Higher Power

Cease Fighting

~ Patti ~ Leave a comment

My 12 step program has given me the ability to look for the positive in people, to learn how to forgive and think of the world as a generally safe place.  As an alcoholic I’m generally full of fear, focus on the worst in people and hold resentments forever.

When I’m with my children or my family, positive thinking is fairly easy.  I love them, so I can easily find their good qualities and overlook their character defects.  It’s easier to overlook slights because I see their human condition.

At work it becomes more difficult.  I seem to be focused on getting the job done and running the business.  People tend to get in my way, not do what they tell me they’re going to do and just plain act stupid or lazy.  I spend the majority of my days irritated at some person, place or thing that slows down the idea of progress that I have designed for myself.  I forget about the people, people who have feelings, people who love and people who have pain.  I forget that they have an inner life and inner talk just like I have.  I forget that most of them probably have amazing stories of overcoming some kind of hardship or ailment.  I forget that in the grand scheme of things 100 years from now no one will remember the business that I did or the money that I made for the company.  What will be remembered is the compassion and love I showed another human being in the daily chore of doing business.  That love will be passed along to their family and friends and will one day cross the divide of generations.  There is no other work that is more meaningful than the way I treat people while I’m at work.

Since I’ve worked my 12 steps I supposedly have ceased fighting anyone or anything, but yet I still fight at work.  I fight for my place.  I fight to be recognized and I fight to be right.  I fight to keep business and I fight to do business.  My days are wasted on fighting.

What I’ve failed to do is turn it over to my higher power.  My only job is the footwork.  The results aren’t up to me.  Maybe it will fall apart, but if it does it serves a higher purpose and I must be ok with that.  My sanity and ultimately my sobriety are at risk.  We do not have the luxury of resentments like normal men.  We do not have the luxury to live a mediocre life of some good and some bad and let the chips fall where they may.  We are sensitive people.  Eventually the irritants and the resentments drive us back to the bottle.  We must live our lives aware and thinking of others.  When I don’t do that my self-will runs riot and my self-centeredness actually stands in the way of my own progress.

This week I’ve decided to focus on what is good about people.  I’m trying to find the good and verbally recognize it.  I’m working on gratitude for what they do right rather than focus on what is wrong.  The amazing part is I’m happier, my week is easier and I sleep better.  In a world where most of our business is done over the internet, we dehumanize people.  We forget there is a face connected with the name under the letterhead of our emails.

Just for today I will practice patience not knowing if something I do or say will be helpful or hurtful.

Depression

~ Patti ~ Leave a comment

Early sobriety was difficult for me.  The promises of sobriety are said to materialize, sometimes quickly sometimes slowly.  For me it was this painful grueling process in which I hung on by my fingernails for almost three years.  I had worked the steps. I had a sponsor that I called everyday along with other sober friends.  I went to meetings whenever I could.  I prayed and tried my best to assemble some sort of spiritual life.  I read books.  I was really no better off than before I had started drinking.  Or at least that’s how I felt.  I only drank for three years to medicate my depression before ending up in a treatment center.   I was still miserable and self-destructive.  Although I didn’t drink, I picked up smoking.  At times, I was suicidal.  And finally after three years of this, I relapsed.  I had to get out of the fear and anxiety somehow.  I was desperate.  The frightening part is that it almost was an automatic response to life’s stress for me.  There wasn’t a lot of forethought and it was totally unplanned.  It was such a short relapse that I decided no one needed to know about it (another story), but I did decide that maybe it was time to see a doctor and get some outside help and some antidepressants.

I know there are those in 12 step programs that disagree with having prescribed antidepressants.  I am not one of them as long as they are of the non-addictive variety.  What I know for sure is that I am bodily and mentally different from my fellows.  I have studied chemistry and biology and what I know today is that I sometimes suffer from not having the right amount of neurotransmitters in my brain to prevent depression no matter how hard I work my program.  I also know that my sobriety is contingent upon my spiritual condition.  I think sometimes I’m led by my higher power to seek medical help when necessary.  It’s not a character weakness.  For me it’s more like a bronchial infection that needs medical attention every so often when I have some unusual stress.

