Embracing the space - Trusting grace

There is a certain speaker that I just don't enjoy his messages seem staged to me and I usually just turn him off.  Today I randomly stopped and listened and it felt like it was a message just for me.  The topic "embrace the emptiness"

If you believe in something greater than yourself you can be open to hear or see something that seems like it is directed to you at that moment at that time. My experience with the bird this weekend felt like a gift just like today's message felt like a gift.  

I have been struggling with emptiness through the holidays. I have intentionally emptied my life over the years to find peace.  I don't just want to fill every moment just to get through it so I don't feel alone.  I have done that and it makes me feel drained and anxious.

The message today was about space in our lives to let something greater come in. It made me think of myself standing on an empty platform at a train station alone waiting for my train to arrive. I am not anxious I am peaceful knowing that shortly I will be on my way.

I feel my life has been touched by grace.  I have overcome many obstacles and in seemingly impossible situations I have been protected time after time. I know the only credit I can take for that is really just letting go and trusting that I can't do it on my own. I look back today at all the times I felt lost and empty like I have the past few weeks and know it will pass. 

The message was sent to me at just the right moment. Normally I wouldn't be home today or watching anything and again I wouldn't have been open to this particular speaker. I can accept the grace in the words "emptiness is leaving an opening for something greater than what we can imagine".

It feels awkward and for the doer in me I ask myself "what if nothing shows up and you never feel excited or inspired about life again?" Can I trust the emptiness? 

I have been cleaning out my old files at work close to 300 or more files and I have also been purging at home. This has triggered an idea that I am finished with things as they are and I am moving on. This has made me feel panic inside since I don't have a plan but today's message was for me "you don't need a plan just trust the process". 

With the pandemic everything is different we are all different. Our culture of doing seems more empty than ever and we all are just trying to feel like our old selves but that person doesn't exist anymore.  We are forever changed and maybe that is a good thing and sitting with the emptiness is an opportunity to find out what will fill us with new joy. 

    

Empty spaces - Sugar - Keto - Addiction

I have had a lot of space in my life lately.  I can't put my finger on why I feel this vast emptiness all around me.  It doesn't exactly feel bad it just feels I have stepped back from my life to take a look. I feel strange and un-attached from even myself.

I use to think every feeling I had was emotional or spiritual but now I think is mostly physical. What I am eating or not eating in some cases.  I have been on the Keto eating plan for about six weeks virtually no carbs - moderate protein and high fat. I can have sweets if I use Stevia the only sweetener that does not raise blood sugar.  The premise behind this way of eating is to make body run on fat for fuel. Starting with consuming high fat and ultimately having your body switch to the fat you are carrying around.

Over the years I have cut out some life time habits.  Here in the south we drink sweet tea from about the time we can drink from a cup. I realized more than ten years back that I was giving my body a steady flow of sugar all day everyday so I stopped.  I was on Diet Coke when I was with my ex because that was our drug of choice.  I remember coming home from a long day at work and sitting down with just me and a diet coke.  Sweeteners used in diet drinks is also addictive so I quit.

I thought the Keto eating plan was something that I could do pretty easily.  The weirdest thing about it for me is that with the fat you are just not that hungry. When you are running on sugar when you are over the initial buzz or for me sedation you feel hungry again. The other day I watched my co-worker who consistently gains and loses 20 pounds sneaking into the office office of another co-worker who keeps a big candy dish in her office. She does this when she is stressed.  I did this with her a few years ago and ended getting the flu they both had.  I solved that by buying my own candy. You can't just have a little it starts the craving again.

It is funny or maybe not it is just like any addiction.  It starts with a physical craving then all the justifications on why you need it and how you can control it this time.  Just a little this time. They say that sugar does to the brain and the liver the same thing that alcohol does.  I guess this is why sober folks sometimes have the insatiable sweet tooth. A study of mice given cocaine were offered many other substance and stayed with the cocaine until they were offered sugar and then they switched.

My point to this post is that my brain is changing chemically with this diet.  I have lost the actual warm and fuzzy thoughts I used to have around food. I piece of candy is not going to help me make it through boring chores at work and I don't drive home from work thinking about the bag of corn chips I have in my pantry anymore.  It is really weird not to want those things.

So I have spaces in my life right now and it feels very strange to me.  Yesterday I was uneasy with the space but didn't just fill with something.  I did some things around the house but focused on being okay with the anxiousness that space sometimes gives you.  I want my life choices to be deliberate and not just cause I need to kill some time. 

