frequently wrong

important reminder from patty:

"Finally, 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 evident as we go forward that it is pointless to become angry, or get hurt by people who, like us are suffering from the pains of growing up."

(AA 12 &12, step 10, page 92)

Roger Ebert's 12th step

Roger Ebert celebrates 30 years of sobriety and writes an un-anonymous 12th step post, it's really beautiful:

Roger Ebert's Journal: My Name is Roger and I'm an alcoholic

commander in chief

news on the huffpo today that gwb could be drinking again. i am not a fan of the man, but my heart goes out to him during this time. i know he's made his bed, hell, he's made all our beds, but recovery is hard enough when you work your program on a good day - let alone when the whole world hates you (for real)...

also news that his mom is in the hospital...

life just doesn't get easier sometimes. i said a prayer for him today. if this isn't bottom and he's not working his program, i don't know how bad it would have to get for him to get sober again.

i really feel for laura - i read she's writing a memoir - i wonder how honest she'll let herself be?

there were so many times in his eight years that i heard the clouded alcoholic thinking in his words or saw in his choices. so many times i thought "he's not working a program" or "there is no evidence of serenity in his life or words"... scary to think that even a white-knuckle drunk president had so much power.

the clarity and decisiveness that BO speaks with tells me that he is the most diferentiated person we have seen in a very long time. so healthy. i pray he stays that way.

one of my greatest fears about john mccain was that he showed great evidince of addiction in his lifestyle and choices. i knew that our world could not afford another unrecovered addict in the white house.

god bless america.

my mind and my time

Today's thought from Hazelden is:

A man is what he thinks about all day long.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson

This is true for women too. We sure learned that about our disease as well. It kept us thinking about alcohol or drugs all day every day until we could think of little else. Finally we became addicts, gobbled up by our all consuming thoughts and cravings.

Now in recovery, we can be something else. We are becoming free of our addiction, and our minds can think about other things. What do we want to think about? What do we want to be?

It's easy to let the noise around us tell us what to think about. At the end of the day, we can end up feeling out of touch with who we are. We've been giving our minds to whatever is on the radio, television, or the gossip grapevine at work or school. That's why it's good to spend part of each day thinking about things we truly think are important and worthwhile.

Prayer for the Day

Higher Power, Help me understand that what I do with my mind and my time is important. What I do with my mind is my inner life. What I do with my time is my outer life. Together they define who I am.

Today's Action

I will think about the way I use my mind and my time today. What feels good and fits for me? Is there anything I want to do differently tomorrow?

You are reading from the book:

God Grant Me... by Anonymous

what a guy!

manufacturing misery

manufacturing misery.

can you just see lucy & ethel working at the factory as it pours off the assembly line? more misery, coming right up. manufacturing misery. i heard that line at the OA retreat and it rang like a gong in my head.

it's taken from the AA big book on pg. 133:

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.

Avoid then the deliberate manufacture of misery.

brilliant.

liam and i have known each other for 25 years now and i have coined a phrase that describes a behavior he has - i call it "precasting" - it is the tendency to decide in advance how someone will respond to a situation so as to excuse yourself of having to follow through on a confrontation, conversation or interaction. it is mental gymnastics at the olympic level. and it looks so much like manufacturing misery.

in my own life this looks like the paranoia i have after interactions in public and my community. i rehash and replay every word i uttered, every interplay that happened and rake myself over the coals of regret and shame sure that everyone at the event is laughing at me and talking behind my back. i manufacture misery in costco size boxes.

