-Big Girl Panties

Resentment is the number one offender for us chronic alcoholic’s like myself, that’s what it says anyway. In fact, the Big Book states that it’s SO BAD that it compares it to death 4 times in one paragraph: grave, fatal, shut ourselves off from the Sunlight of the Spirit(that in itself is death), insanity returns and we drink and with us to drink is to die. You could actually split that up into 5 times if you’d  like, but regardless of the way you count it, it’s just bad!!!

They say it destroys us, first spiritually and it’s all downhill from there. We run on self-will, though WE don’t think so, which is just all ego. Which just means that we won’t listen to anyone telling us that says we are operating based on our emotions, self-centered fears or delusions. It will erode our spiritual connection with our Higher Power and our fellows.

So what happens when you know you are the target of someone else’s resentment? What do you do when someone continues to retailiate against you? Pot shots, hateful words, malicious gossip, snide and contemptuous comments….. But you are Awake in Spirit enough to know that their only hope is the maintenance and growth of a spiritual experience. What do you do now? That’s what they call “when then rubber meets the road”! Do you put the Spiritual Program of Action to work in your life that you talk about in meetings or do you subscribe to you deepest darkest insecurities, protect your pride and take matters in the hands of self?

“…..we begin to see that all people, including ourselves, are to some extent emotionally ill as well as frequently wrong, and then we approach true tolerance and see what real love for our fellows actually means. It will become more and more evident as we go forward that it is pointless to become angry, or to get hurt by people who, like us, are suffering from the pains of growing up.” 12 and 12 pp 92

I was told early on in my sobriety that I can chose mercy or justice. The literature tells me that I am basically incompetent of telling the difference between justified and unjustified anger(though my head would argue that point even today).  I was also told that it’s either justice for you and justice for me or mercy for you and mercy for me. Since I am extremely grateful for the mercy I have been given, I guess my choice is really a no-brainer!! I have no right to “feel” justified (because feelings aren’t facts anyways). So I must chose mercy for you.

Please don’t think that I’m some sort of Saint, it took me 3 days of meditation, reading literature and consultation with my sponsor and a few other spiritual advisors to come up with this conclusion. But the moment I did, a peace came over me!!! I typically hate character building and walking through uncomfortable situations but today, I’m ok with this. My mind may change tomorrow😊

In the last analysis, this person needs love, compassion, forgiveness, and the hand of AA. Sometimes the still suffering alcoholic is sitting “in the rooms” right next to you and let’s just face it…… Sometime it’s you or me for that matter!!!

We all need love, no matter how damaged we are or ate up with self we are or how unlovably insane we behave because I believe that is the will of my Creator.  Trust God, Clean House, and try, to the best of mu ability, to practice the principles in ALL my affairs!!! No matter what I fail at in life there is always a step to clean it up and I thank AA for that and I thank AA for my God!

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Unshakable Foundation, Part 1

Hey there blog-peeps! Long time – no type! Just living the dream or trying to…. I guess. Not even gonna attempt to catch you up on all that madness!!! I will just jump right in with something that I have been working on, towards and putting in to practice in my trudge over the last 17 months.

“There is a direct linkage among self-examination, meditation, and prayer. Taken separately, these practices can bring much relief and benefit. But when they are logically related and interwoven, the result is an UNSHAKABLE foundation for life. Now and then we may be granted a glimpse of that ultimate reality which is God’s Kingdom. And we will be comforted and assured that our own destiny in that realm will be secure for so long as we try, however falteringly, to find and do the Will of our own Creator.” 12 & 12 page 98

So first off, If you have done more than just the 1, 2, 3, waltz around the rooms of AA, then you have had an introduction to the self-examination that this piece of literature is referring to. We learn to inventory our behavior at step four, confess to another in five, identify character defects and become willing to have or HP remove those in 6, ask our HP to remove those objectionable to us in 7, decide who was harmed in 8 and make restitution to those harmed in 9. We begin to continuously monitor our thoughts and actions with the practice of step 10, while we our cleaning up the wreckage of our past. I don’t know about you, but sometimes I am not the greatest at telling you that I am full of fear while I am in the middle of a knock-down drag-out fight with my husband. It looks like rage on the outside but is truly more like insecurity and self-centeredness. Which is why I have become extremely grateful for step 11 for several reasons.

See, I miss stuff during the day that I am supposed to catch in step 10 when I  “continue to watch for selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear.- Big Book(BB) page 84” I will still lie to myself in the moment. So, our literature gives us a backup plan of sorts on page 86, “when retire at night…” under step 11. Just in case I miss it in the moment, because, lets face it, I will miss it!!!!

I have been going through and answering those questions on page 86 in the BB in writing form and sending my invertory to an accountability circle of women for 17 months. Much different than just reading over them and answering them in my head. Or what I did for the first 7 years of my sobriety, which was not look at those inventory questions at all. I can look back at my written inventory and see what I need to bring to my Higher Power for corrective action in prayer. I can see where I have been intolerant of others or unkind and unloving. I can see which character defects have been activated once more due to my selfish, self-centered behavior.

