Blog entry for:

to work in my daily life. today looks like the second day in a row, where showering will come closer to noon, rather than 8 AM. stuff happens, but at least i made it to grocery store for round one, before shop-ageddon part two started. the furnace looks good, Daisy is feeling better and i have her “add-in” cooked, packaged and in storage. it has been a full day already and i am still in my jammies. as i was attempting to clear my mind, what kept popping to the top was how the heck i was going to finish my shopping for my Thanksgiving offerings, before the stores got crazed and crowded. my plan ended up being, go before breakfast, but to remember i was hungry and stay out of those “middle aisles,” where all the “junk” and processed food live. left on my plate for this day, is a walk in the frigid and icy cold, a trip to Whole Foods to pick up an already ordered meal and a bit of service. today, i have FAITH, that if i allow myself the FREEDOM to go slow on the less than stellar streets and highways and practice a bit of patience and tolerance, i will make it home, safe and sound. and there go the sirens, so someone was less than careful in their journeys this morning, a great reminder as i pound this out.
that was certainly a long way to go, just to get to what i did “hear” this morning. i have said it before and i will just repeat it, probably for the sake of my own sanity, i am not a “GOD” kind of person. the fact is, i do believe that some sort of POWER is keeping me clean and i ask for that POWER to fuel my recovery, every morning, for quite a few days in a row. i have FAITH that if i ask for that and a few other tasty bits, i will get what i NEED and even some of what i want. that FAITH allows me to be part of society in general and a fellowship where i am understood. there are certainly days when i feel alienated and alone. there are days when i feel a vital part of everything. most days, however, fall somewhere between the two of those extremes. what does not change is my FAITH in the recovery process that has brought me this far. i consider myself lucky that when given a choice between returning to the using life and remaining in recovery, i chose the path i did.
i readily admit that, that choice was not based in the FAITH i have today,. but in the abject FEAR of what the “life” would like after close to a thousand days clean. i was afraid of losing my desire to complete my education and being saddled with student loans and nothing to show for that money. i was afraid that i would lose my home, the trust of those who saw me in those using days and never were quite certain how i would behave. most of all i was afraid that what little insight i had gained into how i saw the world and the work i had done in gaining that knowledge would be a waste of my time and effort. so FEAR of relapse kept me clean for a very long time. FEAR morphed into HOPE and HOPE into FAITH as the days added up and i became more secure in the knowledge that IF i did what i needed to do to stay clean and allowed the POWER that fuels my recovery to provide for me, i would get what i need.
fast forward to today. all that i am today, is the product of that FAITH, HOPE and FEAR. i may be far from perfect and still exercise more than a modicum of self-will on a daily basis, BUT i am working on the solution, today. that solution is to live my FAITH, be honest about what i feel and learn how to care for myself better than i did yesterday. part of that care, entails bundling up and heading out to the frozen wasteland that is the aftermath of 13.5" of snow that my hometown officially recorded. it is a good day to walk in the FAITH that i can be okay and i can recover, just for today.

∞ DT ∞