A Blessed Day

We each have our mission in life and we seldom realy know what it is and yet we often think that we know. If we kept a log of what we thought our mission in life was everytime we thought we knew, we would have a couple of notebooks filled by mid-life. I have come to know and understand that what God wants for me is to be the best example of his love that I can be.

I know that some days I will fall short and some days I will get it right. I also know that he will always put me where hee needs me to do whatever it is that he needs me to do that day. I may not be sure of much else most days, I am sure of that. All I have to do is trust him and know that he put me in this place at this time for a reason. Than if I do my best to be the best person I am capable of being his mission will be filled. I may be there to teach someone or I may be there to be taught by someone else, either way I am there to learn something about me and what I am capable of.

It is the times that try us the most that we learn the most about our ability to learn, grow and love. Remember when we were kids and having growing pains, they hurt like hell. Why would the events of life that help us grow be any different, they will hurt like hell and we will grow from them and be a better person for having gone through them. All of these things make everyday a blessed day. Have a great day all and God Bless, I love you all.

Another Day

We have a chance to give and keep our words each and every day. We say we value honesty, do we show we value honesty by our words and actions. If I tell someone that I am going to do something or not do something than I have a responsibility to do it.

One thing I have learned is that our actions always demonstrate our true intentions. So if I say I intended to do something and did not that my actions show that I intended not to do it. How many people do we know that actually keep their word to us and how much do we trust them and how close a friend are they? Is it also not true that we all know people that 'intend' to keep their word but something always comes up? They are not people that we tend to keep close to us and include as part of our inner circle.

Our actions speak voulmns for us. They speak about our values, beliefs, hopes and dreams. They demonstrate to all that which is important to us and how important it is to us. Anyone can talk the talk it takes someone of real character to walk the walk. Well have a great day all and God Bless, I love you all.

The Day After

The party is over and the family and friends have returned to their homes. We are returned to the rality of the day to day life when we start getting ready for work. The thing that is most important in life starts with our relationship with our Higher Power, ourselves and than our family and comes our friends. Life is really good and I am enjoying every moment of it and looking forward to what God has planned for me.

Today is a gift from God, that is why it is called the "present". That makes everyday Christmas because everyday you have a gift to open and see what you have been given. Like any gift you may think it is too big, too small, the wrong color or it is just not you. Yet it is just the right gift to be given at just the right time and just for you, from your Higher Power. Have a great day all and God Bless, I love you all.

Best Christmas

As Christmases go this one has to rank as one of the best. I spent it only with those that are closest to me and peace reigned through the whole thing. There were the normal sibling rivalry kinds of things but that happens every day. The Lord blessed me with being able to have all the kids home for Christams and while they were not able to be there at the same time, they were here and that is all that mattered.

I spent a couple of days with a dear friend and her kids and I felt very comfortable with everything that happened. I had fun with the kids and go to watch them open their gifts. I even got the best gift of all, I was able to have a civil conversation with my brother and I was not only able to wish him a Merry Christmas but also a Happy Birthday as well.

It was a small step and I am hoping that it is one that will lead to more conversations in the coming months and years. Everything I could have dreamed of having received for Christmas I did receive. Thank you God for blessing me with so much. In the last few weeks I chose to re-evaluate my life and my priorities and I was unsure of what was going to happen. If the events of the last few day is any indication I know without a doubt that I ahve made some very wise choices and that the new direction my life is headed will be filled with happiness and joy. Merry Christmas to you all and God Bless, I love you all.

Step Twelve

Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry the message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs. What is a spiritual awakening? For some it comes on suddenly and is a profound moment of 'aha' and the light comes on and suddenly everthing is clear. For others it is something that comes on slowly as and they just suddenly realize that they have changed their entire life.

Being in recovery means I have to be available to help and support anyone that is in recovery or wanting to be in recovery. It is in giving away the things that I have learned that I continue to grow and it keeps the program alive and well in me. I have to also apply the priciples of what I ahve learned in my recovery to everything that I do. The principles I devlope while in recover keep me sober and I will stay sober only when they are applied to every aspect of my life.

It has meant that I have turned my back on my old life and the way I used to live. I have never turned my back on any one person because that would not be right. Yet if I am going to remain sober and have serenity I have to set boundaries for what behavior will be acceptable and what will not be. My life used to revolve around chaos and having to solve everyines problems. If there was no chaos in my life I was lost and did not know how to function.

I can tell you from experience that having kids provides me with all the chaos I am comfortable with these days. Over the years I have learned that I am the only one that can work my program of recovery. I cannot expect other to work it or live by it. In helping others find their path to recovery it is often a painful job because you do not want to see others get hurt. You have to allow them to fall and pick themselves up again. Learning the live a sober life is like learning to walk all over again, you are going to fall and you will pick yourself up again.

It is my old life and life choice that got me drunk or stoned and it is those very same things that will get me drunk or stoned. I have no choice but to walk away from the past and make a new life for myself. Today that life that I have is one filled with peace both internally and externally. I do not try to solve others problems or fix their mistakes for them, they have to do that for themselves, it is how they will learn. Today chaos is the holiday seaon or bath time, trying to cook a meal with a kitchen full of kids.

Those are then only acceptable kinds of chaos because those are the normal run of the mill chaos. The moments that actually build positve relationships and memories. No matter how rushed and chaotic things got at home, I remember all the times my kids tried to help me cook in the kitchen. So far 7 out of the 8 kids that have been a part of my life have helped me cook in the kitchen and it will be a few years before I will be able to teach her.

When I got the program it became clear that I had to change all aspects of my life and that took time and I did it and I have no regrets for having done it. I have gained far more than I ever lost. The people today that are a part of my life are people that make it better for having been a part of it. They add to the joy and happiness of each day. Have a great day and God Bless, I love you all.

Step Eleven

Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out. This a very powerful statement and is has a very large impact on our daily lives. We get so wrapped up in the drum beat of each day that we so often time forget that which is most important in life.

It is said that freedom comes from self awareness and self knowledge and that is something that goes back thousands of years and yet we forget it every day. In this step we turn our focus to getting to know what God wants for us. The God of my understanding want me to be happy and he has his profound ways of teaching me things that no one could possibly teach me. I have as of late been re-evaluating the priorities in my life and the direction that it has been going.

I start each day with prayer and meditation and I end each day with prayer and meditation. I want to know what God wants for me and at times it is really hard for me to figure it out. I have learned over time that there are certain things that are guide posts to knowing if what I am doing is God's will or my will. The first is that things seem to fall into place in ways I could never have imagined possible and it all comes easy. If I am following my will road blocks pop up all over the place and I have to fight to gain an inch.

