Gifts to Grow On

All we are asked to bear, we can bear. That is a law of the spiritual life. The only hindrance to the working of this law, as of all benign laws, is fear.
—Elizabeth Goudge

There is no problem too difficult to handle with all the help available to us. Let’s not be overwhelmed. The program tells us to “Let go and let God,” to turn it over. And that’s where the solution lies.

Our challenges, the stumbling blocks in our way, beckon us toward the spiritual working-out of the problem which moves us closer toward being the women we are meant to be. Our fear comes from not trusting in the Power greater than ourselves to provide the direction we need, to make known the solution.

Every day we will have challenges. We have lessons to learn which means growing pains. If we could but remember that our challenges are gifts to grow on and that within every problem lies the solution.

I will not be given more than I and my Higher Power can handle today, or any day.

On this, the 5 month mark after my son’s death…I can do all things through JESUS.

From the book Each Day a New Beginning

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Taking a turn for the…Different

So, things are moving right along, here in my little world. I am about to make a strong turn in the direction that my “career” is taking. Funny how things go, sometimes.

Years ago, I had a stroke. It was the kind where my hand was curled up and, being a southpaw, I found it difficult to write at all. I woke up with my face sagging on one side, the hand curled, and kind of wobbly walking.

We went to the ER and were sent home again pretty quuckly. I remember driving with my right hand, as I’d promised to take a friend to work that morning, and I felt ok, so I did. She looked I credulous when I told her what had happened, but, to me, it was just another day. I’m still not sure if I “should have” had a different response.

Anyway, the reason I tell you all that is to tell you that I stopped crafting around that time. My hand didn’t work well enough to really be too creative, so I packed everything up and donated it to the Youth Group at church. I really enjoyed crafting, though.

Fast forward to today. My hand has come back to about 98% of what it once was; enough that I’ve been keeping up pretty well while working on production lines for the last several months.

And, I am about to make the aforementioned turn in employment. Next week I begin work at one of the country’s biggest Arts & Crafts supply stores. (😄🤗🤓😁😃)

I hadn’t given much thought to getting back into crafting, since I was pursuing working in Addiction/Mental Health, but this job presented itself, and can I say that I’m PRETTY STINKIN EXCITED?!

1. They’re not open Sundays, so it doesn’t interfere with church attendance

2. Pays better than most jobs I’ve had

3. Company has a really good reputation

4. No Hiipa laws

5. IT’S A CRAFT STORE!!!

Like I posted this morning on Facebook, I have a new home to decorate, I love diy, and I’m gonna be working in a Craft store! If I believed in Karma I’d say I’m getting rewarded for something.  Instead, I’ll say this:

“Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.”

After working in the places I’ve been, struggling to get enough hours or enough pay to make ends meet…I am just very grateful that I’ve been blessed with this opportunity.

It’s been a long time since I’ve worked retail. I’ve worked with “The Public”, or certain segments of the public, but not like this. I just hope I can make Father proud.

I think that I’ll be able to easily identify my tribesfolk, because they WILL be coming in to the workplace. 😉

Today is 2 days short of the 4 month anniversary. This is where I am. Not depressed.  Working on my bond with Christ. Reading a John Bevere book about forgiving. Life isn’t easy, but it’s ok. I am grateful.

 

A few words on adulting.

Adulting is really fucking difficult isn’t it?

Especially when you sometimes feel like you’re still the 14 year old version of you.

But the truth is, everyone is still waiting to feel like a grown up.

And you know what?

You’re not weird or strange for feeling this way.

You’re amazing, just as you are.

♥️

I lifted this from someone on Facebook. I haven’t written lately because I haven’t had anything new to say. Oh, how I hate redundancy.

So it’s entirely possible that the next posts will be just things that resonate with me, and hopefully, you, too.

I want to begin to write again, and I believe that I will. I’m just waiting for the words to come back to me.

I am grateful for you.

13 simple ways to be mentally strong

…and 13. Keep turning it over to God.

Posted from my happy place.

I didn’t know what I didn’t know

My Dad told me that getting sober is about growing up. One of the first things that I can remember becoming clear to me in those early days was that I didn’t know everything. The next step seems to have been realizing that it wasn’t important for me to be RIGHT. That’s been an on going lesson. 