It is not to something I use to make me feel terrible about myself but to see what I can do better tomorrow. I want to grow in understanding and effectiveness like the BB says at step 10. To understand where I have been wrong and what I have done good so that tomorrow I will be able to a better instrument for my HP. After all, He did grant me this gift of GRACE in sobriety. I do try, however falteringly, to do His will daily…

After Birthday Night

My husband was out of town at a Men’s conference, so he missed out on Birthday Night (BN). When BN was over I checked my phone and I had a text from my awesome husband, it said……”you and I have been asked to speak at ______ Roundup May 10th”

My response, ” No No No No”

Him- ????, since when did you get allowed to say no?

Me- Answer your phone

Him- In meeting

Me- Was this your suggestion or idea? I will KILL you Mr Husband!

He called me after his meeting and SWORE he didn’t throw me under the bus! I gave him the 5th degree of how this conversation went down. I am still not totally sure I believe him!

Like I said I don’t like speaking! He, on the other hand, is completely comfortable behind the podium or anywhere else that he has everyone’s full attention. He speaks very well and I don’t just say that because he is my husband! See he has a nice sized ego, so you have to be careful with compliments HAHA! Love you hubs!

I can already see how this will go down….. they will love him and they will listen to me and wonder why I was chosen. I am no way near his caliber of speaker. But, regardless, he was right when he asked me in the text…….”When did you get allowed to say no?” The truth is I don’t! I dang sure wouldn’t call my sponsor and tell her that I refused to speak! I am not that stupid!

But o do still have the compulsion to confess, so I did call my sponsor. I told her my response and she laughed and said, “I think that is wonderful! It ain’t about you anyway!”  Then she gave me the same advice I have been given since I got sober , “Tell the truth and don’t say the “F” word.”  After all, it has always worked in the past!

Instead of fretting over this for the next 2 months, I will add this to my prayer and meditation, trust that God knows what He is doing and just get mySELF out of the way! I will keep y’all up on the craziness that goes through my head over the next 2 months. Peace!

It’s a WE deal!

You ever get the feeling that you just aren’t helpful or effective? That no one hears what you are saying? That they just don’t get the point? Well I do! But I have had it beat into my head that feelings aren’t facts! I’ve been told that since I got to AA. None of my sponsors have coddled me or listened to me whine about my “so-called” problems! It always been “where did you start the ball rolling”, or “what is your part in this” or “Man you really are sicker than I thought!”. I’m just kidding about the last one! Although it has been said to me and it is a realization I have come to myself!

But I am not the first one in the program to feel useless or it wouldn’t have talked about it in the bedevilments on page 52 of the Big Book. But God has always provided what I needed, as long as I have been wiling enough to look for it and to give Him credit. There was a period of time that I sponsored no one, truly I didn’t have what anyone wanted or what I wanted either. But when I finally started doing the work again and quit isolating myself from the people that had the answer and from the program, fellowship and service…..I began to get better.

Well that period of time was a while ago and I am not devoid of sponsees anymore. I actually went from 2 to 4 in one day! My first thought was…. “Man, God must think I’m real sick right now!” Truth be told, I love these women I sponsor! It lights me on fire when I see the light bulb come on! It’s better than any high I ever got off dope and booze! The book even tells us about it!

“Life will take on new meaning. To watch people recover, to see them help others, to watch loneliness vanish, to see a fellowship grow up about you, to have a host of friends — this is an experience you must not miss. We know you will not want to miss it. Frequent contact with newcomers and with each other is the bright spot of our lives”.- Big Book page 89

Man has that been my truth! What a blessing and a promise! To go from a self-absorbed, self-centered, “me and mine” girl to wanting to help someone else…… I am amazed! Of course none of that would ever happen if I didn’t have God to reduce all the self, self, self! That was and is definitely a Big part of the equation!

“You are going to meet these new friends in your own community. Near you, alcoholics are dying helplessly like people in a sinking ship. If you live in a large place, there are hundreds. High and low, rich and poor, these are future fellows of Alcoholics Anonymous. Among them you will make lifelong friends. You will be bound to them with new and wonderful ties, for you will escape disaster together and you will commence shoulder to shoulder your common journey. Then you will know what it means to give of yourself that others may survive and rediscover life. You will learn the full meaning of “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” Big Book page 152-153

I have found them! I have made lifelong friends! I am bound to them, for they are my people! I have escaped disaster because they showed me the way out! I journey with them! I have experienced giving of myself, my time, my experience so that WE can not only survive but live! I have learned the meaning of “Love thy neighbor as thyself”! And I have been shown how to do this by some of the most wonderful people that were once hopeless just like me! It’s a WE deal! I get it!

It is freaking AMAZING!!!

Not NOW! Not TODAY!

Wish I could say that I have been a beaming angelic child of God lately but that would be entirely untrue. Life is just life! I am at least grateful that I know that no one is doing this or that to me. You know you have heard the sayings… Life on Life’s terms or Life on God’s terms or Life on my terms. I don’t know which is true or which reality I am actually living. That’s probably because my belief is that it is simply or complicatedly JUST LIFE.