I haven't been part of the regular world since my first marriage when I tried so hard to create the childhood I lost.  When that ended I quit trying at all to make my life look like anything in particular.  I could see all the stress of keeping up was mindless and empty in the end. None of what is out there will ever really satisfy us long term.  Do what gives you joy with people that you love. Be okay with the empty spaces we know they never last for too long. 

Making changes - My favorite hole in the wall

I ate alone last night at one of my favorite restaurants I have been going there with the people I love or loved for over thirty years.  As I sat alone with my critical designer eye could see the place as it really is a hole in the wall and in need of a serious makeover.

It made me think of how we live in our own self created world and for the most part don't see things as they really are or how they might look from the outside. We get into habits that we stick with our head down and don't change unless we have to.

The life we have created is too close to our hearts for good or bad to even make changes that might make us happier. Maybe just small decisions like joining a new group or going to a new restaurant. It would upset the flow of our own lives and the people around us.

Change takes effort and it is uncomfortable for usually a short time. Internal change is even harder because the voice in our head has been there a long time and takes changes in attitude as a personal assault.  Playing devils advocate to the extreme to keep things just as they are and winning most of the time.

I have had a lot of change in my life but it was mostly thrust upon me.  I resisted these changes and suffered a lot and it made me hate change more than ever. I wanted my life to be calm and secure so I worked hard to keep things exactly as they were. Also known as a rut.

What I didn't realize it my effort to make everything stay the same actually suck the joy right out of everything. I actually need change to feel refreshed about life but I want it to be on my terms and not in the form of crisis like it has always been.

The Al-Anon program was where I first realized I really liked drama. The drama my spouse created made me feel alive at first and I was always needed. My official job was to manage him and I never had to entertain myself or think about the emptiness I felt inside. In the end the job wore me out and I was forced to look at who I had become and be willing to make changes.

Since then I have done a lot of looking at my own life and my own short comings and over the years have made some serious changes. Again most of the time because I was forced to make them.

I think I am finally ready to take charge of my own change. I have walked into my own hole in the wall and can seen clearly that my life needs a makeover.

Just like my favorite restaurant I need a makeover.  I don't need to change everything just a few things to start with and then maybe more.  Just like my the resturant I have a history and knowledge that came with that history and a have worked hard to become who I am today.

I am ready to move on and stop just surviving the past. I will keep the best parts of me, like my favorite resturant should keep their food and just work on changing everything else that no longer working for me.  Wish me luck.  

Step One - The greatest moment of my life

I had the thought yesterday that maybe I should talk more specifically about the Steps on my blog. It is hard for me to do this because they are so inter woven into my life and in my personality that I don't even notice.

I got a late night call from a woman who got my name off a phone list of  a meeting she attended. She wasn't really dealing with alcoholism but at verbally abusive child in her school class. She had a shout out with the nine year old and sent her out of the room. She was feeling like a failure and in the wrong profession.

I told her about my recent meltdown and how it isn't always about us. Our mind makes it about us just like the person we are dealing with. Their mind makes it about them. We are the way we are because that is what we learned from our childhood. If we are lucky we see that it doesn't work in the adult world but most people don't get that opportunity.

This gets me back to the steps. They were the first tool I used to look at my own behavior and how I was hurting myself. It didn't happen over night because I was still caught up in blaming my husband and being the overall victim of my life to really look at my own behavior. Step One was where this process began.

Step One - Admitted we were powerless over alcohol and that our lives have become un-manageable.

We in Al-Anon are proud folks and don't let anything stop us. By the time we get to the rooms of Al-Anon we are beat. We have met our match with addiction. We are about taking on the impossible and making the best of any situation. To admit that we have come across something that we can't manage it almost un-thinkable.

Of-course we don't go gently into the night we have already tried everything. If we haven't we wouldn't have come to that first meeting. Just like the alcoholic something really bad has to happen before we are ready for help. We have lost something or we are about to loose something. For me it was my mind and my husband.

He left and left me and my mind a mess. My life was so wrapped up in him that I couldn't function without him. He kept me busy and filled my life with disasters to contend with. I didn't have any friends or any interest of my own I made him my full time job. In hindsight he was constant entertainment for my ADD mind. Where is he? What is he doing? When is he coming home?

This is what I got out of it he needed me and I wanted so desperately to be needed. I wanted the emptiness I felt inside to be filled. I wanted to think that there was someone that couldn't live without me. But it turns out he could and I was left unable to function unable to get out of bed.

This was what led me to Step One.  I surrendered for the first time in my life.  I couldn' find an answer. I had met my match. It was the greatest moment of my life because I was teachable.