about themselves for so long from others, they end up by hiding it from themselves. How much of the innocence of childhood do you still retain, is there anyone today in whose presence you can be simply and totally yourself. as nakedly open and innocent as a child?

There is another more subtle way in which the innocence of childhood is lost: when the child is infected by the desire to become somebody. Contemplate the crowds of people who are striving might and main to become, not what Nature intended them to be - musicians, cooks, mechanics, carpenters, inventors - but somebody: to become successful, famous, powerful; to become something that will bring, not quiet self fulfillment, but self-glorification, self-expansion. You are looking at people who have lost their innocence because they have chosen not to be themselves but to promote themselves, to show off, even if it be only in their own eyes. Look at you daily life. Is there a single thought, word or action untainted by the desire to become somebody, even if all you seek to become is a spiritual success or a saint unknown to anyone except yourself?"

The highlighted sentences I have underlined in my book because they continue to be food for thought as I journey.

The journey has been rocky lately, hence my silence. It takes time to process, pray and believe that beauty can unfold from the pain. While learning how to stop being one thing and pretending to be another I'm stepping on the toes of those most precious to me. Sadness has been the dominant emotion within. When people around me don't see the process as something beautiful it's easy to believe that any forward movement is simply a figment of my own imagination. Not only have I doubted I was making progress, there've been times when I've convinced myself that I'm only a bitch in hiding.

Sometimes it sucks that there is no going back. Sucks that the journey forward is uncomfortable not only for me, but also for those with whom my life is intertwined. It takes everything within me not to go around saying, "sorry, sorry" for simply learning to be me. Father Charlie has often reminded me that I'm in the process of being transformed and so too, those around me will feel the ripple effects and face their own transformation process.

To embrace my own journey I became willing this week to let go of all resentments, all the baggage I've carried with me since childhood in order to move forward. I also became willing to do that imperfectly. You know how it is sometimes? You decide a thing then wake up the next morning with the same issues plaguing you and it's easy to think you either didn't mean it or that the Spirit was busy with someone else, and that nothing really happened within you or else you'd be free from your humanity? That kind of thinking has only added to my shame level, it's never brought me any closer to real freedom. So for today I let go to the best of my ability, asking for God's grace to continue to be open to letting go.

I've spent a lifetime being quick to think of myself as bad. Someone's not happy with me, that means I must be bad. I make a less than stellar choice, I must be bad. I say the wrong thing, think the wrong thought, I must be bad. It takes so very little to label myself that way. No one is putting that on me, it's my own self talk feeding itself. During this rocky stretch of life I learned that the label no longer fits. There's a difference between being bad and being human. Something has settled within me, in that deep place, where I now know that any judgement I could make of myself will never be the full picture of who I am. I am so much more than my flaws. I have a hope that I can learn to live with myself, humanity intact, faith intact, look in the mirror and rejoice.

Today is the nine week mark of abstinence from sexual addiction for me. For all the turmoil of the past few days, I give thanks that my thoughts never even turned in that direction for relief. That was a gift of grace. I think that maybe I was actually living in the moment instead of trying to run away from it.
That, I know, is a most childlike quality.
There is hope.
God bless you as you embrace the journey.

Monday, Monday

We've been without a phone service since Saturday. It certainly makes for a much quieter house. No phone. No internet. We survived. I'm glad it was easy to get fixed this morning by some techinician in a building far away from here.

Dearest one did just come in the house though and told me he found it no suprise that I was on the internet. Some habits die hard.

The storm is over, the cold weather came and went. There's the beginnings of a chinook arch on the horizon. In the space of the last week then we went from blizzard conditions and 20+cm of fresh snow to -35C cold to above freezing temperatures today. What's that saying? If you don't like the weather wait 5 minutes, it'll change.

I took my chances on highway conditions Saturday morning and went to my AA meeting. The roads were icy and by the time I got over half way there I wasn't too sure I was happy with my decision. But going was worth it. A good meeting. Food for thought as always.

I've been doing a lot of reflecting lately and haven't been able to gather my thoughts yet. I feel an openess in my spirit that hasn't been there for a long time. I have an appointment with Fr. Charlie tomorrow and am hoping to hash some of this out with him then. Today is the only day until next Monday when I don't have commitments to attend to outside my home. Spoons, spoons, I'll be in need of some. Having a good mental outlook somehow makes my spoon supply bearable.

