One of my favorite bloggers seems to be missing along with all his comments. I hope everything is alright. Over the years many bloggers have drop off but usually with some kind of farewell explanation. In life everything runs its course and maybe it is just his time.
I was painting my deck yesterday and pulling weeds today and had time to think. I did sleep long and hard last night and got up this morning and gathered my thoughts. I have been reading my mother's Bible mainly because I have be looking through family pictures and thinking of her. I will say this is the same Bible that she taught me to read with. It is not translated other than in English to bring it up to more modern standards. We read a chapter every night and I was particularly fond of the "verily - verily I say unto you" parts.
Don't stop reading because I mention the Bible. I have been treated badly by people who professed to be God fearing Bible lovers and I chunked the Bible out along with them a long time ago. Anything that represented what those people said they believed in was off limits. Today know that it isn't all or nothing.
What Al-Anon did for me in my early 30's was to find the God of my own understanding. It was good start for me realizing it was up to me to come to terms with how I was treated and establish the God of my own understanding. I didn't really trust my childhood God because he took my mother and replaced her with one of the most selfish unloving people on the planet. With that I lost the rest of my family because I could not tolerate the hypocrisy of those who professed to be Christians.
Of course this is totally my problem. I was never great at pretending things are one way when it is obvious that they are totally another. I say that when I lived with bold face alcoholism and totally ignored it until it was too late and it had destroyed my own confidence and my marriage. I am no different than anyone else when it comes to denial or living in a fantasy.
Some many things in this world are hurtful and sometimes devastating and denial is how we survive. When something rocks our world we find other people that think like us and huddle together chanting our own beliefs until the storm passes. There is a lot of this going on right now on both sides.
Sometimes individually we break from the group because we know that no one could possibly understand how we are suffering because it feels too personal. For me I broke away because I felt that I couldn't possibly put the burden of my pain on another human. This left me alone to find the strength within and to rely on something greater than myself.
This is the point of God or whatever you believe in that doesn't depend on you to have the answers. I have found strength in ultimately letting go of everything I ever believe to be true. With letting go my life began to flow again. Every difficult thing I faced was resolved without my tight grip on it. I let go of my idea of the way things had to be and received peace. Nothing even now seems to move when I have an agenda. I have tested this over and over with every part of my life and it is always true.
I know that forcing a solution on my terms never works. Turning my will over to a power greater than myself is humbling and freeing. My thoughts and prayers over any situation without demanding a certain outcome can result in a literal miracle. Sometimes leaving me thinking "I never imagined that as a solution to the problem".
I am not afraid of my past anymore or the God that I was raised with. I can read the Bible without attaching what people have to done to me in his name. People are flawed. I am flawed and everyday I have to live with my own humanness and walk in faith that I haven't done too much damage.
I have done my best just like everyone else. I have ask for forgiveness from my God the universe and from myself. I have hurt myself the same as I have hurt other people along the way. Just as I offer forgiveness to them I can offer it to myself. It may not seem like it but we all live in fear and this causes us to react in unique ways based on our own past.
Today I am feeling peace and for that I am grateful.
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