powerless

This morning I woke up, a little usual than normal, but late at the same time. Today is a day I’ve been waiting for, since it was to be a day of service to my group. I live in California and was headed towards southern california. Well, I don’t watch tv or the news in the morning. I had no idea what was going on with the fires. So I leave, semi early, and when I make a rest stop I call someone from program who tells me there were some detours on the freeways, but again, I had no idea how bad it really was.

I was headed down 5 south. Normally it takes an hour or so to get to this one location. This time it took roughly 2 to 2 1/2 hours. I escaped one traffic jam, made it to fifth gear and was excited about that when BAM. Another traffic jam. I did okay up until that point. I was only half way to my destination. So I pulled over to a fruit stand to rest my legs (those stick shifts are fun, except in traffic jams). Today was a good day to be at this time on that day. There was a museum that was free for the day, and they were holding a book sale. I love used books. Plus there was a bathroom that didn’t smell like there were some rotting dog poo hidden somewhere. So that was a bonus. I got a couple books, and headed in the opposite direction, from where I came. I wasn’t about to sit in another 2 hours of traffic. By the time I would get there I wouldn’t have enough time there anyway.

But as I was sitting in traffic for the first hour or so, some things popped into my mind. I had a clear view of the mountains, and the huge amounts of smoke that filled the sky. But the fire was on the other side of the mountain, I just saw a tiny bit of fire for a brief moment. And as I sit there, powerless over traffic, I was thinking about the family disease of alcoholism. We all see the smoke. We are all stuck in the same situation. We are all just poking along, very slowly, hoping any moment things will pick up and we can go again. I know for me that the disease of alcoholism made me powerless and stuck throughout my life. The other cars were other people, my fears, my resentments, everything that gets piled onto our shoulders when we were in this situation. And it makes me angry. The whole situation makes me angry. I can scream, cry, cuss, blame, whatever, I’m still stuck in the disease and stuck in my life.

On the road there’s many exits. Some people pratically run each other over trying to get off the freeway. Not me. I stay on the road. I choose to keep going, to stay stuck. I’ve done that for years. Stick with it, keep going, don’t give up, you really aren’t powerless.

The freeway was windy (not wind as in the air was windy but the road itself had a lot of turns) and I couldn’t see how far we had to go until the detour. I have no idea how many miles I was stuck in traffic. Felt like 100 but it was probably about five. Took an hour plus to get to the next freeway. Again there was traffic, and I needed a pit stop but it was out of the way of the gas stations/fast food places. I was stuck. I kept going. Traffic lightened up, which it always does, even in the family disease of alcoholism there are still good times. And BAM. They’re over.  So I made the stop at the book sale.

Ordinarily, I would have kept going and stay stuck in the traffic jam, despite the physical, emotional and spiritual stress it causes me. I was fine during the first jam, but the second, I was getting angry. Ordinarily I’d martyr myself and keep going. Blame traffic for my crappy mood. Get mad at the fire. Get more annoyed with the other drivers on the road. Because, after all, it is about my inconvience, despite the fact that I’m choosing it and I’m forgetting that traffic jams are the least of the problems of a huge wildfire.  So I said no I choose a different path today. I turned back around. There was one minor traffic holdup, but it was light on the way home. Its safe to say that today, I chose recovery. Tomorrow I’m sure I’ll mess up and choose to be stuck again, but today I’m proud of myself. I got a few books, even a used AA book for $1 to pass along to my sponsor so she can pass it along to her sponsees to help others work the steps. That’s more important than needless suffering to try to force something to happen that obviously I shouldn’t have been part of in the first place. But I’m grateful for the spiritual training. And grateful I got home safe.

Transformation through Grief

We’re striving for acceptance in recovery – acceptance of our past, other people, our present circumstances, and ourselves. Acceptance brings peace, healing, and freedom – the freedom to take care of ourselves.

Acceptance is not a one step process. Before we achieve acceptance, we go toward it in stages of denial, anger, negotiating, and sadness. We call these stages the grief process. Grief can be frustrating. It can be confusing. We may vacillate between sadness and denial. Our behaviors may vacillate. Others may not understand us. We may neither understand our own behavior nor ourselves while we’re grieving our losses. Then one day, things become clear. The fog lifts, and we see that we have been struggling to face and accept a particular reality.

Don’t worry. If we are taking steps to take care of ourselves, we will move through this process at exactly the right pace. Be understanding with yourself and others for the very human way we go through transition.