Bubbles In The Snow

Weird title, eh? Dearest one went to work last night and because of blizzard warnings he stayed in the city today. I am simply bored and more bored. I got the great idea this afternoon to try and blow bubbles out in the snow storm. There's no picture to show you because it would've taken one person to blow bubbles and another to take the photo before the bubbles burst. I tried to do it on my own but had to settle to just enjoy the bubbles myself. It's blizzarding up a storm out there and I'm not sure dearest one will make it home tomorrow either. He just called and said the visibility was nearly zero some places right in the city. Combine that with forecasted windchills of -28C tomorrow and you have a lovely picture of winter up north. It's all iffy enough that dearest one will have to check out road conditions before he buys groceries tomorrow. No point buying them if he can't bring them home.

My appointment with Fr. Charlie was cancelled today because of the weather, too. I did talk with him on the phone for a while and shared the bulk of what's been riding around in my head since our last visit. I came away committed to moving forward even though I'm feeling a bit cranky as to how much work it continues to be. Today is all I need to cope with. I have to remind myself of that on a regular basis. Someone said something that spoke to me at the AA meeting I went to last Saturday and I heard it again in Fr. Charlie's homily on Sunday. I sat in the pew with tears rolling out the corners of my eyes and it was all I could do not to just bury my face in my hands and sob. It was one of those grace moments where I got a glimpse of Truth. And it was scary and a blessing at the same time. We bring ourselves to God as a gift, as we are. And as we are is enough. We can't be anywhere else in this moment. It's food for thought when God is okay with me but I'm not okay with me. Something opened within me this past weekend that makes the idea of being okay with me closer to an ongoing reality than before.

The first time I met with Fr. Charlie for spiritual direction he asked me if I struggled with wearing masks. "Who me? No." was my basic response. In the ensuing 17 months I've had more masks drop off my face than they sell at a costume store. I'm getting close to being willing to walk around as maskless as a healthy person can, but I'm not there yet. And to simply be okay with that is something new for me. I told Fr. Charlie today that I was willing to do whatever I had to in order to speak my truth and be who I am without apology. I told him I just didn't know how to get from here to there. He told me I was already on my way. God, I hate walking blind. That's what this journey feels like sometimes.

There's ham and eggs cooking on the stove top as I type. After I have some supper I'm going to dig out the Spirograph set that I spotted in the cupboard when I dug out the bubbles. When I was in grade three one of my classmates got a Spirograph set from the teacher in our Christmas gift draw. I was as envious as the green ink that came in the set. Several years ago I saw a set at a garage sale and just had to have it. At least with the Spirograph I know where I'm going.
In circles.

The Palm Of Our Skull

"It's at night, when perhaps we should be dreaming, that the mind is most clear, that we are most able to hold all our life in the palm of our skull. I don't know if anyone has ever pointed out that great attraction of insomnia before, but it is so; the night seems to release a little more of our vast backward inheritance of instincts and feelings; as with the dawn, a little honey is allowed to ooze between the lips of the sandwich, a little of the stuff of dreams to drip into the waking mind."~Brian W. Aldiss

It's the middle of the night and I'm holding some of my life in the palm of my skull. I was trying to keep track of the little bits of mental notes I was making when I decided to get up and write them all down so I could go back to bed and get some sleep. It would be of no surprise to dearest one to wake up and find me writing. He knows me.

I finally got to an AA meeting yesterday. What a relief to be in a room of people where I don't have to explain myself. I simply get to be. Accepting where I am on the journey and telling that truth without judging myself, is probably the hardest thing I face on a daily basis. An AA meeting has become one of few places where I don't struggle to be someone else or somewhere else on my journey. What a gift.

It was a good meeting. Before I got there I really felt the need to share. When I walked in the room, the person who normally chairs the meeting asked me if I wanted to chair it. I took a few moments to think that over and decided maybe his need to share was greater than mine and accepted. I heard good, good stuff around the table. I love that I benefit from someone else sharing their experience, strength and hope. I've had more light bulb moments at a meeting than for all the times someone has been purposely trying to flick the switch on for me. I need to remember to stop trying to do that to others.

I've never had a bona fide sponsor on my recovery journey. In the beginning, the woman who introduced me to Al Anon and then AA was a rehab counselor. She gladly took me to meetings and we became friends. Since being back in the program the last 6 months, I've increasingly seen the need for a sponsor and have become willing to surrender my habit of trying to fly solo. After the meeting yesterday I approached a woman about becoming my sponsor. Every time she has shared in a meeting I have appreciated her words of wisdom. She has a beautiful, humble spirit and she tells it to you straight. I need that. It's not easy for me to trust women, especially other alcoholics. I'm not sure why. Reaching out for help is such a sign of health for me. She is willing to consider it and I will call her later today. I realized through the Christmas holidays that had I had a sponsor I would have dealt with my resentments sooner rather than later. I could have heard myself simply from sharing outloud with someone else, someone who gets it, and known I needed to take action.