The next guide post is that when I am doing what God wants me to do I feel at peace with myself and the choices I am making. There is no internal conflict and I do not feel stressed over it in the least. When I am not doing God's will I am very stressed, short tempered and my stomach is in knots. I am overwhelmed and a basket case and certainly no fun to be around.

The next guide post is my happiness level. If I am doing God's will I know a real and honest happiness. This is a happiness that comes from the inside and radiates out for all to see and all the little things that would normally stress me out, don't. If I am not doing His will for me than I paint a smile on and go about my day feeling anxioous and depressed, sure that I am being punished for something I have done wrong.

The final guide post is the sleep factor. When I am doing His will for me, I sleep like a baby; soundly and deeply. When I am not, the blanets end up in a ball by morning and I tired as hell the whole next day. I have to do what is His will for me and that does not mean it is His will for anyone else, just me. In looking at my values and priorities of the last twenty years I have placed a lot of energy into chacing the brass ring and feeling frustarating because it kept getting moved.

While I was there for my family I wasnot there for them as much as I could have been and needed to be. My eyes were opened by someone that I love very much and is a large part of my life. One look was all it took to open my eyes to what I had been missing out on all these years. Since than I have resigned from driving cab, being the chair of the neighborhood association, vice-president of the neighborhood coalition, retired from politics and I have closed the doors of my business.

These have all been things that were a big part of my life and it is time to let them go and see what else God has in mind for me. I am still in school and I intend to finish that and I do still have my job and things are going very well there. I have had a lot of success in my life over the years and I have many great adventures. I have been places, seen things and done things that most people only dream of or fear. I am leaving my life and my heart open to God to fill it with all the love that he can.

I am will to go and do what he asks of me and I hope that in some way the experiences I have had over the years will benefit others and I know that it already has. I do not know where this new journey is going to take me or who will be a part of it. I just know it is time for a change and I have to remove the baggage that has been tieing me down so that I can grow in whatever direction I am meant to. There are people that are very important to me and they will continue to be important. I am moving forward and not looking back, bring it on, I am ready.

Have a great day all, God Bless and I love you all.

Step Ten

Continue to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it. This is something that is a very important and is called a maintance step. The first thing I need to keep in mind when thinking about this is that I am taking a personal inventory and not someone elses inventory. The focusis on me and what I am doing and that I am doing the right things for the right reasons.

This is the way I end my day by lookign at what I have done during the course of the day and evaluating what I am doing and why I am doing it. It is a time when I talk with God about what I have been doing that day and let go of the events of the day. I acknowledge when I did my best and when I fell short and look to see when I did something that may have hurt someone else. It does not matter if I intended to hurt someone else or not, the question is did I?

They say that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. The thing with intentions is that they are meaningless unless your actions match your intentions. I believe that if something is worth having it is worth working hard for and fighting for. My sobriety is something that I fight for and work hard for on a daily basis. Without that I have nothing. It is important to continually move forward and grow and taking a daily personal inventory is a critical part of that growth.

That personal inventory keeps that junk from building up and threatening my sobriety with resentments and other negative energy. My sobriety has to be real and honest and my daily personal invetories ensures that it stays that way. HAve a great day and God Bless, I love you all.

Step Ten

Continue to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admited it. This is something that is very much needed in my daily life. If I am not looking at what I am doing and more importantly the reasons for why I am doing it, issues will begin to build up. I need to be able to be honest with myself about what I am doing and more importantly why I am doing what I am doing.

It is after all possible to do the right things for the wrong reasons, which makes it wrong. I try to be aware of what I am doing as I am doing it and catch myself right away. If I am wrong I try to catch it right away and go to the person and admit that I was wrong and it often times catches them by surprise. I also try to end my day with a look at what I have done over the course of the day.

Is there something that I will need to make amends for the next day? Did I do the thoings that day for the right reasons? Did I try to manipulate or control a person, place or thing that I should not have? Did I try to make someone change to what I thought they should be? If the answer to any of these questions is yes than I have to do something to correct it right away. Otherwise it will fester and grow into a resentmesnt that can get me drunk.

I try to be totally honest with people and that keeps the need for amends down. It is also helpful to the people I am dealing with to know exactly where I am coming from and what they are dealing with. I have learned that to have expectations of other only gets us into trouble and if I am honest with them my hands are clean. If I have expectations about what they will do than I am not being honest with myself and my hands are not clean.

I cannot place any expectations on other for how they will react to me or what I am doing. I have no control or right to expect a certain reaction to my actions. If I am doing this than that goes to the motivations for my actions and it makes it all wrong. My motivations have to be right for anything I do to be right. Have a great day all and God Bless, I love you all.

Step Nine

Made direct amends such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others. This is somethig that is very important and needs to be looked at seriously. In the last step we became willing to make amends and now comes the time when we actually do it, At this time having a good relationship with your Higher Power comes in very handy. For I have found that my Higher Power puts the people and the means in place forme to make amends in the most appropriate way.

This is going to be diferent for each person and they have to be dealt with as individuals. This is something that is important, after all you are not sending out a form letter apology and if you do you can be asured that it will be treated as such. For some people on your list all that will be needed is that they see that you are living a good and happy life. For others you may need to have a face to face to take responsibility for your part in what happend and leave it at that.

In other cases you may need to write a letter about how you feel and what you did and than never send the letter. I have known people that gave to charity to benefit others that were in a similar positon as those they have hurt. Some of the people we hurt we will never see again because we moved, they moved or they have passed on. We also have to be able to accept that for some people the hurt is so great that no amount of amends will ever be enough. It is sad because we have worked so hard to get to this point that it can be devistating when the door is closed in our faces.

In the end we are responsible for the things we do and have done. We are not responsible for how others choose to react to what we do. If someone does not want to accept our amends or that we have changed than it is on them and not on us. We cannot change how they feel or how they choose to react to what we are doing. The final thing is that we need to make amends to ourselves and that has been a stumbling point for a great many.

It is so easy to forgive others for anything they do and yet so hard to forgive ourselves for the things we did to ourselves. The reality is that if we cannot forgive ourselves for the things that we did, how can we really expect others to forgive us? In forgiving ourselves we do not make light of what happened or make excuses for what happened. We take an honest look at the events of our lives and take responsibility only for our actions and reactions. We are not responsible for what anyone else did as a result of anything that happened. We all have free will and we all make our own choices and that is sometimes very hard for us to remember. It is after all much easier to blame our actions on what others have done, 'I would not have done that if they did not do...'. We chose to do it and that is all there is to it, no one can make us do anything we do not want to do.