Today, I will accept the way I go through change. I will accept the grief process, and its stages, as the way people accept loss and change.

unanswered questions

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves.
–Rainer Maria Rilke

We carry problems and discrepancies within us, quandaries that are not easily answered – and we have bigger questions about life and the world. Why did I act as I did in my younger years? Can my life partnership be happy again? How should I handle a secret that I carry? What is this thing we call Higher Power and God?

We are on a journey and, in some ways, this journey is a quest for answers. The questions give energy and direction to our seeking. We cannot expect to get quick or easy answers. And some questions will always remain just that: questions. But we can learn to be patient with ourselves, tolerant of our incompleteness, and always curious about how it will all turn out.

Today I will practice patience with myself and embrace my unsolved questions as crucial elements in my quest.

Wants and Needs

So many of us have been brainwashed to think that we can’t have what we want in life. That is the belief of the martyr. It is born of deprivation and fear.

Identifying what we want and need, then writing it down, sets in motion a powerful chain of events. It indicates that we are taking responsibility for ourselves, giving God and the Universe permission to supply our wants and needs.

The belief that we deserve to have a change in character, a relationship, a new dimension to an existing relationship, a possession, a certain level of health, living, loving, or success, is a powerful force in bringing that desire to pass.

Often, when we realize that we want something, that feeling is God preparing us to receive it!

Listen. Trust. Empower the good in your life by paying attention to what you want and need. Write it down. Affirm it mentally. Pray about it. Then, let it go. Give it to God, and see what happens.

The results may be better than you think.

Today, I will pay attention to what I want and need. I will take time to write it down, and then I will let it go. I will begin to believe I deserve the best.

Times of Reprogramming

Recovery is not all-tiresome, unrewarded work. There are times of joy and rest, times when we comfortably practice what we have learned. There are times of change, times when we struggle to learn something new or overcome a particular problem.

These are the times when what we’ve been practicing in recovery begins to show in our life. These times of change are intense, but purposeful.

There are also times when, at a deep level, we are being “reprogrammed.” We start letting go of beliefs and behaviors. We may feel frightened or confused during these times. Our old behaviors or patterns may not have worked for us, but they were comfortable and familiar.

During these times we may feel vulnerable, lonely, and needy – like we are on a journey without a road map or a flashlight, and we feel as if no one has traveled this ground before.

We may not understand what is being worked out in us. We may not know where or if we are being led.

We are being led. We are not alone. Our Higher Power is working His finest and best to bring true change in us. Others have traveled this road to. We will be led to someone who can help us, someone who can provide the markers we need.

We are being prepared for receiving as much joy and love as our heart can hold.

Recovery is a healing process. We can trust it, even when we don’t understand it. We are right where we need to be in this process; we’re going through exactly what we need to experience. And where we’re going is better than any place we’ve been.

Today, God, help me believe that the changes I’m going through are for the good. Help me believe that the road I’m traveling will lead to a place of light, love, and joy.

Stopping Our Pain

Some of my feelings have been stored so long they have freezer burn.
–Beyond Codependency

There are many sources of pain in our life. Those of us recovering from adult children and codependency issues frequently have a cesspool of unresolved pain from the past. We have feelings, sometimes from early
childhood to the present, that either hurt too much to feel or that we had no support and permission to deal with.

There are other inevitable sources of pain in our life too. There is the sadness and grief that comes when we experience change, even good change, as we let go of one part of our life, and begin our journey into the new.

There is pain in recovery, as we begin allowing ourselves to feel while dropping our protective shield of denial.

There is the pain that leads and guides us into better choices for our future.

We have many choices about how to stop this pain. We may have experimented with different options.  Compulsive and addictive behaviors stop pain – temporarily. We may have used alcohol, other drugs, relationships, or sex to stop our pain.

We may talk compulsively or compulsively focus on other people and their needs as a way to avoid or stop our pain.

We may use religion to avoid our feelings. We may resort to denial of how we are feeling to stop our pain.

We may stay so busy that we don’t have time to feel. We may use money, exercise, or food to stop our pain.

We have many choices. To survive, we may have used some of these options, only to find that these were Band Aids – temporary pain relievers that did not solve the problem. They did not really stop our pain; they postponed it.

In recovery, there is a better choice about how we may stop pain. We can face it and feel it. When we are ready, with our Higher Power’s help, we can summon the courage to feel the pain, let it go, and let the pain move forward – into a new decision, a better life.

We can stop the behaviors we are doing that cause pain, if that’s appropriate. We can make a decision to remove ourselves from situations that cause repeated, similar pain. We can learn the lesson our pain is trying to teach us.