I never went through rehab or 90 meetings in 90 days. When I sobered up I had a newborn, a toddler and a 4 year old. Rehab seemed too inconvenient. I can laugh at the absurdity of that thinking now. I had been sober a year and active in Al-Anon before I walked through the doors of an AA meeting. Dearest one and I have been discussing whether it would be possible for me to go through rehab now. Even though I haven't had a drink in almost 19 years I feel like I've only been working the program for these past six months.

Sometimes when someone is pissing me off I think to myself, "You're messing with my serenity." It's a gentle, humourous way to remind myself that my serenity is up to me and no one can mess with it unless I give them permission. There are people at my meetings who have serenity on a daily basis. I want that. I want it more than I want to be right. I'm willing to do what it takes to get it. God help me.

Last night while hashing out my day with dearest one he interrupted me to say, "I love you." He had this tender hearted look on his face and I replied, "You do?" I proceeded to pepper him with questions about that until he laughed and teased me that I was giving him the grand inquisition because he told me he loved me. I laughed too and decided to accept his words without having to have them clarified. I know he was seeing something in me that I couldn't see had I gone and looked in the mirror. Accepting love heals.

This past week I took a step towards better social health. I've known for some time that I need to be among people more than I am in any given week. It's so easy for me to be a hermit, to stay within my comfort zone. Several months ago I approached the head of the local historical society about volunteering my writing and research skills. I told her I couldn't commit to anything until after the New Year and this past week she called to see if I was ready to start. Despite the piles of papers I make on any flat surface in my own home, I do love to organize and file things away, which is one of the jobs this woman needs done. In the next few weeks I will also learn the practical side of museum collections and how to register and catalogue items. When time allows I will write about items already on display and at some point write a local history booklet for elementary students. Every week I will meet for a few hours with other community people and use my gifts for the benefit of the whole. It feels like step in the right direction.

This coming week I will start biofeedback training. Back in November, when I had my annual checkup, my doctor and I discussed options for dealing with my increasing pain levels. If I sit too long it becomes painful to walk. If someone touches me pretty well anywhere on my body, it hurts. My joints are getting to be an issue. Last week at a family gathering, dearest one was holding one of our great nephews when he teasingly, gently touched my shoulder joint with this little guy's foot. By the third touch I was in pain. Anywhere I scratch on my body becomes painful to the touch immediately. I don't know anything about biofeedback training but am hoping it will help me cope with the pain. I'm also on the waiting list for a local chronic pain group too, which will also teach me coping techniques. It's been several weeks since I've had enough spoons to get me through to the end of a day so I'm hoping all this will help me manage those better. Trying to balance having a life and having spoons is an ongoing challenge.

Dearest one just got up and looked at me kind of puzzled a few moments ago. Even though it's 3:30 AM, the kettle is on and we're going to have a cup of tea. Then it's time to put this waking mind back to sleep.

It's A Wrap

"Is it really truth that we seek, or just a sweet enough lie to settle our minds so we can sleep at night?"~Lou

I got a crash course on how nursing resentments makes relationships dry up instead of being nourished over the holidays. It wasn't pretty or fun for anyone.

Only daughter was home for mere days before I got this unshakeable feeling that I might not be the easiest person to share a house with. Nothing I could put my finger on, just an inkling that who I thought I was and who I am might very well be two different things. There's nothing like adding more people to the daily mix of life to have multiple character defects rise to the surface for all to see. Damn.

I'm sure whoever was on the other end of the business phone call dearest one was in the middle of when I shouted at the top of my lungs to only daughter "What happened to the fucking training I gave you?" was left wondering whether the clerks at Wal Mart had forgotten to wish us "Happy Holidays".

Crying in the shower is very cleansing. It saves on kleenex, too.

They say timing is everything. I bet God made that one up. Especially when I am about to fall asleep in order to temporarily avoid dealing with aftermath of my own melt down, only to have step 10 surface in my head, "Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it." To which I immediately thought, "oh for fuck's sake" before I ignored it and went to sleep.

Deciding I didn't need progesterone cream to help regulate my hormones this month was possibly the worst decision I've made in regards to my health all year. Especially when those much needed hormones reached a crescendo hours before I started acting like a screaming banshee.

The one time only daughter and I actually agreed with one another in the past 10 days was when she told me that she had never had a time at home of seeing her flaws so in her face. I told her I felt the same (my own flaws in my own face courtesy of her) and then she said she hadn't enjoyed her time at home very much and I told her I hadn't enjoyed it much either.