Have a great day all and God Bless, I love you all.

Step Eight

Made a list of all people we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all. This is one that takes some tine to do and a couple of sharp pencils and a new notebook. When we create the list it can be a very long one and it needs to be. We need to look at everyone we hurt and if they are dead that is of no concern they go on the list ant ways.

This something that we do for our benefit and not the benefit of others. They are not walking around feeling the pain of what we have done, they are living their own lives and hopefully dealing with their own issues. When we talk about amends it is about taking reposibility for our part in the events that happened. How someone else reacted to it is not our concern, only what our part in it was.

The final part of the step is being ready to make amends to them all. That does not mean that we are going to have a party and invite everyone we have ever hurt and make amends to them all at once. Chances are we would not be able to walk out of the room, afterwards. It just means being willing to make amends and being open to the best way to do that. In some cases it may be a phone call or a face to face meeting over a cup of coffee.

For those that have already transitioned to a better place a letter, prayer or song (written by you) may do the job just fine. By being willing we open ourselves to all the possible ways to make the amends. We also open ourselves to the opportunities to come to us to be able to make amends. The person you want to make amends to most and have not seen in many years suddenly calls or walks into your life. By being willing you allow God to do his thing and provide for you the things you need to be able to make amends.

We also also have to be willing to accept that our amends will not be accepted because they are unwilling to let go. That is not on us and solely rests with the person receiving the amends. The final thing that we need to do is to look over the list and look for one name in particular...yours. Is it there? Are you willing to make amends to yourself? Are you willing to accept the amends and forgive yourself for the hurt you caused yourself? If it is not there you really do need to add it.

After all we are very quick to be critical of ourselves and even slower than anyone else to forgive ourselves. Have a great day all and God Bless, I love you all.

It's been seven years

Seven years ago today an event happen that would send me in a new direction and change my life forever. Before this event I was a dreamer and not a doer and while I cared about others and had a strong faith it was not solid. I still heald back and was not willing to trust God completely. I was in my second abusive marriage and my life was a wreck and I lived in complete fear on a daily basis.

I had gotten custody of my kids and my than wife turned violent and everything spiraled out of control real fast. All I could do was try to protect my kids the best that I could and I spent many a night curreled up in a corner crying to God asking why I had to go through this. I was working and going to school in another town and I hit a racoon with my car and that was in the shop. It was now winter and I was hacking to hitch hike from Annandale to St Cloud (20 miles) to and from work every day.

Than the event happened my than wife decided that because I was not making enough money for her, the kids and I had to go. She threw us out into the street with no where to go and no way to get there. It was cold and dark and I looked up to God and asked, why? I found a place for my kids to go and I got a ride to St Cloud and went to a meeting. Than I stopped and decided to give up and turn my life over completely to God. Nothing I was doing was working and I had just lost everything.

I was now stand on a street, no kids, no home and no money. I had a job and I was in school and I was still sober. Over the next month I was able to see my kids twice and I was so ashamed for them to see their father homeless. I think over that first month I saw my kids for about 4hrs and unders my pareents supervision. To make matters wose my kids were with their mother and I had taken the kids from her two years earlier becuase they were being abused. I lived every day with the idea that they were going to use this to take the kids away from me and I would never get them back. I did find a place to live after that first month and I did get my kids back.

I just kept turning my life over to God and asking him to use me for his will, whatever that was and I would not question it. Since than my life has been a sieres of ups and downs and it has been heading up since.

1. divorced twice
2. married once
3. engaged twice, one ended in marriage and the other friends
4. built a home for my kids and I
5. finished two college degress
6. started a third
7. ran for public office 3 times
8. became an advocate for men that are victims of domestic violence
9. became an advocate for single fathers as single parents
10 graduated one kid from high school so far and one more to go
11. watched both my kids rent their own homes
12. learned to love again

Out of the darkest things come the brightest events. It has been a wonderful seven years and I would not give up any of it. I am truely blessed to have the people in my life that I do because God brought them to me and blessed me with them as part of my life. Thank you God. Have a great day all and God Bless you, I love you all.

Step Seven

States, Humbly asked God to remove my short comings. The first thing I had to do with this step was to come to an understanding. That understanding was that humble and humiliate are not one in the same. At first I believed that I would have God was going to humiliate me during the process of removing my short comings. The second thing that needed to happen was the change of the idea that my character defects were not defects but short comings.

The difference is also rather profound in that a 'Character defect' indicates that I am broken and needing to be fixed. I was not broken and did not need to be fixed. A 'shirt coming' means that I have fallen short of my best and that I have fallen short of my own personal values. The final thing was to come to the understanding that I was not going to sit there with a shopping list and dictate to God, which short comings to remove now and which one to remove later.

We I humble mysefl before God I am simply acknowledging his ability to do things I could never dream of doing myself. It was the idea that I could do it all myself that caused me to be humiliated in the first place. Being humble carries no shame, guilt or pain with it. Acknowledging my humanity allows me to see my character defects as being short comings. These are not things that are wrong about me, they are traits and abilities that mean well and I allowed them to take over and cause others and myself harm.

Instead of being a positive in my life they became some distorted idea and heald me back from being as God intended me to be. By asking God to remove my short comings I admit that I do not have the ability to remove them myself and that I need his help. I in turnhand over the list of short comings that I know of and as I find more I give them to him as well. At first I thought that he would remove them all at once and I felt very disappointed that he did not.

I believed that my prayers were not being answered when in fact they had been answered all along. You see instead of removing them all at once and leaving me totally defensless he removed the ones that I was ready to have removed. As I grew as a person more and more of these short comings were able to be removed. My load became lighter for not having to carry all those short comings and that made it possible to grow even more.

I can only grow so much at any one time and if I want that growth to stick it needs to be slow growth. God understands that like a plant if you over feed or over water or give it too or too little light, you kill it. In that regards God is the master gardener and is keeping this plant alive and growing in the light of his love. Have a great day all and God Bless, I love you all.

Step Six

Where entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. Defects of character was the only thing I saw when I first read this. It supposed ans re-enforced the idea that had been beat into my head over the years, that I was defective. Was I really defective and if so, why?

The things that I had identified in my 4th step were the things that defined who I was. Now they were being refered to as defects of character. It tiik me a while to come to grips with what this meant. I had allowed things to define who I was and shape how others saw me. These traits that I had for so long were in fact walls that I had built up for so long to keep people out and never let anyone get close.

