It was only a matter of being willing to believe in a Power greater than myself. Nothing more was required of me to make my beginning. I saw that growth could start from that point.
Monday morning, March 28, 2005: move into healing

The alcoholic mind is an incredibly agile and wily survivor. At least mine is. We sustain deep wounds that threaten our very existence, promptly seal them shut and hide them from ourselves. We offer them little chance for repair as we step through life, trying to heal the pain by treating the symptoms and not the cause.

Sometimes in recovery we have the opportunity to discover these old wounds, and if we can trust our Higher Power, we can receive the strength and courage we need to open, accept, grieve and nurture ourselves back to health. Without attention and care these injured parts of our past will simply knit together at the surface, leaving a viable source of misery as fresh as the day it was inflicted. The Twelve Steps show us gently how to move into healing and beyond our past troubles. One day at a time. And we start today.

God, I offer my heart to You, the One who knows me better than I know myself. I believe You will make of my pain a thing of joy, as I will find the capacity to heal myself and to share the experience, strength and hope that comes from this healing. I ask for Your Will, not mine, in everything, and I know it is given as I ask.

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Wednesday morning, March 30, 2005: amends

Some days it seems like the wreckage of the past will never be cleared away. Today I had the honor of listening to my daughter tell me what it was like to live with an alcoholic mother. She recently watched a movie called "Thirteen" with Evan Rachel Wood and Holly Hunter, which depicts the downward spiral of a "good girl" treading a dark passage of life.

She cried over the heartache and loneliness of those years. Her husband asked, "Was that what it was like for you?" He cried, too.

I remember well the time; it was painful for me, too; I felt incapable of doing anything to help her. I was so helpless myself, and so needy, I was virtually absent from her life as a nurturing parent. She took on the role of so many Adult Children of Alcoholics: as she put it, "I thought it was my job to take care of you."

I don't know how well I behaved during her honest confrontation. I tried to sit very still and just listen. I let her talk. I let her be angry with me. I listened to her say that I let her down many times, and that some days she still feels that I let her down.

One thing I did offer to her is that it is important for her to face her issues now, or they will continue to cripple her life for as long as she ignores them. The other thing I offered is that I'm trying to be a better person today. Some days I do pretty well. Other days I just don't. I pray a lot for guidance, and try to make right decisions, and other days my self-will just brings it all crashing down.

I can only be grateful for The Steps, and today I get to see how they work in our lives. My daughter knows that they are for her, too, and she will be able to heal herself if she continues to be honest.

We ended the conversation by agreeing to go for a walk. We dressed and drove to the park, and started out on the one-mile track. She outdistanced me easily. I hope that she will always outdistance me, especially in matters of the heart and living, and I believe confidently that she will.
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Friday, April 1, 2005: blessings

Some how the money shows up, or at least the hope of money. I am helping out at the flower shop for $8.50 an hour. Not much, but I'm enjoying the work. Keeps me in pocket change. I do have design work at home that I hope to get done over the weekend. Maybe a big job coming from the ad agency; requoted it yesterday. This time of year I have the itch to dig in the dirt, grow things. I wince when I see friends or family come home with flats of flowers or tomato plants. But I trust my time is being put to worthy use, nurturing relationships and serving others. I do miss my meetings -- I am grateful for daily contact to and from others in recovery. The Spirit flows through us to one another, and I know that I am nurtured and supported.

Then there are the little rewards, the smiles from recipients of beautiful flowers, and onlookers who observe them with curious delight. It cheers me, too, driving around the city with hundreds of dollars of lilies, roses, forsythia, other wonders in every imaginable color.

Today I bought 130 sets of flowerpots. I was entrusted with the owner's vehicle and a signed blank check. I didn't know there was that kind of trust left in the universe. Someone or something has made of me a person worthy of trust. I am grateful for that.