My husband and I have said for years…..”When life slows down in a few months” or “When we have a weekend off from commitments”. You’d think we would have figured out by now, that is simply not gonna happen! There will always be something that comes up to plan into the mixing bowl which is our life. Even with all these gadgets and do-ma-hickies that make everything faster, none of them shorten my day. They do however allow me space to cram more stuff into the already over filled day. So, you start with this super crammed life that I have either created or participated in creating and then you throw in some anomaly like back taxes due to the IRS because I screwed up 3 years ago, my husband having the flu and me having a raging migraine simultaneously for 5 days, or our car was in the shop and then the car we borrowed breaks down while my husband is on the way to work. I could go on, but I’m not special! This kind of stuff happens to everyone.

“We are sure God wants us to be happy, joyous, and free. We cannot subscribe to the belief that this life is a vale of tears, though it once was just that for many of us. But it is clear that we made our own misery. God didn’t do it. Avoid then, the deliberate manufacture of misery, but if trouble comes, cheerfully capitalize it as an opportunity to demonstrate His omnipotence” Big Book page 133

WHAT AN ORDER!!!! Truth is, this is not always the easiest thing to do. When trouble comes my first reaction is not to go skipping through the tulips with full trust and dependence on God. My first reactions is to FLIP SMOOTH OUT! No spiritual giant here, for sure! I usually calm down pretty quick because I get this uneasy feeling in my stomach that this is not how to act, treat other people or react in any given situation. My sponsor says, “at any given time I am either moving toward a drink or moving toward God”. I have this sneaky suspicion that letting my head spin like I am having an exorcism is in no way moving toward God! So what I usually have to do is regroup which most of the time comes down to me talking to God with skin on.

“When we developed still more, we discovered the best possible source of emotional stability to be God Himself. We found that dependence upon His perfect justice, forgiveness, and love was healthy, and that it would work where nothing else would. If we really depended upon God, we couldn’t very well play God to our fellows nor would we feel the urge wholly to rely on human protection and care. These were the new attitudes that finally brought many of us an inner strength and peace that could not be deeply shaken by the shortcomings of others or by any calamity not of our own making.” 12 & 12 page 116

The coolest thing about this program, to me, is that we GET to practice it. Practice the principles. Practice turning our will over to His. Practice forgiveness. Practice reliance upon God. Practice! Practice! Practice! I think about all the years I spent playing basketball and the countless hours of practice I put in. I made tons of mistakes, air-balls, turnovers, bad passes etc. As long as I dusted myself off and tried again, I still improved and over time I made fewer mistakes. To practice is the repeated exercise in or performance of an activity or skill so as to acquire or maintain proficiency in it. So essentially I am trying to become proficient in a spiritual way of life.

No matter what my poorly planned, insane, inappropriate reaction to calamity, another persons behavior, or just simply &h!t Happens……… God can and WILL meet me right where I am! What an AWESOME gift that is! I don”t have to come to Him perfect! I just have to seek Him, not find……just continue to seek! And that folks is simply FANTABULOUS!

Staying Alive

A girl told me today that I am such a good person! If she only knew! The truth is I am not. The longer I stay in the program the sicker I realize that I am, not that I was. They told me in the beginning that I was going to act myself into “right thinking” not think myself into acting right. Well that has turned out to be true. The Big Book says “When the spiritual malady is overcome we straighten out mentally and physically.” page 64.

My brain still tells me all kinds of crazy things and I believe all kinds of delusional thoughts, fears, and ideas that can get me into all sorts of troubles. Nearly 8 years off what my friend calls “the sauce” and this mess in between my ears is still not a credible source. Thank God for friends who love me enough to tell me the truth, hurt my feelings and for strong Big Book sponsorship, I have learned it matters what I DO. So I DO A LOT. I move my feet A LOT in AA. I was taught that early on and that has been a saving grace for me.

Alcohol is a subtle foe and I am not exempt to what Earl Hightower calls “The Beast”. That sucker will tell me all sorts of craziness at any time. The funny thing about this spiritually fit thing is that I usually don’t know that I am spiritually fit in the moment…… I figure it out after the fact. So staying busy in action in AA is a very good thing for this girl!

I don’t keep my mouth shut because I shouldn’t say what has come to my brain, most of the time I do it because I DO NOT like making amends. I go places at all hours of the night because the book tells me I should act the Good Samaritan everyday. I answer the phone because our literature tells me that my life depends upon constant thoughts of others and how I may help meet their needs.

So NO, I AM NOT a good person but AA has taught me how to be a better person than I ever imagined I could be and believe me it has paid me more dividends than I ever could have imagined!

“Who wishes to be rigorously honest and tolerant? Who wants to confess his faults to another and make restitution for harm done? Who cares anything about a Higher Power, let alone meditation and prayer? Who wants to sacrifice time and energy in trying to carry A.A.’s message to the next sufferer? No, the average alcoholic, self-centered in the extreme, doesn’t care for this prospect — unless he has to do these things in order to stay alive himself.” – 12 and 12 page  24