You see if you allow someone to get close, they can hurt you and I had been hurt far too much in life already. The stuff that was in my 4th was everything I did not want to be any more and it was not what I wanted others to see when they saw me either. It was that realization that helped me come to grips with the idea of what character defects meant. It did not mean that I was a bad person only that my ideas about who I was and am have changed.

I had come out of my crysalis and was ready to spread my wings and fly. That gave me the willingness to turn my character defects over to God and to allow him to remove them from me. Some were gone right away and others took much longer. It is in coming to the realization that the old me serves no purpose any longer, that I am free to change. It is in understanding that the past does not define the future that I am free to live. It is know that God protects me from harm that allows me to love again.

My life is defined by what I do in the present and not by what I did in the past. I will always carry with me the lessons I learned from those character defects. It does not mean that I will carry forward those character defects. We all have the ability to change as a good and dear friend continues to remind me. Yet it can only happen if there is a desire to change. That desire comes from know you have character defects and you are willing to give them up. If you do not believe you have character defects, you have nothing to give up and no reason to change.

It took years to be able to trust God enough to become entirely ready. For the longest time I would only give him parts of my life but never the whole thing. Now, I can give him the whole thing and I am still entirely ready to have him remove all my character defects. HAve a great day all and God Bless, I love you all.

Step Five

Admitted to God, to myself and another human being the exact nature of my wrongs. Ok what this isn't is when you have your head in the toilet saying, "God I know I was wrong to do this and I will never do it again." This is an important moment when we have a chance to let go of who we are as a drunk and make room for who we become as an alcoholic.

The first difference is that as a drunk we are still drinking and as an alcoholic we have found recovery. The 5th step for me was vert humbeling becuase I thought I was the absolute worst person that ever existed. When I finished sharingmy 4th step with a priest, he politly nodded and than asked me, "is that all?" Those three words sucked the wind out of my sail and sent my ego on a crash and burn into the ground.

They also sent shivers down my spine of hope that maybe I really was not all that bad. The important thing in doing your 5th step is that you are given a chance to let go of the baggage that you have been carrying around. That baggage can get you drunk faster than anything else ever will. That baggage also keeps you locked in a prison of your own creation and so long as you are in that prison you cannot grow as a person.

If we are going to make it in recovery and have real honest sobriety we need to be able to let go of the things we have done in the past. There will always be those that will always hold our past against us and there is nothing we can do to stop them or change them. The only thing we can do is change ourselves and that ability gives us more power in life than we can ever imagine.

For as we change for the better, those that do not want to change or accept or changes simply drop off in time. In letting go of the past we become reborn into the present and have the ability to become anything we want to become. This is the promise of recovery, that if you let go and let God, miracles will happen. This step gives us back our lives and allows us to have a fresh start and we deserve it after all we have been through.

Everything before this step is about building ourselves up and getting us ready to begin our new life free of alcohol and drugs. We have admitted the we cannot do it, that God can and that I will let him. We have taken an the best accounting of our past life as we can and now we are letting go of our old life. Understand that all the things we have done are still part of who we are it is just that they do not define who we will become.

That is somewthing that we have the freedom to choose for ourselves. We cannot change anything that happened in the past and we have no control over what will happen in the future. The only thing we have control over is how we act in the present and that will shape the future that we live. Have a great day all and God Bless, I love you all.

Think a Minute

Now, THIS is really fascinating - it's rather dazzling to see it presented this way. Scroll down...

I CERTAINLY THOUGHT THIS WAS ENLIGHTENING. BEYOND OUR SUN ... IT'S A BIG UNIVERSE.

ANTARES IS THE 15TH BRIGHTEST STAR IN THE SKY.
IT IS MORE THAN 1000 LIGHT YEARS AWAY.
NOW HOW BIG ARE YOU?
------------------------------------------------------------------

NOW TRY TO WRAP YOUR MIND AROUND THIS.........

THIS IS A HUBBLE TELESCOPE ULTRA DEEP FIELD INFRARED VIEW OF COUNTLESS
"ENTIRE" GALAXIES BILLIONS OF LIGHT-YEARS AWAY.


BELOW IS A CLOSE UP OF ONE OF THE DARKEST REGIONS OF THE PHOTO ABOVE.


HUMBLING, ISN'T IT?


KEEP LIFE IN PERSPECTIVE.



AND DON'T SWEAT THE SMALL STUFF!

Step Four

Made a sesarching and fearless moral inventory. This has too be by far the hardestthing that anyone has to do. It wipes away all the false images of ourselves and we lay naked before God. In reality God already knows everything we have already done and I am sure he knows what will happen if we do not change course. The idea behind this is to clear out all the stuff and get it on paper.

By stuff I mean all the good and bad that wehave done in our lives tothat point in time. There are many people that never get through this becuase they cannot handle seeing what they have become as a result of the drugs and alcohol in their lives. We all have this image in our minds of who we are, the fourth step removes that false image of who we think we are and exposes who we really are.

This is a step that should never be done alone and it should always be balanced between good and bad. I have known many people that have gotten drunk over their fourth step. The moral inventory is only going to be as good as our morals at the time will allow it to be. By the time we are ready to do our 4th step we usually at the end of our treatment program and we have a solid support system to back us up.

By the time we are ready to finish treatment we have more than likely regained some of the moral values that we had lost and regained some of the honest wirth ourselves that we had lost. To me the fearless thing was the idea that I was going to be ok when I was done and that was important. There is a great deal of fear when you begin to realize the shear number of people that you have hurt over the years.

When you begin to realize the amount of pain that you have caused yourself and others there is a great deal of fear. Can you ever forgive yourself, will anyone else, will God? All is good and I can assure you that you are never as bad as you think you are. The reason we feel so bad about the things we have done is simply because what we have done goes against our core values. By getting in touch with this we are also able to identify with our core values and that helps us identify with who we really are and that helps us get back to the real person behind the mask. Have a great day all and God bless, I love you all.

Step Three

Made a decision to turn our will and our live over to the care of God as we understood him. This is something that did not come easy for me and I struggled with it becuase of my lack of trust. For to me the God that I understood growing up was one of violence and he hated kids. This was hardly the God that I wanted to turn my life over to, I was crazy but not that crazy.

I needed to find a different God, one that I knew livedin my heart and not my head. This was a journey that would last for many years and take me halfway around the world. I had always been interested in the nature based faiths because of the respect that they and I shared for all life. Even though people had treated me very badly over the years I was never able to come to apoint were I hated them.