After three months of medication, I was a new person.  My life changed dramatically.  However, I don’t believe it was all in the medication.  My work with the 12 steps was preparation and the medicine was the catalyst that helped increase the activation energy of the work I had done, putting me in a far better place mentally in a shorter amount of time.

I do not recommend this for everyone. It’s just part of my story.  I do understand that my disease stands waiting for me.  I understand that there is also only so much stress, anxiety and fear that I can take before taking a drink is automatic.  I have a quality life and I work a solid program, but sometimes it’s not enough.  I need medical help.  I practice all kinds of alternative medicine and believe in living as drug free as possible which includes antidepressants and antibiotics, asprin, etc.  There is a time and a place for my program.  There is a time and a place for alternative medicine.  There is a time and a place for medical intervention.  The trick is putting aside my ego that tells me I can do it on my own and knowing how much is enough. Living life on life’s terms tells me that I will get a bronchial infection from time to time.  It tells me I will have depression from time to time.  I’m ok with that today and I’m ok with getting the help I need.

Just for today I will live life on life’s terms and accept it.

Tomorrow’s Business

~ Patti ~ Leave a comment

I had lunch with my soon to be daughter in law over the weekend.  Her and my son has been talking about what they want their wedding ceremony to be like.  Much to my surprise, my son told her that he would like me to get ordained over the internet and to perform the wedding ceremony.  He calls me the family’s spiritual leader.  Although I was extremely flattered and would probably perform the ceremony if they really wanted me to, I also have a lot of fear rushing through my veins.

I’m not afraid to speak and perform the actual ceremony but more afraid of the implications of being ordained.   I’m not very spiritual.  I’m still self-centered and self-seeking.  I am prone to tantrums when things don’t go my way.  I still curse and have been known to sneak a cigarette or two.  I am extremely materialistic.  I can be judgmental of others and most of the time I’d rather help myself than others.   My life has been fraught with some really poor choices.  Most of all, I’m an alcoholic.  My sobriety is only contingent upon my spiritual condition today.  I’m afraid I will fall.  My head is filled with the committees telling me I’m not good enough.   My mind races and has prepared all of the arguments for and against this idea.  I’ve already prepared the sermon and the polite decline.

I ponder what I would tell a sponsee if faced with a similar dilemma.  The first thing I would probably say is, “La tee da.  Welcome to the human condition.”  Everyone faces these very human emotions and reactions to life.  I realized that with every responsibility I was given I was not necessarily ready, but that I grew into it.  I wasn’t a mother when my son was born.  I wasn’t a grandmother when my first grandchild was born.  I wasn’t a chemist when I started school.   I wasn’t a manager when I was given the title.  I wasn’t a wife when I got married.  I wasn’t a sponsor when I was first asked to help another alcoholic.  I wasn’t even an alcoholic when I got sober.  I was just a drunk.  With every responsibility I’ve ever had, I learned as I went.  It was on the job training.  Each responsibility, in some way, made me a better, stronger and a more compassionate, less self-centered person.  If I had said no to any one of those responsibilities my life would have been dramatically altered and I would not have grown into me.

Maybe God is calling me to go deeper into my spirituality and to become stronger.  Maybe my higher power just wants me to perform a simple ceremony.  Then again, I am alcoholic.  I haven’t even been officially asked by my son yet.  I would probably tell my sponsee to worry about today and stay out of tomorrow’s business.

Just for today I think I will.

 

Things We Trip On

~ Patti ~ Leave a comment

The day I walked into my first 12 step meeting, I had barely finished detoxing.  I was still in treatment, still shaky and terrified, full of a million forms of fear.  I knew my life was ending as I knew it.  My marriage had ended a long time before I started drinking.  I thought if I had a few drinks and relaxed maybe things would improve.  It worked until it didn’t.  I knew divorce was imminent.  I had no education and no skills.  I knew I’d have to provide for myself after 20 years of being a stay at home mom. 

We are told, “There are those that suffer from grave emotional and mental disorders, but many of them recover if they have the capacity to be honest.”

“I knew I couldn’t stay sober,” was probably the first honest thing I said to myself in a long time.