If we are being pelted by pain, there is a lesson. Trust that idea. Something is being worked out in us. The answer will not come from addictive or other compulsive behaviors; we will receive the answer when we feel our feelings.

It takes courage to be willing to stand still and feel what we must feel. Sometimes, we have what seems like endless layers of pain inside us. Pain hurts. Grief hurts. Sadness hurts. It does not feel good. But neither does denying what is already there; neither does living a lifetime with old and new pockets of pain packed, stored, and stacked within.

It will only hurt for a while, no longer than necessary, to heal us. We can trust that if we must feel pain, it is part of healing, and it is good. We can become willing to surrender to and accept the inevitable painful
feelings that are a good part of recovery.

Go with the flow, even when the flow takes us through uncomfortable feelings. Release, freedom, healing, and good feelings are on the other side.

Today, I am open and willing to feel what I need to feel. I am willing to stop my compulsive behaviors. I am willing to let go of my denial. I am willing to feel what I need to feel to be healed, healthy, and whole.

Powerless over Others

Stop making excuses for other people.

Stop making excuses for ourselves.

While it is our goal to develop compassion and achieve forgiveness, acceptance, and love, it is also our goal to accept reality and hold people accountable for their behavior. We can also hold ourselves accountable for
our own behavior and, at the same time, have compassion and understanding for ourselves.

When we claim powerlessness, we are not claiming irresponsibility. We have no power to control others, what they do, what they did, or what they might do. We’re stating that we are willing to end an ineffective life based on willpower and control. And we’re beginning a spiritual, mental, and emotional journey in which we take responsibility for ourselves.

We are not victims. We are not helpless. Accepting powerlessness when that is appropriate enables us to begin owning our true power to take care of ourselves.

Today, I will avoid making excuses for my own or someone else’s behavior. I will let consequences and responsibility fall where they belong.

we are not beyond help

Many are saying of me, “God will not deliver him.” But you are a shield around me, O Lord; you bestow glory on me and lift up my head.Psalm 3:2-3

We receive messages about ourselves from the important people in our lives. We internalize these messages and carry them with us, repeating them to ourselves as if they were gospel truth. When the messages are shaming messages then the internal chorus chants “You are not lovable. You are beyond repair. Even God cannot help you.”

This chorus is a chorus of lies. The psalmist rejects these lies. And we need to begin to reject these lies as well.

The Lord is a “shield around me”, the psalmist says. A shield protects. It comes between the blows of an enemy and a person’s vulnerable places. Most shields are small and can only protect a limited area from
attack. But the shield which the Lord provides completely surrounds us. We can let this shield protect us from these attacking messages.

The psalmist also says that the Lord “bestows glory on me and lifts up my head”. Heavy burdens of shame, neglect and abuse have bowed our heads. The Lord listens, pays attention and cares about us. God’s love counters the voices of our internal shame-chorus so that we can lift our heads. God replaces our shame with glory. It is a picture of a ragged, neglected child whose head is bowed and shoulders are bent. A king sees the child and goes to him. The king gently lifts the child’s chin until his eyes meet his own smiling eyes. He asks the child to come home and live as royalty with him. The child is loved, honored, protected. You are the child. God lifts your head and bestows glory.

God help me to stop listening to lies about you.
Help me to stop listening to lies about me.
Be a shield around me.
Bestow glory.
Lift up my head.
Amen.

thinking

  Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.
–Abraham Lincoln

Our negative thoughts can be like pebbles rolling down the mountainside. One pebble bumps into another one. The second begins rolling and slams into a third. On and on it goes until thousands of pebbles, rocks, and even giant boulders are hurtling down the mountain.

When we find ourselves stuck in a rut thinking a negative thought, we can decide to stop and replace it with a positive thought. At first our single positive thought may not dislodge another one. We may have to think of several and start them rolling down the mountainside. If we practice, we will find it becomes easier for that first good thought to shake loose others. We will see our lives change when we begin to look at the positive side of things.

Finding Direction

I used to spend so much time reacting and responding to everyone else that my life had no direction. Other people’s lives, problems, and wants set the course for my life. Once I realized it was okay for me to think about and identify what I wanted, remarkable things began to take place in my life.
–Anonymous

We each have a life to live, one that has purpose and meaning. We can help our Higher Power give direction and purpose to our life by setting goals.

We can set goals annually, monthly, or daily in times of crisis. Goals create direction and pace; goals help us achieve a manageable life that is directed in the course we choose for ourselves.

We can help give our lives direction by setting goals.

Today, I will pay attention to setting a course of action for my life, rather than letting others control my life and affairs