He hated me - Drinking - Immaturity

I got up yesterday morning and ask God for an easy pleasant day. I think that is ironic because sometimes I don't know if I believe in the God of my childhood.  For this I regularly apologize to him for my lack of commitment but I am sure being God and all he is big enough to understand where I am coming from and not be too upset. 

I did have an easy day arriving at work early getting a few things done and heading to an appointment close to the ocean. It is a part of town where I had one of my first jobs at a country club. I was 18 and on my own with really no idea what my future would look like. It is also that same beach where just a few years later my then husband and I would have a huge fight that was the beginning of the end for us.  It was late at night and his drinking was in full swing and he hated me. 

He thought it was my fault our life was hard and I accepted that judgment.  I was the keeper of all things and I was sure there was a solution to the problems we were having.  Why couldn't I fix them?

Before I recognized alcoholism I blamed everything on myself. After I saw the light I blamed all my problems on alcoholism. I found out over time it was neither it is really my thinking that causes my problems.  Another persons behavior is just layer of confusion on top of the real problem in me..

I have wanted so bad all my life to feel safe.  Like I thought I was before my mother got sick.  I thought I had lost something that could be found.  When I met my husband whose mother had died when he was eleven he wanted the same thing.  I filled that for him and his obsession with me made me feel like I was the center of the universe. Who doesn't want that?

Because I didn't recognize the drinking as a problem I blamed myself for not being enough. He was right "I was not fun"  I became the parent, very sexy I might add and I didn't join in and party till dawn like the rest of the wives. By the time the night at the beach happened he hated me and I hated myself. I wanted to stop and look at the full moon and he wanted to get away from me as quickly as possible.

At some point I stopped blaming Alcoholism for my own suffering especially after the alcoholic was out of my life. Even now it is my own immaturity that causes most of my problems. I can admit when I met my husband it was the smothering kind of love that he offered that I became addicted to.. When the drinking got worse he withdrew that affection and I was devastated.  This was my fault.

The program and my own spiritual searching and the hardest knocks possible made me finally see how immature I have been most of my life.  I wanted what children want safety and love. Someone to shield me from pain and suffering. Someone to make me feel secure like I did before my mother got sick before I knew life was hard. I thought I could get that back.

I have tried everything to find the secret to security and happiness and sometimes I came real close but life is life and something happens to shattered that illusion. The 12 steps are simple because we are mostly children trying to find out way. For me they were just the beginning and at some point I needed more. I found that mostly writing and sorting things with my own higher power.

With writing about my friend's illness I have realized that I can still go back to the Steps they are just a part of me now. Wanting to be the keeper of all things and save someone is also part of me one that I have got to manage.  I have do what I can without control and resentment and leave the rest to God.

I find it harder to write these days because I have gotten everything out. I am bored with my own story and I am looking to fill my time with something else. In maturity I do not desire to be the center of the universe anymore and just want to relax and have an easy day. Thanking  God, if your out there,  for that. 

Signs - Covering all the bases

I spent the day alone yesterday after a full work week and then a preparing a dinner on Friday night for my best friends birthday I was exhausted.  I am glad thatI am busy at work and it hasn't given me too much time to think about the election but last night YouTube queued up a video of a preacher talking about the moon event tomorrow night.

The moon will be the closest it has been to the earth in seventy years.  About the predictions in the Bible and I have to admit this really took me back to my childhood and my grandmothers stories about the end of times. I turned it off as soon as I heard where he was going.  I woke up fearful this morning and haven't really been able to shake it.

When I was about five I would regularly go outside and look for the coming of Jesus.  We talked about it all the time and to a five year old it was a pretty big deal.  One night I went out and there was a bright light in the sky bigger than I had ever seen. I ran back in the house told my dad that I thought Jesus was coming that night.  He followed me out and we looked at the light together and he explained to me that it was just a spot light from a local grand opening.

I was disappointed but still kept up my nightly vigil wanting to be first to see him coming. We moved shortly after that to the suburbs where there was a lot of other things to distract me. As I grew older I realized that people have been waiting a long time for him to come again and it was doubtful he would show up just for me.

Over the years I have merged my fundamentalist beliefs with what I have learned through my own spiritual quest.  I discarded God all together in my twenties figuring I couldn't every live up to the perfection that was required to make it to heaven. We don't believe once saved always saved.  We believe if you sin and your life ends then you are headed to the lake of fire.

This is a lot of pressure and after seeing my family for the wedding I realized that no one today seems worried about that anymore.  It is all too much really to live in that state. I remember as a child praying "God forgive me of any sin that I might have committed even if I didn't know it was a sin"  I thought that this covered all the bases.  This was probably around the same time I was looking for Jesus every night.

Today I am forgiven by a loving  God that is there to guide me.  I have done my best and I am not worried about the things that might be sins that I don't know about.  I try to be loving and compassionate and know everyone is doing there best even if it isn't good enough for me. It is all they have at that moment.

When the big moon comes and goes I will have to trust that life will go on and we will have to make our way through this time of division in our country.

My story - A moment of reflection - I am not afraid

echun.wordpress.com

In my mind I have been on my own forever. The loss of my mother naturally left me to emotionally fend for myself and the loss of my father emotionally left me with only the person in the mirror to be the judge, jury and executioner.

I became hard as nails being on my own at such an early age. I didn't have much empathy for others or myself because of the hand I felt I had been dealt. Life reflected my insides by giving me one harsh reality after another. I lived life preparing for the worst and I got it. Just to reinforce my idea that life was unfair.

When I was at my lowest I surrendered just like Step One states I was broken and my way wasn't working. I had met the alcoholic of my dreams and later my nightmares. I had trusted another to be my God and we all know how that works out.