Avoid then the deliberate manufacture of misery.

our daughter pink teaches me so much about myself in watching her navigate through middle school. i see her fears, watch her insecurities and struggles and find myself in and amongst her pain. poor lamb. the journey to womanhood isn't easy at all - but for those of us who are introverts with very little self confidence it is excruciating and lonely.

i can see how she holds back in social situations, i can read the anxiety on her face at youth group. will they include me? will i fit in? will i be able to bring myself to walk up to the group of girls who seem so able and become one of the group? i feel her pain. i know that even today those same thoughts and fears run through my head as i am faced with the need to meet and greet and make small talk when i would rather sit quietly with a book and ignore them all.

i hear pink speak of "mean girls" - but when i ask her how they are mean she is unable to explain behaviors. i have seen the girls she so longs to be friends with, and it's not that they exclude her, it's more that she doesn't know how to join in. she projects much of her own fears and rejection of herself onto them when they really aren't behaving in a way that is mean or cruel (now please, i know girls can be mean, especially in middle school) but i wonder if much of the angst of the pre-teen years isn't a manufacturing of misery based on our own awkwardness and insecurities?

how do i do this in my own life? how can i learn how not to create the misery that i am so afraid of? how can i teach it to her?

i don't have answers, but am starting to pull at the edges of this tangle. i so want to be happy, joyous, and free, don't you?

3 great recovery quotes

got these yesterday from 'the wisdom of the rooms' and i thought they were such nuggets, too good to keep to yourself!

"The reason the program works is because we're not all crazy on the same day."

"Do you want to save your ass or your face",

and finally:

Someone once said that he only needed one meeting a week, but went to five because he never knew which one it was going to be.

singleness of heart

Purity is not a long struggle against that which is impure or forbidden.

Rather is it singleness of heart.

Catch the great thought that from Him,
the Father of Lights,
comes every good and perfect gift,
and therefore nothing outside of God is worth having or craving.

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, pg. 154

timely words

"When all the little things really bug me,
it's because there's a big thing I'm not facing."

Irritable, restless and discontent - that's my normal state as an alcoholic. Going to meetings, working my steps, praying and relying on my Higher Power are the ways I get restored to sanity and actually achieve some peace and serenity. But even when I am in a calm space, if little things still bother me I know now to look beyond my alcoholism.

It's amazing how my first instinct these days - even with considerable time - is to deny or ignore things that are uncomfortable in my life. And it's been my experience that not facing what at first appears to be a 'big deal' often turns it into one and quickly makes my life unmanageable. And the first signal I have that I've done this is that all the little things (stuck in traffic, misplacing my keys, a line at the market) start to really bother me.

Today I've learned to acknowledge these things and recognize them for what they are - indications that there is something bigger that I'm not dealing with. As soon as I take the time to look at what's really going on, I immediately begin to feel better. And once I begin to apply the tools I've been given in this program to deal with whatever is going on, I find that it really isn't such a big deal after all.

Today I use the little things to help me become aware of and to deal with the 'big things.'

via - Wisdom of the Rooms

the 12 principles and virtues

i had never heard these before:

1. Honesty
2. Hope
3. Faith
4. Courage
5. Integrity
6. Willingness
7. Humility
8. Brotherly Love
9. Justice
10. Perseverance
11. Spirituality
12. Service

thanks tex!

breaking through to certainty

i have so many thoughts and ideas to write on, but so little time to do so - so today i will leave you with the conclusion of bonhoeffer's life together. i am so amazed that this whole book seems to have made so little difference in the modern church. i think it should be mandatory reading for anyone who uses the word community. i really could highlight 100 different things, but this one has so much to do with recovery and the 12 steps that i thought it needs to be here:

In confession a man breaks through to certainty. Why is it that it is often easier for us to confess our sins to God than to a brother? God is holy and sinless, He is a just judge of evil and the enemy of all disobedience. But a brother is sinful as we are. He knows from his own experience the dark night of secret sin. Why should we not find it easier to go to a brother than to the holy God? But if we do, we must ask ourselves whether we have no often been deceiving ourselves with our confession of sin to God, whether we have not rather been confessing our sins to ourselves and also granting ourselves absolution. And it is the reason perhaps for our countless relapses and the feebleness of our Christian obedience to be found precisely in the face that we are living on self-forgiveness and not a real forgiveness? Self-forgiveness can never lead to a breach with sin; this can be accomplished only by the judging and pardoning Word of God itself.

