Sunday, December 30, 2012

A Tricky Time of Year

I have always liked the clean slate aspect of the new year.  This year I notice that I want to go off on tangents with thoughts of Improving My Life.  I'm thriving on the energy of joining the Franciscan process, getting an iPad so that I'm more plugged in than I have been most of the year.  Today I downloaded Angry Birds, folks!

Anywho, I am determined not to get carried away with myself.  I know my urgency to write down targets and goals is my effort to try to control and quantify.  Today I'm going to enjoy the music, maybe hum along but not clutch my notebook and try to write down every lyric.

Here's to 2013 where we can sway to the music, smiling in faith!  That's what's good about today.

Thursday, December 27, 2012

Most People Don't Talk, They Advertise

I can't figure out if I am listening to something helpful or not. I get the Daily Reprieve email from Tom Murphy and am listening to the recorded speaker.  He's someone who calls himself recovered and speaks from a spiritual bent but I can't identify.

The post title is a song lyric I heard on the radio this morning driving to work. Another line from the song was Love is Like a House That is Never Finished.

Have you heard anything helpful today?

Wednesday, December 26, 2012

Back to Business As Usual

Every other person that I've talked to today is exhausted! I am pretty tuckered myself today.  Barely on the good side of the naughty or nice fence.

I had the most stress free holiday season of my life and it all had to do with using program tools.  One thing was to keep my head in the present.  If I don't do that then I get lost in my head and end up in at the corner of Dysfunction Junction and Self Pity Road.  I can also keep a better eye out for H.A.L.T.

Nobody can take better care of us than ourselves. Just paying attention to sleep, rest and exercise needs goes a long way to emotional sobriety.

And that's what's good about today!

Tuesday, December 25, 2012

Another Sacred Day

Every new level of awareness brings its own trouble!  This week I found myself resenting the well wishers who presented me with ultra sincere wishes that I have an absolutely wonderful Christmas Day with my family.  Did they think it was a coronation?

Then, yesterday, at work I grew weary of the ubiquitous Merry Christmas that I was hearing everywhere that had taken the tone of  Have A Good Day.  I shared that with our administrative assistant whose real life includes being married to a minister.  She gets me and nodded quickly.  Unlike the agnostics who want to take God out of holiday greetings, I would like to limit it to those who cherish God in their daily lives.  Too hard core?

Christmas every morning and Thanksgiving every night is something I used to hear at meetings.  The promise of a life heretofore unimagined is what program promises and what it has delivered to me.  I was in a meeting this morning and thinking of my next destination which was church.  I thought about how much the service would resemble a meeting and how those things made it attractive to me.

My church was built out of a horse barn 52 years ago by area folks who wanted their own Episcopal Church instead of traveling to the next town.  It is a plain and simple place, it's cross made of two fence pieces.  We sit in chairs that can be brought around in a circle. This morning we were a small enough group to assemble next to the alter for communion, passing eucharist in a circle one to one another.  As in a meeting, some readings were read by volunteers and there were prayers spoken of thanksgiving and pleas of intercession for others.

It's not always such a small, intimate gathering but this morning as we pondered such greatness bestowed upon a teenaged girl in first century Palestine, it was just right. Not a coronation and not an ordinary day either.

Just another sacred day in which lies great promise.  It carries the likelihood that it will pass without struggle.  And I ask in my higher powers grace to keep me away from a drink or its substitute a day at a time.

Sunday, December 23, 2012

Happy To Visit My Blog Family

What a time knocking the cobwebs off this blog site.  Had to rattle the doorknob just right to get the door open.

I am well and happy.  Still going to my morning meeting and will be at the 18month sobriety date on Christmas Day.  It's a different holiday season for me this year.  Last year I really wanted an LOA from sobriety for about two weeks, ending in early January!  After all, it's the time of year that cries out for sedation.

What's different this year?  Gods grace holds me and I hold up my end of things. I'm off to peek in on you, maybe say hello here and there.  Thank you for being here for me.