That by no means means I trusted them, that is an entirely different matter. I explored wiccan, shaminism of Central America and the faiths of many of the Native Americans to learn about the God that they understood. I have always knowm that God was known by many names and I always believed that God was both male/female, it just made sense that that was the case. Slowly I gained an understanding of a God that was loving and compasionate and that was something new for me.

I was still not ready to turn my will or life over to God because he was still responsible for what others had done to me in his name. Than after I had already been struggling with sobriety for a couple of years he apparently had enough and hit me upside the head with the proverbial 2x4. On Valintines Day 1981 I was in a head on colision and died on the scene. I would than have an experience in which I felt complete and total love as I have never felt before or since.

Aparently he was not done with me yet because he sent me back and I would climb out of the wreckage of my car and walk away without a scatch. Needless to say that everyone that saw it was blown away and I was clueless. It sent me on a deeper search because in that moment everything I had ever been taught about God, death and life after death just went out the window. It was as if God had hit the reset button and nothing made sense and I started my journey all over again.

I did not know where I was going or where I woudl end up. There was the Southern Baptist, various new age groups, wiccan, Native American, Assemlies of God, Catholic and the list can go on and does include Dowism, Budism and Hindu. I needed to figure out what happensed to me and what was going on. I still made bad choices and I still slipped and struggled with sobriety for another year or so.

The seeds had been planted and I knew that there was no turning back at that point. I would turn my life over piece by piece until I felt I could trust this new God of my understanding. I was changing and so was he and that took time and a lot of work on my part. God in reality neer changed only the way I saw him and his interactionin my life changed, I no longer held him responsible for the bad choices that others made.

I learned that I can love someone and not like what they do because they are different things. I have learned that the God of my understanding today can see around corners and has blessed me in a great many ways, too many to count really. My Higher Power (God) does not belong to any one church because no church is so big that it can handle all that God is. Today my God is one that I cannot define in human terms because they place limits on what God can be.

Today I know that God has a plan for me and while at times I wish I he would let me in on the secret. I am also glad that he does not tell me because I do like a good surprise now and than. In the end my belief in my new God of my understanding does not faulter it does change with each day because I change each day. Have a great day all and God Bless, I love you all.

Step Two

This was another hard step to make because I felt betrayed by God. Having been abuse by my mother and uncle and moliested by the babysitter and finally abused by the nunes at school, there was very little room for faith. I believed in a Higher Power but it was certainly not the one that everyone around me seemed to belive in.

Their God seemed to get a nut off on watching kids get beaten and that was supposed to be a loving God. I was raised Catholic and to me that meant that guilt ruled my life and that everything was either illegal, immoral or fattening. I had a very hard time with the whole God concept and what it meant to me. The things Iw as being taught in my catacism classes did not make sense to me. That was because the things they said were supposed to be doing were not the things people around me were doing.

I grew up in a very intersting time and place and I saw things that to this day I do not understand why I had to see them. I grew up around people that survived the rampage of the Nazi death camps. I was for hand the damage to the soul of the racism of the riots of the late 60's. I could not make the separation between what was going on in Vietnam and my own neighborhood at that time.

Death and violence seemed to be everywhere and I watch people turn on each other and understood how dark we could be to each other. Yet I found some comfort in a Higher power that could create the beauty of a rose and the sweet taste of a freshly picked ripe black cherry. The Higher Power I identified with was more along the lines of the one the Native Americans followed. I would read about their God and how loving and nurturing he was.

I struggled for a long time to come to understand that my understanding of my Higher Power would change with time and grow as I did. They call it a spiritual awakening when you come to believe in a Higher Power. Foe some it is sudden and for others it is gradual. For me he had to kill me to get me to see the light and I was still stubborn about it. I explored many religions trying to make sense out the senseless.

The hardest part was the concept that my Higher Power could restore me to sanity. I had to first come to the understanding that I was insane to begin with. Than there is the matter of trusting him to make me sane. Being able to trust God after all I had been through in his name was not going to be easy. Everytime I heard those words, "God loves you" made my skin crawl and made me recoil in fear. You see the beattings I took as a kid by the nunes and the adukts that were supposed to love me were always proceeded by, "I am going to show you how much God love you".

To me God's love meant being abused by someone. How can you tust someone that wants to see you abused? It took years of trying to be able to give him parts of my life just to see what he was going to do with it. It would be a lifetimes work to learn to trust God to return me from the nightmare I lived in his name. Slowly I have learn to trust a Higher Power of my understanding. I will never trust the God they talk about in church because I associate him with the abuse that I suffered through ut my life.

God to me lives in my heart and not in any building. People I have learned do the most horrible things to each other in God's name. They believe that he will reward them for that as well. How can a God of unconditional love be proud of a mother that beats her kids or a nune that beats the word of God into you? Have a great day all and God Bless, I love you all.

Step One

When I look at the first step I see hope for a better future for myself. That was not alwats the case though. When I first looked at it it was something I mouthed to get people off my back. It had no meaning to me because I knew it did not apply to me. The first step states, "We admit we were powerless over alcohol and that our lives had become unmanageable".

Hell, I knew I could control the drugs and alcohol, I had been doing that for years and the only reason my life was unmanagable was because people refused to do what I thought they should be doing. The reality was far different than I had imagined it could have been. The reality was that I was a trainwreck looking for a place to happen. I was flunking out of high school, I had no concept of a healthy relationship of any kind.

I had lied to and manipulated everyone in life and was hell bent on a path of self destruction. I was self abusive and I had a violent temper that kept me safe on the streets. I became whatever I needed to become to stay alive and make it through the next crisis in my life. I felt no human connection to anyone and I had already seen more violence in my life than most would see in a lifetime.

I was hell on wheels and fought anything that anyone wanted to do for me becuase I trusted no one. I saw everyone as working an angle just to use me to get what they wanted and there were no exceptions. I had learned many hard lessons in life by the time I first looked at that first step. I was 18 and I was in a room of old drunks, what the hell did they know about the life I had lived.

My first meeting I was like a scared rabbit caught in a trap and I smoked an entire carton of cigerettes that night. There was only one person in that room that understood what I had been through and he had just been released from prison after serving time for murder. I never saw him again and it kinda freaked me out that he was the only one that could relate to me. I think that was the first moment that I understood that something was wrong, I mean really understood and not just mouthing the words.