When I became a Mother, I knew that I had no idea how to care for my child. I’d worked at Day Cares, and even become a certified Nanny at one point, but in the position I found myself when I became a parent,  I realized that I was pretty much clueless. I knew how to put on a diaper, sure, but there was so much more about which I had no idea. I didn’t know what I didn’t know. Now, almost 24 years later, I am convinced that I have no clue. By the grace of God my boys have turned out as healthy as they are. 

When I began working the steps with my Sponsor, I was apprehensive, having heard lots of those who’d come to the rooms before me talking about their struggles. Of course, I hadn’t begun my Stepwork, so I thought those people were a bunch of cry-babies. I didn’t know what I didn’t know. But I soon found out. 

When I was still calling the shots in my life, in Party Girl mode, I was always looking for something new. Something exciting. For a long time, the chemicals were enough to bring me to new and exciting lands (if only hallucinatory). After a while that wasn’t enough, so I chose more exciting places and more dangerous people with whom to run around. I suppose it was the adrenaline rush along with whatever drugs I used that made for an acceptable escape from the mundane and the depression that was a constant companion. I knew how to create distractions for myself, even if they were increasingly perilous. I was untouchable. 

I didn’t know what I didn’t know. 

Of course one can only live in that level of (drama) for so long before it starts to catch up with them. I don’t recall anyone talking to me about my drinking or using, but I suspect that’s just because I’d decided that wasn’t going to hear it.  More than likely, there were at least a couple of times that folks cared enough to try to get through my hard head. But I was skating along with relative ease, at the time. I refused to see the place that this lifestyle was taking me. I suspect that much of my cavalier attitude regarding the impending crash-and-burn was due to my complete lack of self-worth and my confidence that the hell I was living in was unavoidable.  I didn’t know what I didn’t know. 

I’ve been unable to avoid the political sh*t-storm in recent weeks, try as I have. This post was prompted by learning the truth about a situation that had been sold as a seriously unfathomable act by a candidate. The original information wasn’t (clearly) reported as having been (spun) by their adversary, so I took it as the truth. It was pretty outrageous. I thought this person was as big a scumbag as I’d already decided that their opponent was. Then I stumbled across the truth. I didn’t know what I didn’t know.
It’s my own fault. I’m too comfortable hearing about unethical behavior to actually look into it, to find the truth. Laziness, I guess. But as the Day of Reckoning draws nearer, I’ve begun to concede that I ought to gather some information before I go pull a lever. I lot of times in the past I’ve been able to just watch for my associates (politically in-the-know people) to summarize the facts, and go from that. But this time it’s just not that easy. I’m beginning to know what I don’t know. Once you know a thing, you cannot unknow it. As much as I prefer to be ignorant about the goings-on of the “powers that be”, I’m coming to believe that not only is ignorance NOT bliss (crazy, right?), but that ignorance in these matters may give me something else to answer for in the Grand Scheme of things. And that list is already WAY TOO long for my liking. 

Let’s get busy and learn about the people who are vying for control of our great country. Four years in the hands of an idiot has proven to be more costly than we the people can afford. 

Religion vs. Spirituality

Like a lot of folks, ​I remember being beat up and put down, physically, emotionally, and spiritually for such a very long time. Some of my misery came from my own poor choices, to be sure, but a lot of it was a response to trauma and/or mental illness.

Regardless the causes, the blackness where my spirit had been eventually became too much for me to bear. No amount of self-medicating was enough to relieve the pain. So I began investigating options.

I found my way to a place where they said they wanted to care for and help me. They told me about a Savior who loved me, and then they shamed me for having scrapes and bruises. Their words and actions told me that my wounds were my own fault: I’d not sought God enough, I’d not suffered enough, I hadn’t conformed enough for them to give me the love I so desperately needed…so I changed my hair, my clothes, my makeup, prayed more, I cried more, and I did my best to be who they seemed to want me to be.

None of that was enough for the people I met there, who claimed to represent HIM. And I didn’t know any better than to believe them.

I left there more wretched than I’d arrived. I left with no hope, where at least when I had arrived, I had a glimmer of hope. I went to other places where “God-loving” people congregated. The results were the same.