it's the part on relapses that just jumped off the page at me... lots to ponder. i can't recommend this book more highly to those in recovery or longing for community. it's only about 230 pages, but it's kicked my butt through the whole thing.

have a great day!

it's YOU lydia!

gasp - out loud - stunned, complete revelation - my friend lydia just left this comment on how is jesus like bread and another penny dropped:

What came to my mind as I read your ponderings about bread - you are comparing something tangible with something intangible: a slice of buttered bread which we can see, feel and taste with our physical bodies/and Jesus who we can only experience on a spiritual level. Your question "Why did God pick these two addictive elements (bread and wine) to remember Him?" jumped right off the page at me and made me wonder if maybe it is actually the other way around - we become addicted to these substances BECAUSE they symbolize God to us and we are desperate in our need for Him.

i am so thrilled to have you in my life lydia - face to face - you are a deep, deep well! i LOVE the way your mind thinks!

csi my mother

in the organization of last weekend i finally tackled a large trunk of musty, mothy paperwork that i have lugged (oh who am i kidding - liam lugged) from pillar to post on the many moves we had made. i had thought it was filled with my mother's old writing. i was wrong. it was a treasure chest. filled with bounty from my childhood, my mother's childhood and my father's childhood. pictures, letters, scrapbooks and ephemera from decades gone by. i have a huge sinus headache because of the mold and i can't bear to put everything away again. it feels like i've found pieces of myself i never knew existed.

did you know my mother went to college and dropped out in her first semester? i did not. nope. never knew it. i found that in a letter typed in a round-about by one of her high school crushes who was a math geek and at technical school pining away for her. he called her dumb for dropping out. i was shocked. i never knew. i knew she worked for the college, but i never knew she enrolled. i think i have stumbled upon a family secret.

my grandfather was a brilliant man. he held the formula (in his head) to some aluminum magic mumbo jumbo that was in high demand. he just could never seem to roll that into income. i think he was such a kind-hearted soul that people took advantage of him. i remember hearing about loosing investments and bill collectors. the shame of it all drove my grandmother into seclusion and no one ever talked about it in detail. i only remembered fragments of information overheard or talked about above me.

i wonder if she had to drop out due to financial reasons? she was so bright, excelled at everything she did. all of her friends went to college. but she was left behind. i can't imagine how disappointed she must have been. it feels like a piece to a puzzle i don't know where to put yet. i have so many questions, but don't know who to talk to about them. the secret keepers are still in full force in some bastions of my family.

i also saw the scrapbook of her first love. things were gangbusters and then nothing. zip. zilch. no information. it just evaporates. like the trail into the forest that ends at a stream. which way to go? what happened here? my mom always told us she was a virgin when she married dad. he tells me now that he doesn't think she was. i wonder if they had sex. she moved out to wisconsin shortly after the trail of the relationship died. maybe he just broke her heart. maybe she just needed a change of scenery. but it would answer so many question marks as to why she told me what she told me about men and how life can treat you. again, more questions, very few answers. i really feel like i'm reconstructing bobbie.

i could spend all my days looking over pictures, reading old letters, trying to piece the fragments of information together. she called my dad "tiger" in her letters to him. he bought her extravagant cards for every holiday. she saved them all. when did the alcohol begin to overtake their marriage? i can see the glamorous pictures from "before" - then in the beginning they start slack off, only a few snapshots here and there, not nearly as glamorous, and then hardly any from the time of the heavy drinking. i wonder if that's why there are only a very few pictures of my sister's childhood.

i know this is a gift. that there are answers here to some of the questions i have, and maybe leads to find the answers to others. i only know that looking at the pictures of my parents together, or my mom in her career clothes, riding in parades for being the "top-seller" are ties to a life gone by that fill in the gaps of my memories and brings me closer to the woman that she was. i am grateful.

amen

Third Step Prayer

"God, I offer myself to Thee, to build with me, and do with me as Thou wilt.

Relieve me of the bondage of self, that I may better do Thy will.

