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maturity and grace in my day-to-day, minute by minute life, is not the easiest task for me. in fact, there are times when i just want to reach out and make someone hurt for starting up with me, the tit for tat sort of action that i learned as a kid on the playground, after all, i cannot let ANYONE get away with disrespecting me, even when there are only two of us present. i can truly say, that this behavior is not working very well for me, and has not worked in quite a bit of time. the only thing that keeps me from having to “own” my wrongs, is the threat of the corrective portion of STEP TEN, because i HATE admitting that i am wrong. so i end up muddling through, swallowing my pride and ego, petulantly walking away, before i do something i WILL regret doing. not exactly the healthiest of my behaviors but certainly more healthy than ever before.
this morning, for a nice change of pace, i am not falling asleep at the wheel. it is not as if i laid down and went straight to sleep last night, but i did seem to sleep a bit better than i have over the course of the past few days. i had one of those “moments” i just wrote about, with my spouse as we were preparing to go to bed. i, however, instead of carrying any feelings with me as i put my head down on the pillow, decided to let it go, ask the POWER that fuels my recovery to take it away from me, and proceeded to fall asleep , after a few minutes. for a change, i did something a bit different and surprise, surprise, i got rewarded for doing so.
that was without a doubt an example of me practicing a bit of maturity and receiving a bit of grace as a result, although i know my source material was about me being graceful and not getting grace. i am certainly one of those people, who feels less than comfortable in social situations. it fact, i have often referred to myself as a social “retard.” as my campaign against self-deprecation has taken precedence in my life, these days, i no longer give myself the permission to use terms like that, to describe how i think and feel. i am okay with being by myself, but more and more i find that i want to be in the company of others and i am, at times, at a loss on how to behave. that is where practicing a bit of grace comes in. i know what i need to do, and why i need to do it, it is just the how that is a bit on the difficult side. just as i did when i was learning to play the bassoon, practicing grace over and over again, will allow me to be part of a group and feel okay while doing so. life is far too short for me to live in a petulant frenzy about the slightest of slights and learning to accept those with a bit of maturity and grace, well that is certainly a task i am up for, just for today.

∞ DT ∞