Over the years when I look back on that time, I still feel this pain inside my chest.  I still feel the fear.  I still feel the heartbreak and I still feel the pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization of my disease.  I still feel the physical weakness and the nausea after detoxing for 3 days. I still feel the tremors.  I feel that feeling of being utterly alone in an abyss of darkness where there is not one single person that believes in you or even cares, not even yourself.  I don’t think it’s hard to figure out why someone would commit suicide.

What I didn’t realize at the time was that I was walking into the light.  There in the middle of the city in a mental hospital, I found a room of hope. I found a group of people who loved me sober and they would love me drunk.  My higher power is a funny thing.  As my life was ending, he met me at the door with the beginning of a new life.

My current husband was the chairman of that very meeting.  It was 11 months before we dated and 6 years before we married from that time.  I’m married to a man that knows who I am at my sickest and knows who I am at my healthiest and loves me anyway.  Maybe even because of it.

I don’t suggest looking for a soul mate at a 12 step meeting.  We are not sane people.  I’m just saying that when our old life ends, our higher power has already made arrangements for the new.  We probably trip over it.  Sometimes it just takes standing still and doing the next right thing one day at a time.  I decided that it wasn’t important that I was happy.  It was important that I did what was suggested for me to do.  When I had thoughts of suicide, I said to myself that I would stay here just for today.  I went to meetings, found a sponsor, and worked 12 steps.

What I’ve found is that it’s the things I do a little every day that make up my life.  If I work on my sobriety a little every day I’ll stay sober.  If I work on my education a little every day, I end up with a degree.  If I work on not having to control my loved ones a little every day, I end up with good relationships.  If I work on thinking good thoughts a little every day, I end up happy.

The opposite it true also.  The small amount of negativity I subject myself to every day, can corrode my career, my relationships and my sobriety. It’s a choice.

Just for today I think I’ll focus on one good thought.

Solutions

~ Patti ~ Leave a comment

When I first became a member of my 12 step program, I was looking for the differences.  I was comparing myself to others. It was difficult to see that I was alcoholic because I didn’t have a DUI. I had not been in jail.  I hadn’t stolen anything to support my addiction.  What I failed to do was to look at the similarities until an elderly gentleman in overhauls told my story.  I was a housewife with 5 kids, but this elderly man with nothing apparently in common with me told me who I was by his own testimony with alcohol.  I still find that amazing.  I’m awestruck by the common bond that those of us share who otherwise “would not mix.”  It was then that I started seeing the likeness, the similarities.  It was then that I accepted my disease and that I was like every other alcoholic and it was only a matter of time before my “have yet’s” would catch up to me.

I find a similar phenomenon with religion.  As alcoholics we are so bitter against God or anything resembling God that we are looking for the differences between us and those who believe. We are looking for why we shouldn’t believe.  If we are truly agnostic or atheist as we say we are, then why are we so angry with God and religion?  Why is it so hard to open our minds up to the possibility of not even a God, but a higher power?  I think we feel we’ve been burnt by religion and want nothing to do with it.  We’re afraid of being hurt and disappointed.  We’re afraid of another dead end road.  We’re afraid that nothing is on the other end of the line that we pray.

When I worked through my resentments with religion while working on step 4 of my 12 step program, I realized that I had played a part in my bad relationship with God.  Just like all of my bad relationships, I had some part to play in its disintegration.  Somewhere along the line, I blindly believed in someone else’s definition of God.  I didn’t take the time to think it through and discover for myself who God was to me.  I had expectations of what God was supposed to do for me based on expectations that someone else had fed me.  I had set myself up for failure.

When I finally began to define my higher power for myself, the resentments melted away.  Instead of looking for differences between myself and those “God believers”, I began to work with what was similar.  I began to look for the universal truths behind all religions.  I was told not to throw the baby out with the bath water.  Religion has given millions of peoples through thousands of generations hope, comfort, peace and direction.

What I found was a greater faith and the peace that comes with the unity of knowing I’m connected in some way to every human being on earth.  We all share something in common, including those periods when I doubt.  Doubt is part of the process.  I have something spiritually in common with people on the other side of the earth even though our lives and lifestyles normally “would not mix.”  I love and laugh and hurt and so does every human being on earth. I started there.  I think my higher power, or God, loves and laughs and hurts.

I noticed that all little boys think farting and burping is funny.  I think God does too.  I think God hurts when we hurt but, I think it hurts him more when we don’t use the power that he gave us to help ourselves and to help others.

