Blog entry for:

handle life after all and that it may be useless to try. no i am not writing about suicidal tendencies, nor am i writing about donating everything to charity and trotting off to cave somewhere to become a hermit in a hair shirt contemplating my navel and seeking the answers to such universal and and abiding questions such as: “what do we want to have for dinner, tonight?” okay, all kidding aside, even with some clean time, life with all its choices and various vagaries, can still be mysterious, frightening and overwhelming, even when there are no real “biggies,” going on. what i heard this morning, as i sat was not about how big life may seem, but what this addict needs to do to cope with all that bigness.
i started this an hour ago and then decided to go for a walk around the neighborhood, after a quick meeting with my team mate at work. what often happens when i let my mind stay focused on the exercise and not fantasizing about how to spend hundreds of millions of POWERBALL winnings, is that what i felt as i sat, gets reinforced. what i heard about how to deal with the bigness of life, was once again brought to the surface. the interesting part of this, now that i have actually started writing out my THIRD STEP, is that what i heard was not that much like what i have always done. there is however a HUGE difference, no longer to i bargain or present the outcome i desire in a prayer to a HIGHER POWER. i always felt kind of dirty doing so, even when i tacked on something about being ITS will. as i uncovered the other evening, a whole lot of the practices i have adopted over the years have been cop-outs that i called “accommodations.” before i piss on anyone's flowers, what i feel is my path to a relationship with the POWER that fuels my recovery, is mine. what you feel is yours, is yours. i am casting no judgements on your belief system or how you build your relationship with a HIGHER POWER. for me, things have changed and this THIRD STEP is the place where i am moving in a direction to solidify what i have always known to be true to me. scraping off the layers of “accommodation” as it were and facing my concept head on. oops i went off on a tangent here, back to our regularly scheduled topic.
as i was saying before i got diverted by squirrels, what i heard this morning was that when life feels too big or too complicated, i can pause, clear my head and listen. i have the experience of my peers, my recovery and yes a POWER that fuels my recovery, in which to listen for the answers. stopping to listen and to feel what is really going on inside is not a bad way to take a break from reality and put a brake on my runaway desires and expectations. there are very few circumstances that require split second decisions in my life today and those that do, do not usually overwhelm me long enough to even notice, such as the crazy-ass drivers that surround me every single day. i am okay today, my life may not be manageable but i have the skills and abilities to guide it that way, as long as i do the next right thing and pay attention to the voice of the POWER that fuels my recovery.
sure i can make things complicated and spin all sorts of yarns about how tough i have it. when i allow the program to work in my life, that flotsam and jetsam, is carried away by the arising tide of my FAITH in the POWER that fuels my recovery, just for today.

∞ DT ∞