The program gave me the means to identify how I participated in creating this nightmarish life. I did everything they told me to do and in the beginning went to every meeting I could find. The transformation was remarkable and in six months I was able to turn things over and not worry so much or be so hard on myself or other people.

After three years I met someone and we merged our lives and I got an opportunity to practice these principles in all my affairs. In my effort to keep from repeating my past I worked hard to stay autonomous.

I was happy for awhile but something was missing in the relationship, I think is was me. I thought what I had learned was live and let live but I took it too far and fell back into the being isolated emotionally and picked someone that was the same. There was no vulnerability or even emotion of any kind. Hey it felt good to me after living with the emotional roller coaster of a life with active alcoholism.

I did everything I thought I was suppose to do. That is an important sentence. I didn't get any feedback so I just did what seemed like the logical thing to do. You can live a long time together when two people are happy without emotion. I had only known pain most of my life so it felt pretty good to coast.

But it did finally run it's course and there I was left to deal with only myself. I didn't lose myself in another person, but the other person filled my life so I didn't have to grow emotionally anymore.

I feel that I orchestrate change subliminally in my life. I drown out the voice of my spirit with busyness but eventually when I stop to catch my breath the dullness and lack of joy in my life comes to the surface and a dramatic change takes place.

This is happening to me now. The difference is that it feels good to me. It doesn't feel like it is a mountain I will have to climb it just feels life freedom to move my life from dullness to joy.

My spirit is at the wheel. It has silenced the logical side that requires me to always prepare for the worst. I can feel that peace once again the peace I felt when I entered the program but this time it isn't from trusting the old man in the sky it is from trusting spirit of God within me. The one that has been waiting for me to listen and the one that isn't afraid.

Trusting myself - Commitment Phobe

Tomorrow is the big the day when the business gets signed over to us. Maybe. It all depends on whether the owner agrees to the terms. I feel both excited and terrified at the same time.

Granted I have prepared a resume to hunt for a new job in an old career but I am moving forward with this at the same time. The uncertainty I see in everything is a reflection on my own inner inability to commit.

I have a hard time with commitment because once I am in it might be decades before I resurface. This is my story if I choose to believe it. So I am straddling the fence per say while moving forward at the same time.

I know myself well enough to see that I am pretending not to commit leaving the door open so I can run off at any moment. Have I ever done that planned an escape route or ran off. Nope not ever.

I have documents in a folder with my name on a new corporation. Scary stuff that sounds like commitment to me. I am still pretending.

I keep thinking that if I am not suppose to do this he will not sign those papers tomorrow. I am trusting in God and my own process for working through this and I will listen carefully to my gut tomorrow.

I want to be free and if we can make a success of this business I will have freedom. If I don't focus on all the things that could go wrong or the mountain of obstacles my mind has made up this could actually be fun and exciting.

I will keep you posted.

Hey does anyone know how to remove the underlines that suddenly showed up on my blog.

Good Friday - A Path to God

I took the day off yesterday. I thought a little space between me and the office would be good under the circumstances. It has mostly blown over but I will take care of myself and my boundaries at a later date.

The day started on the porch with the very active wildlife community. Birds, butterflies and squirrels, oh my. My pet owl was calling out with no response. It was actually pretty calm and quiet compared to the previous night. At 2 AM I couldn't sleep and went out on the porch to meditate the frogs and raccoons were so loud I had to go back inside to get some peace.

In the day light everything seemed fresh and new. I reflected on the fact that it was Good Friday and that many people were acknowledging the meaning of the day for them. I thought about what it means to me and determined that for me it showed a willingness to give everything for the ultimate good of mankind. Could I do that?

I am not willing to give up my place in line most days, let alone my life. Is that true? Actually I think a spiritual life does require giving up your life in a sense that you step back and see a bigger picture. You look at other people as souls trying to find their way through life, just like me. Doing their best or least their best for the moment even if it doesn't meet my expectations. Maybe their best will be better tomorrow. We are all just trying to find our way. I feel lucky I found a program that gave me guidelines for finding my own way when I was so lost and sad.

I went to an Earth Day ceremony last night that included drumming, chanting and other rituals. About 20 people finding there own way by getting very worked up and I felt detached. It reminded me of my childhood in the pentecostal church watching the emotions pouring out. I do believe in a personal connection to God and everyone has to find it in their own way. A year ago I might have been interested in this because I was still searching. I have found God in the quieter moments now.

The search is over for me. The time and energy I have spent looking for the truth has led me back to the same place over and over. Staying in this moment and realizing we are all connected spiritually and part of the whole. It has been the ultimate awakening for me. My ego enjoys being an individual but it only brings me temporary pleasure. Acquiring the next thing or the next experience satisfies only for a moment. Then the search must go on for something more.

I left the ceremony and went outside. I stood in front of the a small pond and noticed a lot of movement. It was full of turtles and they were very busy doing nothing, from my perspective. As the sun was setting I truly felt part of a bigger plan.

On the ride home my friend and I talked and she said she felt the same thing that there was nothing there for us. It has been a year of awakenings and we both are feeling content to just be. It is nice to be with others that have the same interest in the spiritual and we will continue to participate. It is just different now.

You probably think I have gone off the deep end and think I have found some kind of nirvana but it is not true. I have been on the quest all my life and only this year I have found that the answer isn't out there it's in my heart. The same place God is for me. It is so simple maybe too simple. When I make it complicated it takes me further from what God wants for me peace and serenity.

I still have bad days and will have to fight my ego constantly to keep fear from making me doubt my new found freedom. Already it says, who do you think you are making it so simple? That voice will be out of work if I stop listening. My spirit is what God created and the ego is what I created. If I stop listening I will be free to listen to others and when I am really quiet I can hear the voice of God.

As always, this is my journey take what you like and leave the rest.

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.