It occured to me at that moment that if I did not change I was going to end uo where he was and I knew that was not what I wanted. I spent a lot of time doing a lot of soul searching while still trying to control everyone in my life. I even went through treatment and that was a joke. I had lived the hard life on the streets of the big city and these kids lived a comfortable mid western suburban life. They had never dug through the trash looking for food, they had never carried a gun so you could shoot back and stay alive.

The more I loearned about the dease and recovery the more I felt alone because there was no one that could understand what I was relating. They would shy away from me and recoil in fear when I talked about what I had expierenced in life, When I look back now I see myself on the brink and I could have very easily gone the other way. I followed a nature based faith of the Native Americans and in that I found what I needed to hold onto some sense of humanity.

Was my life unmanagable, yah I see that now and at the time I was blind to it. I thought I was in control of everything and everyone. Control is an illusion that tricks us into believing that we are God and that what we think really matters. In the end we are a piece of sand on a beach and while we impact the live around us we do not control the lives around us. The booze and drugs only allows us to think that as it draws into a death spiral that eventually will kill us. For some the lucky it is a physical death for others it is a mental or emotional death.

It has take years of very hard work for me to be able to feel human and to have a connection to people. Still to this day I allow very few people to get really close and they have to be damn special to be allowed that close. Yet through it all I never stoppe caring about people and wanting to help them. I am not sure if that makes any sense at all but it was the one thing that allowed me to stay connected ion some way to humanity. Well now that I have spewed, have a great day all and God Bless, I love you all.

Recovery is Easy

I have heard that statement made by people that to be kind have no clue about what recovery is. They read a book somewhere and now they have all the answers. These are individuals that have never had to take that walk and have never supported a loved one that has or is taking that walk. To be honest recovery is the hardest thing you will ever do and the most rewarding as well.

For those that have never steppedintot he world of recovery they think of it in the same way as starting your car on a warm spring day. You simply jump in, turn the key, drop it in gear and go. For me recovery is more like starting you car in December when it is below zero. Sometimes it starts and sometimes it does not. Sometimes you need jumper cables and other times a good friend to tow you home, lol Sometimes it starts and you have to feather the gas peddle for what feels like a lifetime to get it to stay running, cause you know if you take your foot of the gas it is going to die.

Even when you get it started, it still takes forever for it to warm up enough so that it will not die on you the minute you put it into gear. It also has to warm up ennough that the windows are clear and your coffee does not freeze. I other words recovery is never easy to start and it is even harder to maintian and just like starting a car in the winter once you have it running it is a grat thing.

I bothers me greatly when I hear people say that support groups for people in recovery keeps them weak. That is the farthest thing from the truth becuase you draw strength from the knowledge that others have gone through this and made it. Damn if they can do it so can I and when you do make it you have a responsibility to help the next person get to the point that they can make it.

Today I can look at my journey of recovery and know that it was all worth the effort. Even though there were days I never thought I would make it. At the begining I could not imagine going one day without getting drunk or stoned. Today I can and I can do it today becuase today is all I really have. I am grateful for each person that is in my life and value them and charish them for all they bring to it. Thanks everyone, hope you all have a great day and God Bless, love you all.

Family, Family on the Wall

This holiday season as with all the others of my past brings with it the reminder that my family is distant. They are miles away geographically and a lifetime away in any other sense. You see my family is full of drunks and abusers and they never got over it or if they have I don't know anything about it. You see I ahve not gottent a phone call or holiday card from the in 30 years.

At one time I cared about why they were treating me the way they were. I sobered up and made something of myself and raised two kids that I am very proud of. Yet nothing has changed, they still want nothing to do with me. What has changed is that I no longer wait for that phone call or that Christmas card. Though there is still hope that some day they will be willing to accept me into their lives again.

What I do know now and it took me a long time to get here is that I am not responsible for the choices they make. I held onto the idea that this year it would be different for too many years. I got angry with them for far too long because their lack of contact punished my kids for things I did or they did. I think that was probably the hardest part of all, I could deal with the idea that they felt they still needed to punish me but my kids, that was a different matter.

At first I thought itheir lack of contact was because becuase of things I had done. Then I thought is was because of the fact that I had sobered up and they had not. Then it just no longer matter what excuse was used to justify what they were doing to my family. After years of hating myself and being angry with them, I realized that I was punishing my kids for what my family had done. I was just as guilty as they were in this area.

Today I am trying to heal that with my kids and hope that they will do better with their kids than I did in this area. My family is my family and I will always love them and I will always look in the mailbox this time of year to see if I got a Christmas card from them. My heart will always sink when there is no card from them again. What has changed is that I am no longer allowing them to destroy my holiday with my kids and the people in my life that I love.

It is about choices and this was a hard choice to make, to go on each year without them. You see I felt that I was turnign my back on them and felt very guilty about doing that. IN the end though I am responsible for the things that I do and not how others react to it. If they choose to never speak to me again that is their choice and I will live with it. I have been blessed with wondeful kids and people that I call my family.

I enjoy the holidays with the family I have, even if it is not the family I was born into. You see with the family I have I am able to be me. They love me for who I am and accept me flaws and all and I cannot ask for any better gift on any holiday. Have a great day all and God Bless, love you all.

What is Recovery?

I have known people that simply do not understand what recovery really means. They think that if you stop drink, druging or get out of the abusive relationship that you have recovered. The in reality is only half of the equasion and in fact it is the easiest part of all. For those that have tried this approach and only abstain they still have a life that is filled with all the same problems and behaviors as before.

Some people may even think I am crazy by saying that abstaining is the easy part and in reality it really is. The hard part comes when we have to look in the mirror and see who we have become as a result of our abusing the booze or drugs. Who we turning into becuase of the abuse of another that we loved. We all create false images of who we are and that can be really hard to break through to allow the real me to get through.

With time and lot of work I slowly identify the things that I did that hurt those around me and the things I did that hurt me. It is important to do that and to make amends for having done it. Yet, for many the best amends will be in the form of changed behavior, in not continuuing to do the same things over and over again. When we are in recovery it is not enough to just stop drinking, we also need to change the way we think, deal with issues and how we deal with others.

We no longer have the ability to hide behind a bottle, a pill or an abusive spouse. If we continue to do what we have always done we will only have ourselves to blame for it. Looking in the mirrow and see what looks back is the hardest thing anyone can ever do, when done honestly. The bravest thing we can do is to take action to change what we see by allowing ourselves to come out from behind the mask that we have created.