I learned by taking calculus that there is more than one solution to a problem and that there is a solution.  Believe it or not, I learned about my higher power through mathematics.  It’s there if you look for it.  I learned how to find solutions in theoretical multidimensional worlds.  We ask why all the pain and suffering in the world.  I think God has provided solutions but we don’t use them.

With that being said, I’m not a religious person.  I do not attend church.  However, I do believe in the power of organized religion that helps millions of people all over the world with not only spiritual matters but also matters of survival. I also came to believe in the power of a loving God.

I think, just for today, I’ll look for and ponder the solutions that God has already given me.

 

Higher Power

~ Patti ~ Leave a comment

When I first was admitted to treatment, I was told to find a higher power.

“You have got to be kidding!  That is the very thing I gave up on!”

The difference this time was that I wasn’t told to find God.  I was told to find a higher power of my own understanding.  I didn’t even know what that meant.  You can just pick and choose? I didn’t know you could do that. I just knew that the religious God, the one that decided if you go to heaven or hell, the one who constantly stood judgment against me, the one who asked me to pray and didn’t answer anyway and the one who caused my suffering (or allowed it), didn’t work for me.  My assignment was to write down all the things that I didn’t want in a higher power, which was the easy part.  Then I was instructed to write down what I could understand a higher power to be.

I was told to throw away anything that I ever believed about God.  We were going to start over.  I think my family and especially my teenage children had a difficult time with this.  It appeared that I had turned my back on everything that I taught them and everything that I believed in.  Maybe I did for a time.  But for me, it was like building muscle.  In order to get stronger you have to break it down first.  The beginning of finding a higher power of my own understanding had to be rudimentary.  God is love and understanding.

Over the years my understanding has developed and deepened.  Today I maintain that if I can define God, then God is too small to keep me sober.  For me a higher power is all encompassing.

One of the first things I was taught in treatment was that I am not a victim.  Very few of us are.  Children are victims.  As adults we are usually not victims, we are volunteers.  Today I have problems with any religion that tells me that I need a savior. I quit thinking of myself as a victim a long time ago. I think that my higher power has given me all I need to save myself.  He’s already done it all and given it all.  I think that pain is a part of life, but suffering is optional.  I get to decide.  Once I think of myself as a victim, a drink is close by.  I think of my higher power as energy that I can tap into at any time.  I can also shut it off.  I can’t define it.  I can’t see it.  I know it’s there because when I consciously choose to tap into it, my path is enlightened, I feel inspired and I’m at peace.  When I choose not to tap into it I develop resentment, I become whiney and I begin to think of myself as a victim of society, my job, my family.  I always get to choose.

It took me years to learn to tap into it.  It began by choosing to notice the things that I was grateful for.  I’m an ingrate by nature.  When my heart is grateful for what I have, I no longer have to worry about what I don’t have.  When my heart is grateful for what I have, it’s easier for me to let go of those things that I don’t really want in my life, jobs, relationships or junk around the house.  Gratitude makes the path clearer and makes forgiveness easier.  I’ve never seen anyone unhappy that is truly grateful for what they have.

It is easier said than done.  I began by writing a gratitude list every day.  I wrote down my small one bedroom apartment that I lived in with my three children.  I didn’t feel grateful for it, but I wrote it down.  I wrote down my old minivan that I was paying high payments on with a 9.9% interest rate.  I wrote down each one of my children individually and that they were experiencing good health.  I wrote down that I was going to college and that I had a part time job. I wrote down that I was grateful for my ex-husband and the part that he’s played in my life. In the beginning I really thought that I deserved better and that I should have more.  After writing the same list every day for about 6 weeks, I began noticing a shift.  I actually felt grateful.

It’s a funny thing about gratitude, in the laws of chemistry as well as the laws of life, like attracts like.  Shortly afterward, I was able to move into a bigger apartment.  My relationship with my oldest son improved.  My ex-husband and I became friends and began working together instead of against each other. My part time job started paying more money. My life continued to improve from there.

Now whenever I find myself wanting something, I begin to achieve it by first counting my blessings.  Make no mistake. Gratitude is the conduit that ties me into the energy of my higher power who I choose to call God.

So just for today, I think I’ll count my blessings.