Having once had an ENCOUNTER with the Spirit of God (and the feeling of complete love and acceptance in SPITE of my sins), I knew that the problem here wasn’t HIM. But these folks were seriously doing me more harm than good, so I had to go.

I went back to the gutter where I’d crawled out from, back to the mire. This slow death was familiar; at least there was no false hope. Nothing to cause me to think that life could be better, and simultaneously rip out what little there was left of my heart and soul.

This is the story of a sick and dying person who sought help from pious, uncaring  religious people.

The street life sent me seeking the safety of a loving God. Churchianity sent me back to the streets. At least I knew what to expect, there, and was familiar with what came next.

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Once mental illness, addiction and spiritual bankruptcy had adequately broken me, (or more to the point, I found a REASON to live that was greater than what I’d ever had before) I started looking for a spiritual solution. Again.

Thankfully, I was allowed to observe someone I’d admired, as he began to climb up out of a similar place of pain and misery. He had tried to find answers in traditional religion, as well. But, like me, he had come out of the church seeking for MORE.

I mean, when you think of God, at least in America, don’t you usually first think “church”?

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Anyway, I found that when I began to earnestly seek to know Who God really is, He showed Himself to me. I bought a new Bible, w/o the highlighting that someone else had influenced. I looked for the FULL picture of God’s personality. Is He angry? Not usually. Does He want to discipline his children? No, actually. He goes to GREAT lengths to keep from having to do so.

A thing that I learned about God is that our idea of Him is MASSIVELY affected by our relationship  (or lack) with our earthly dad. It was a turning point for me when I looked at God and purposely did not impose my ideas of human men onto Him.

Today I am still learning and growing. I know for a fact that God loves me and is on my side. Like a strongwilled child, sometimes I may rage on, wanting MY WAY. He lets me rage. He loves me too much to let me have my way, a lot of the time. When I am finally exhausted from struggling, He holds me and gives me good things.

Firstly, seek Him. Learn about Jesus. Dont put too much stock into what most folks tell you. People will always let us down. He NEVER has, and NEVER shall.

God didn’t send His son to condemn the world, but that through (Jesus) the world might be saved.

Do you REALLY want to?

…drink? Smoke? Snort? Shoot?

Really?

I didn’t. I had exhausted my options.
I had run down every highway, every street, every back alley that I came to, in my desperate attempt to Get. Away. From. Me.
But when I looked at that angelic face, that beautiful, tiny boy, I knew in the depths of my heart that I could not have both him and drugs. My running days had come to an end.
Sure, I talked about running. I kept a pair of running shoes just inside the front (and, let’s be honest, also the BACK) door of my mind for an incredibly long time. However, there was one thing that had become abundantly clear to me on that day, when I realised that I was completely drained…I did not want to drink, or use, again.

“we gotta get out of this place”

That’s not to say that I didn’t want to escape from reality. Oh, no, I didn’t say that.
I’d awakened from so many years (while using) of being at a dead run…and each time I got a direct hit, be it a sexual assault, or an unhealthy relationship, or some other kind of intense emotional trauma, I had vaulted over the place where anyone else might have thrown a white flag…and ran faster.
My days of hiding, by way of chemical means, had finally come to a screeching halt.

So, what, then?

Facing my past fears and traumas was really too much to consider while I was being inundated with a whole different kind of drama (new Mom, baby in ICU, etc., etc.), so I had to find other options.
I discovered (archaic, to be sure: it was the early 90’s, after all) video games, and the   benefits of Mel Brooks movies, and chocolaet ice cream, and tattoos, among other things.
I didn’t want to use. I just wanted to check out for a minute. So I found other ways to distract myself.

Sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly

At some point, I came to realise that the Promises, were, in fact, materializing for me. Some days, it felt like I was engaged in a war just to breathe, and other days, things would slow down and I got to taste of serenity, briefly.

It takes a village

I will forever be grateful to the women in the Program who walked with me those first months and years. They showed me how to live life, in all of its blood and chaos, on life’s terms, and then they encouraged me as I learned to walk again. No more running. I might jog now and then, but running is not in God’s plan for me, today. And I’ve discovered that His plan for me is always good. Always.

Posted from my shack by the creek.