The bravery comes in when we allow ourselves to be real with all our flaws and allow others to love us for who we are and not for who we pretend to be. This is recovery and it is really hard to do becuase you ahve to be honest with yourself and others. You cannot hide behind masks like others do, you have to be real. It in being real and honest that we recover the thing that means the most and that was the highest price paid for the abuse of chemicals or the abuse at the hands of another. Our selves, our own identity our own soul.

Have a great day all and God Bless, love you all.

Prep Time

Today we wrap up the week and get ready for tomorrow and all the activities that will come along with it. I am looking forward to having a little time off and being able to relax. I know that I will be cleaning and cooking and tending to all the last minute, I forgot to get this or that. I may even feel like puling my hair out at a time or two.

Yet this is all different the stress and anxiety of the day is about doing for the people in your life that you want to be there. I am excited because my son does nto have to work as originally thought and so both my kids will be home for Thanksgiving. It will be a day of travel and fun and enjoying the company of people that I both love and care about. People that hold a special place both in my heart and life.

I wish everyone the best that the day can bring as we all come together in gratitude for the people and events in our lives that keep it all interesting. It will be a fun day and thanks to all those special people in my life for being there. You guys mean the world to me.. Have a great day all and God Bless, love yah all.

Wakie Wakie

It is that time again, to wake up and begin a new week. It has occured to me that Thursday will be the first day I get to sleep in...mmmmmm The turkey will have to wait until 7 and I hope that I do not wake in a panic because I am late for work. I have been thing about the things in my life that I am thankful for and I would be here all day if I were to list them.

The first thing would have to be my friend and family and often times the lines between the two blures. They say that you can pick your friends but not your family and that is certainly true enough. Yet I have found that over the years we have two families. The one we were born into and the one we claim and they are not always the same. We allow people into our lives all the time and some I am glad that I did and others, well I am thankful they are gone.

For those that are in my life, they bring something positive to my life and I hope that I bring something positve to theirs' as well. The people in my life have touch my heart and made my life richer for their having been a part of it. That is a good feeling to have and to know that I have made better choices about who I allow into my life and who I do not. Those that we choose to call friend or family are those that have stood by our side time and time again when it mattered most. That is surely something to be grateful for, it is even better when they do not realize that they have been that in your life.

My friends and family are very special to me and I cannot imagine life without them and the joy and happiness they have brought into my life. Even when they have brough stress, anxiety or I just wanted to shake my head, it was still nice we they got it. You could be proud of them and what they have accomplished. We all face challenges and hardships and it is the special people in our lives that get us through the rough spots in life.

Have a great day all and God Bless, love yah all.

Hmm...Weekend

Well another weekend is quickly coming to a close and things have been very good this weekend. There have been some warm fuzzys and a few good hearts laughs at my daughters expense. She is learning to care for a 3mt old and is finding that it is not as easy as she thought. She learned her very first really important lesson about caring for a baby.

When a baby is sick and teething, apple juice is a no no. LOL She found out that you end up wearing the poo that comes flying out (explosively....think the Exorcist, only at the other end) LOL I can take heart in know that this is a lesson that she has learned all too well and I doubt seriously that she will be repeating it any time soon. Otherwise it has been a relaxing weekend as I was able to get my school work done.

I have to research a few things so I can get credit for classes that I have already taken, otherwise my schooling will go from one year to three. I am really not all that excited about going to school for another three years but if I do not have a choice, than I will have to do what I have to do. I know that in the end it will be worth it and I do have a stable job and in this day and age that is saying a lot.

I am looking forward to Thanksgiving very much at this point as I will not be driving cab that day. Which will mean that that will be the first day I have had off since mid-May and I intend to enjoy it. Have a great night all and God Bless, Love yah all and thanks for being a part if my life.

These are some of my favorite songs

Mental Feng Mental Feng Shui

ONE.
Give people more than they expect and do it cheerfully.

TWO.
Marry a man/woman you love to talk to. As you get older, their conversational skills
will be as important as any other.

THREE.
Don't believe all you hear, spend all you have or sleep all you want.

FOUR.
When you say, 'I love you,' mean it.

FIVE.
When you say, 'I'm sorry,' look the person in the eye.

SIX.
Be engaged at least six months before you get married.

SEVEN.
Believe in love at first sight.

EIGHT.
Never laugh at anyone's dreams. People who don't have dreams don't have much.

NINE.
Love deeply and passionately. You might get hurt but it's the only way to live life completely.

TEN.
In disagreements, fight fairly.. No name calling.

ELEVEN.
Don't judge people by their relatives.

TWELVE.
Talk slowly but think quickly.

THIRTEEN!
When someone asks you a question you don't want to answer, smile and ask, 'Why do you want to know?'

FOURTEEN.
Remember that great love and great achievements involve great risk.

FIFTEEN.
Say 'bless you' when you hear someone sneeze.

SIXTEEN..
When you lose, don't lose the lesson.

SEVENTEEN.
Remember the three R's: Respect for self; Respect for others; and Responsibility for all your actions.

EIGHTEEN.
Don't let a little dispute injure a great friendship.

NINETEEN.
When you realize you've made a mistake, take immediate steps to correct it.

TWENTY.
Smile when picking up the phone. The caller will hear it in your voice.

TWENTY- ONE.
Spend some time alone.

Now that we have had our mental exercise for the day we can now all bend over and touch our toes...lol

Kids' duh

My daughter was the last of the kids to move out and she had everything going for her. She was on my health insurance, free room and board and all she had to do was follow my rules. Heck I even gave her and her boyfriend rides when they needed it. Well the day after she turned 18 she moved out and into her own place and did not need my help any more. She has since learned that when you are 18 and even when you are still in school, if your not living with your parents they have no say in anything.

This is what she wanted until it happened and than the reality of what that means and the fantasy of what that means come crashing into each other in an ugly mess. Bodies flying every where and illusions of the carefree life of an adult, lies dead on the of the road. she has suddenly found out that being an adult and on your own means that you are totally responsible for your life, your choices and the results of those choices. Duh, like I did not tell her and I know that others here have also told her that, months ago.

The unfortunate thing is that we are all over the age of 30 and as we all know, our brains turn to muxh when you hit 30 and you just become dumb. I want to pick her up and make it all better and at the same time I know that if I do that she is never going to learn what she needs to learn. Right now she is angry at her ma and I, the school and I am sure that I have forgotten a few more. She will get over it and learn some important lessons about life. The first being that no matter how much you think you know, life does not go the way you thought it would. HAve a great day all love yah and God Bless.