Take away my difficulties, that victory over them may bear witness to those I would help, of Thy Power, Thy Love, and Thy Way of Life.

May I do Thy Will always."

Page 63
- Alcoholics Anonymous

sobrie-tees

found these while looking for some big-book quotes - and i thought they were too funny not to share:

sobrie-tees

Outright Mental Defective: Saving Our Souls

Outright Mental Defective: Saving Our Souls: "Friday, May 11, 2007"

"I came to A.A. to save my ass and
I found out that my soul was attached to it."
Anonymous

step two

Many of us had asked God to help us control our weight and this prayer hadn't worked. Later we understood why our pleas for help seemed to fall on deaf ears. What we were really asking God to do was remove our fat while allowing us to go on eating whatever we wanted, whenever we wanted. Most of us also needed to learn to ask other people for help and let God speak to us through our fellows. In OA, God's healing power comes to us through a caring community of other compulsive overeaters. Before we joined the OA Fellowship our prayers for help might have gone unanswered simply because we were never meant to face this disease in isolation. We were meant to open up so that we might learn to truly love others.

The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions of Overeaters Anonymous, pg. 15-16

whoa.

this hit me the other night square between the eyes. community is the path to healing. isolation is not.

craig ferguson makes me cry, really.

please watch this, it's not allowed to be embedded - so click here:

craig ferguson tells his story on late night - wow.

so powerful.

now you're speakin my language

oh how i love recovery people. 12-steppers speak my language and i hadn't realize how very much i missed it.

we've had 3 weeks of meetings now and i am loving what is happening here, and within me. it feels so good to be back in active recovery. there is a shorthand that happens at meetings for those of you who aren't addicts, one word or small phrase in someone's story touches the group and we all smile together, each knowing that it is the same in our own lives. it's just something universal, a deep written code, like XML for the addict, you can't see it, but when 2 or more are gathered together... the language is effortless. stories flow and bonding is immediate. a newcomer feels like a long lost friend. it's really a beautiful thing.

i find that being back in recovery has helped me to speak my truth more confidently too. i just got off the phone with a good friend here who's daughter is struggling mightily with an anorexia. months ago i was timid and unconfident in my words to her. today on the phone we spoke for over an hour and as she asked questions i was able to tell my story and share my experience, strength and hope in a way that i had been unable to previously. she noticed. she heard and god willing it will make some difference in the life of this young girl and her family.

so today i rejoice in "hanging with my peeps" and having a fledgling community of people who speak my language face to face.

12 ton telephone

one of the things i have found in common with many in recovery is how dang heavy that telephone can be. i used to work on a switchboard and have done customer service in many of my jobs along the way - so it's not the telephone per se, but something about picking up the phone to actually dial it and reach out for help. most of the time it looks about as appealing to me as a nautilus machine, and about as much work.

i know that it is one of the 12 tools of recovery, and once i'm actually on the phone i love it (ask hope about our 90 minute phone calls...), but i have a real block when it comes to phoning for help. i think that is why the internet is such a godsend for me. no, it's not as instantaneous to send an email, or post a blog, but there is something about the "HELP" i can send out via the www that is different.

i'm suspecting that it has more to do with asking for help and admitting weakness in a 'real time' relationship than it really has anything to do with the telephone, it just gets blamed for my phobia, like the leaves get the blame that belongs to the roots...

sigh. the reason that i'm bringing this up is that i've had two amazing phone calls with total strangers who had the courage to pick up the phone and dial a number to a person they don't know. you see, my name and number are at the bottom of the posters and ads we've circulated through our community. and two brave souls have taken the difficult step of reaching out today. they have encouraged me with their bravery. i know what it's like to show up cold at a meeting, not knowing a soul. and i've even made a few of those phone calls myself. i've just not been on the receiving end of them before, and they are gifts. shots in the arm that i needed today.

so if you've been putting off a phone call can i encourage you that the other person on the other end of that line just might need to hear that you need something they have today? just for today.