It is good, this living one day at a time. Every morning I am happy when my eyes open. So many lonely years I was not, and wished to sleep forever. I am grateful for that, too. I am arrayed like the lilies I deliver; my life is full of glory.
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Saturday, April 2, 2005: peace

It is good to wake up and see the day. It is good to sit in bed with sunshine and a cup of coffee as I write. My eyes are very swollen from riding around all day in a florist's van. Also the privet is coming on, and there are walls of it just outside my bedroom windows.

I brought home crates of damaged plants yesterday -- some are still robust with magnificent blooms. There's enough to thrill my soul and my daughter's. Now I must set about finding pots...

I had my first anxious dream last night in a very long time. It is a recurring dream -- I am trying to enter a long sequence of numbers into the telephone, but I keep screwing up and have to start over. This dream had mutated like a virus into a real panic: I had been given a job to do in a week that would take every available minute to complete. I had two angry voicemails from the client wanting information. I also had other jobs waiting that needed my attention.

I could not find the job jacket with the phone number for the client. When I did find it, the number made no sense. I did finally get the number entered and then had to enter a series of part numbers for some little charms I had lined up on my desk. A couple of the charms rolled out of place and onto the floor. I had to enter the part numbers in the proper sequence or the call wouldn't go through. So it was important to keep the little charms in exactly the right order.

I was at the point of despair, thinking I'd have to call the client and beg for more time to do the job, but not sure even how I'd do that because I couldn't even dial the freaking phone!

Suddenly a friend appeared at my elbow and held out his hand to me. "Come on," he said, "I'll help you. We work well together."

I believe that dream is telling me many things. I believe the "jobs" represent my personal relationships and the "client" is my inner critic. The phone call is a connection, in this case one I can't execute successfully. The charms -- well, that's easy: that is the magical thinking we all fall into sometimes, the belief that if we do just the right things in just the right way, we will succeed in controlling the chaos around us (or in us).

The beautiful friend who extends his hand is my higher self, the part of me that connects me to my Higher Power. It is significant that the person I picked to play this role in my dream is a kindred spirit on many levels. And immediately I see and know more about myself just looking at this person in my dream.

I look at the week in retrospect, and realize I had no way to know in advance how exciting, taxing and rewarding it was going to be. There were so many opportunities and surprises along the way. If I'd seen the future in detail, I would have let all the fizz out of the experience.

So today I am content to be right here, right now, looking at nature give birth to a glorious spring morning. The house is quiet, I am alone, happy doing whatever it is that I do, looking forward to my day.

God can change us.
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Pax

All that matters is to be at one with the living God
to be a creature in the house of the God of Life.

Like a cat asleep on a chair
at peace, in peace
and at one with the master of the house, with the mistress,
at home, at home in the house of the living,
sleeping on the hearth, and yawning before the fire.

Sleeping on the hearth of the living world
yawning at home before the fire of life
feeling the presence of the living God
like a great reassurance
a deep calm in the heart
a presence
as of the master sitting at the board
in his own and greater being,
in the house of life.

~ D.H. Lawrence
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Monday, March 28
move into healing
God had restored his sanity. What is this but a miracle of healing? Yet its elements are simple. Circumstances made him willing to believe.
In time they will see that he is a new man and in their own way they will let him know it...From that point on, progress will be rapid. Marvelous results often follow such a reunion.
Those of us who have spent much time in the world of spiritual make-believe have eventually seen the childishness of it. This dream world has been replaced by a great sense of purpose, accompanied by a growing consciousness of the power of God in our lives.
We could cheerfully perform humble labor without worrying about tomorrow. If our circumstances happened to be good, we no longer dreaded a change for the worse, for we had learned that the troubles could be turned into great values, for ourselves and for others.
Moments of perception can build into a lifetime of spiritual serenity, as I have excellent reason to know. Roots of reality, supplanting the neurotic underbrush, will hold fast despite the high winds of the forces which would destroy us, or which we would use to destroy ourselves.