A lifetime of codependent behaviour is not fixed overnight. There are times when I wish there was a courier company who would guarantee next day delivery on that though.

Things I do know:

I have 6845 days of sobriety. Thanks be to God.
I have 50 days of abstinence from sexual addiction.
I've wanted the relief it brings so badly lately.
Surrendering that to God in the midst of the stress was hard.
But to give in would have solved nothing.
Asking for God's grace in the midst of my bitchiness instead of thinking I had to pretty myself up first was hard, too.
But God will never use a mirror to blackmail me.

Today is never the end of the story.

Lord have mercy.
Christ have mercy.
Lord have mercy.

Catholic Carnival 100

the 100th edition of Catholic Carnival can be found over at Sarah's blog. Enjoy!

All Shook Up Over You

Nineteen years ago tonight I spent New Year's Eve in the operating room. Youngest son had been born shortly after 4 pm and by 6 pm I had gone into shock from blood loss. Just before that happened I had this surreal conversation with dearest one. We were alone in the birthing room and I told him I felt like I was going to faint. This was long before his own RN days so he looked at me, shrugged his shoulders and told me to faint then, it wasn't a big deal. I replied that if I fainted I wasn't coming back and then promptly fainted. This diamond like light up in the corner of the room had been trying to suck me into it for a while and I'd spent considerable energy not giving in. When I came to my bed was tipped so that all the remaining blood could feed my brain and heart. All those people surrounding my bed I learned later, had been the code team. The nurse at my head told them my blood pressure was 60/40. When they were scrambling to get a blood sample to cross match before whisking me off to surgery there was a discussion as to where to get it from. When someone mentioned the groin someone else said you couldn't do that to a pregnant woman. I had enough wits about me to remind them I wasn't pregnant any longer and we all chuckled. My feet felt like they were freezing and when dearest one touched them he said it was like touching a corpse because there wasn't any blood left in them.

When we'd arrived on L&D earlier that day our nurse looked so young and I thought to myself that she was going to be useless in our birthing experience. In the end it was her previous 8 years of experience in the ER that helped her get a vial and a half of blood before they ran me up to the OR. She was older than me, too.

Much of that experience, from the time I started hemorraging until I was on the operating table was spent in silence. I spent nearly all my time talking to God. Two thoughts reverberated in my head. Asking for forgiveness and telling God I didn't want to die but if that was God's will for me, so be it. I've never been able to adequately describe those diamond like lights in the corner of the ceiling.

My first memory of the New Year was after I was back on the ward and a nurse came to check my vital signs and the blood transfusion. She told me it was after 2 AM, whispered Happy New Year to me, then I asked her to bring me my baby. I hadn't held him very much before the hoopla began. He had an identifying mark of a tiny hole above his left ear and with that knowledge tucked in my brain I was able to go to sleep, reassured that no one could switch my baby on me.

His birth was the beginning of a new direction in my journey. Up to that point I had been seeking God but didn't have a relationship with Him. Coming that close to death made me realize that Christianity wasn't a game. You either were one or you weren't. I sobered up 3 months later - to the day - and 6 weeks later I surrendered to what the Big Book calls step 3:"Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over the the care of God as we understood Him."

When I reflect back on this night I think about how I thought I was one place on my journey only to be so shaken up by life's circumstances in order to see I wasn't where I thought I was. This Christmas season has been one of internal shaking up for me. On my way to Mass today I was telling God I wasn't who I thought I was and to please help me become all He created me to be.

The journey continues.

Happy New Year! And happy birthday, youngest son.

One Sentence Resolution

Every December I spend some time reflecting over the past year and looking ahead. With those reflections in mind I've often made a list of resolutions that was longer than my arm. Over time I've let go of the obsession to try and revamp my whole life from A to Z in one fell swoop. The last few years I look at each of the social, emotional, physical and spiritual areas of my life (Luke 2:52)and see what speaks to me. Then I pray to work towards health in those areas. Tonight I read the bit below on Beth's blog and found one sentence that sums up all areas for me for this year. I'm going to have to pray for the "want to" part. But the rest is so dead on it's scary.

"I want to confront the way I skillfully avoid what is right in front of me, and maintain the distance that is the pain of yet-to-be risked intimacy."
~via

The Journey Continues

Two years ago today I was received into the Catholic Church. To some who knew me they felt I had just walked into the biggest bondage out there in Christendom. To others, I had come home. And still to others, big deal, who cares?

And two years later I can say that there is more bondage within me than out there, I will always be coming home and when I get hung up on the minor things (like other people's business), Jesus eventually heaves a sigh, looks at me and says, "follow me." So I keep trying, Jesus keeps loving me and my journey continues.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas!