Sleeping Beauty - I want to lay down

I was wondering about Sleeping Beauty if after a few years of being awake did she think it was worth it. Maybe she had a house full of kids and Prince Charming was off doing what he always did. Traveling throughout the kingdom being admired by his fans. His fans didn't have to pick up his dirty socks every day.

Life is never how we think it will be and even if it is we aren't always as happy as we thought we would be when we got there. Why is that? In my old life I had everything most people wished for. I didn't complain ever but I wasn't happy. I didn't even know I wasn't happy I thought I just needed more gratitude.

Day by day year by year I began to disappear. The things the once brought me joy started to feel like heavy chains around my neck. I tried to create a family with someone else's family and mixed in my program family for good measure. I seemed like it was working but then I realized I was more like cruise director than a family member.

I would often find myself alone in the kitchen after cooking a big meal cleaning up. I didn't even mind that I enjoyed the solitude of the cooking and the cleaning. It just wasn't what I was trying to achieve I wanted to feel the connection of family. I thought I could create that bringing us all together.

When the relationship was over I never heard from any of my ex's family and my friends from the program were happy they didn't have to deal with them anymore. It was my dream I was trying to create and everyone was just going along for the ride.

My search for this connection has lead me to the same type of relationships over and over. The addictive relationship or something similar. When I was the bright shining star in some one's life for a time, but my shininess always wears off and something more shiny catches their eye.

I understand this type of personality because I am like that too, but I just change jobs or find a new hobby. It is loyalty that makes me stay whether I am happy or not. I don't want to be the bad guy.

It is the intensity of the start of those kinds of relationships that filled my own void and the fact that I wasn't enough, just as I am, in my own heart. The void cannot be filled from the outside and it is a lifetime commitment to fill it from the inside.

You can never go back once you have been awakened to the truth that only you can make yourself happy. Only you can make yourself feel secure no matter what is going on.

I now find that a comfort and it frees me to just find something to do today that brings me joy rather than trying to create whatever I think will make me happy in the future and the future never comes. Isn't that ironic?

When I think of sleeping beauty I know the only truly perfect moment is the one when their lips touch and she is not quite awake yet.

God and me (and J)

I got a call last Saturday day from the bishop. The shop owner is a priest in a charismatic episcopal church and his bishop calls from time to time looking for him. I was there alone told him that the owner was at the church. It was a church work day.

He seemed surprised by this and went on to explain that he was doing a house blessing in the afternoon and didn't want to alone. He said the guy was in AA and didn't think the guy had any friends. I said if he is in AA he probably has a ton of friends, he said he didn't think that the people in AA really believed in God. I said I wasn't sure that was true and left it at that.

I thought about my own struggle with even the word God when I first started going to meetings. Raised in the Pentecost they talked about Jesus and Gods love along with the part about if you sinned and didn't ask for forgiveness before you died, even if it happened five minutes ago, you were quite literally toast.

My earliest memory of my connection to Jesus was when I was five and I thought when they said, Jesus was coming any minute, they meant any minute. I stood outside one night when I saw some big search lights in the sky, looking for Jesus. He didn't come, I least I don't think so. Once I got the gist of the burning in hell part I would pray every night to be forgiven for anything that might be a sin that I didn't know was a sin, I wanted to cover all my bases.

It was a lot of pressure and as I got older it took a toll on me, once as a teenager I had some evil spirits cast out of me, but that is a story for another time. That was the end of my desire to be apart of the trilogy, until turning 30 and attending
Al-Anon.

Until then everything was black and white. Either you are in or out none of the grey stuff or thinking for yourself. I was out, I knew that for sure because I wasn't perfect and was sinning so much that I really couldn't begin to keep up with the list.

So I had to start at the beginning unlearn all that had been imprinted on my young brain. I didn't want God in my life and I certainly didn't want to turn my will and my life over to him. But I got over that because I started feeling better so I just put on my denial cap and kept going.

When I finally faced the God of my understanding I acknowledged that he was an A-hole and let my mother die and my father marry a evil person and then let me marry an alcoholic. I understood him perfectly. I had been victimized by the God of my understanding.

So how does a person get past that kind of thinking, one day at a time of course. Actually, I don't know exactly, I think the biggest thing the steps taught me is that I was not a victim. I had to get past the warm fuzzy feeling it gave me to be a martyr and start over. It is hard to say my life sucks to a room full of people that can say right back, I can top that. So I guess I found out I wasn't special so I had to get on with living and I did.

I actually feel grateful for those life changing events now. Those events led me to the program and the program taught me that I didn't have to listen to the voice in my head and that people can change. It is really remarkable the transformation I have seen in other people and myself. Even now I have mini awakenings, when I see how my thinking is totally messed up. Is there more, oh I am sure there is.

Coming to terms with God and sifting through what I was taught and what are my own beliefs is true freedom in every since of the word. I always say to my friends when I can't deal with my religious up bringing I just pretend I was raised Methodist, they seem so much more peaceful.

So I am good with the trilogy now and I am not talking about The Lord of the Rings, although I like that one too. I can'tbcomplete this post without noting that it is very interesting that I ended up working with a man that is a charismatic priest. My God of course has a sense of humor.