Self Deception

I was 18 when I first cam to the realization that I might have a problem and I was both scare and pround that I had figured this out. So I went to my parents and shared this with them and expected that would be shocked to hear me say this. Their response was something like, "really wahta was your first clue, we've known for years." That was the first moment that I realized that there was some deceving going on, I just was not sure who was doing the deceving.

How could people know things about tat I did not know about myself. The idea that I was going to get sober out of some noble sense of self improvement was also far from the truth. The reality was thgat I had been drinking and using for 8 years and being a realist I know that my odds were getting short. If I did not do something I was going to end up in jail as an adult and have to do hard time. I was scared as hell and out to protect my own a**.

It would take another three years before I would finally get it and stop slipping. Needless to say that by than many of the people that cared about me had given up and walked away. They could not understand what I was going through and just how hard it was. You see it is not just getting past the booze and the drugs that is hard. It is also getting past the bull**** that I had told myself for so many years.

I needed to become willing to look to the center of my being and see what was there that was worth fighting for becuase I was in a fight for my life. If I did not sober up it was only a matter of time before I was going to be dead. It was really hard and at times very painful to see what I had become and how many people I had hurt. Today things are different and I have not only learned to care for myself but for others as well. Today I can look myself in the face and love myself and feel good about what I have become.

Have a great day all and God Bless, love yah all

Relaxation

A simple word, 'relaxation', Yet, it has been one that I have seen very little of with the schedule I have been keeping. Last night was te first time in a very long time that I was able to just relax. I did help my son move some of his stuff from his old place to his new place and than I was able to just relax.

It was a great feeling and the best part of all was I did not feel guilty for doing it either lol. It is amazing how refreshed you can feel after a little bit of rest. The job market around here has sucked in the IT sector and it had been hard finding anything that was not contract work. I finally found something and I have been there for a while now. Since than I ahve been working two jobs, seven days a week to get myself back on solid footing financially.

I am finally getting to the point that there is light at the end of the tunnel. I am looking at dropping the second job around the end of this month. Then for the first time in a very long time I will ahve a couple days off each week. It is going to feel strange and I will have to make some adjustments again. I will have time to relax and enjoy life and not just work. It has been a lot of hard work to get to this point and I had to prove a lot of stuff to myself.

I built this home and I ahve been in it for almost seven years now and that has been hard for me. Until now the longest time I have ever lived in one place was 4-5 yrs, so there was a huge mental barrier that I had to cross there. Then there is the fact that I am living by myself for the first time in 20 yrs, actually the first time in my life. That was another mental barrier that needed to be crossed, that I could live by myself without the world caving in on me.

Then over the last decade I had supported anywhere from 3 to 8 people on whatever I was making at the time. Yet, I had been accused of not being capable of doing that and that brings me to the third mental barrier that needed to be crossed. In working hard and applying the financial plan that I have always believed in I have regain solid financial footing and I have done without help from anyone.

Then there is the final mental barrier that needed to be crossed and that was the one of fearing being alone. This is not the same as living by yourself becuase you can be in a room full of people and still be alone. In this I am refering to relationships and the idea that some had suggested that I could not function without being in a relationship. I am not in a relationship and I ahve not been in one for some time now. In fact my last girlfriend and I broke up in December of last year.

I am not in any big hurry to get into a relationship any time soon and it is not something that I need to survive. Last night when I was just able to relax for the first time in a very very long time, there was a feeling of arrival. Whatever point that was imagined was arrived at at that moment and it felt great. Life is great and I can finally feel comfortable in my own skin knowing that I have crossed all the mental barriers that needed to be crossed. Now life begins in ernest and lets see what God has in store for me, yippy.

Have a great day all and God Bless, love to you all.

Happy Thanks Giving

This is the time of year when we are supposed to be grateful for what we have and the people in our lives. I hope that this is not the only time of year we choose to be grateful or thankful for the people and things in our lives. I am very grateful for everyine that touches my life on a daily basis and that is a lot of people.

Each brings something out in me and helps me learn something new about me. Some times I see someone that is worse off than I am becuase they have more or less than I do. Becuase it I have come to the conclusion that it is not the things we have that really matters, it is the people in our lives that really make a difference.

In our world of instant gratification it is not something we are taught to value. It seems that it is far more important to get it at 70% off original price than to tell or show someone that you care. If you had no money, who would still be in your life? I have been given people to love and to care for and I do. Everyone has issues and problems and at times I can be there for them or help them along the way.

The best gift you can give this year to someone is that they do not feel alone in their journey in life, At times the journey is hard and the road is rocky and at other times is is smooth as glass. No matter what your road condition is, it is always better when you have someone to share it with. It back the bad times better and the good times great. A toy or scarf cannot give that to anyone. I am thankful for all the people in my life for each of you have been a blessing in your own special way.

Thanks for being a part of my life and my holiday. Have a great day and God bless, love yah all.

God's Will for Us

In recovery they ask us to consider God's will for us and for an addict that is somethig that is really hard to do. We are such a head strong bunch and we always know what is good for us, or so we think. If we know what is so good for us than why are we miserable so much of the time?

I have found that when I step out the driver's seat and let God sit there my life goes so much better. I do not need dramam in my life becuase life is filled with happiness. I do not need to have bad relationships becuase I have good ones. My stress levels go down and I can sleep better at night. So why didn't I let him drive much siiner than I did, in short, I'm stubborn and I know it.

The days are good and I can see the progress that I am making each and every day. Some times the things are big and at other times they are small but they are there. It is simply a matter of taking the time to see the miracles that unfold in my life. I have come to understand that God's will for us is to be happy and not the short term superfishal happines but real solid happiness.

The difference between the two is very noticalble. When you ahve real happiness in your life you hold onto it with both hands. Nothing can take it away from you and the little things that would normally anoye you just role off you back. People can open their mouths and say stupid things and it has not affect on you. Only those that have no happiness want to take away your happiness while those that know happiness will celebrate your happiness. Your happiness is God's will for you and the only thing that changes is what it takes for each to have our own hapiness.

Have a great day all and God Bless, love to you all.

Past to Present

One of the beliefs that I told to strongly is that our past does not define what we are to become. Simply because you were abused does not mean that you will abuse. If people treat you badly it does not mean that you have to treat others badly in return. While my mother was the source of much of the abuse I suffered as a child she also taught me that, 'if I don't like it than to change it in myself'.

I have tried to go out of my way to be nice to people my whole life because I wanted to be different and I did not want to carry on where others had left off with abuse. I am human and I am by no means perfect or a saint, I am simply determined to do things differently. That is my choice and it is also my choice not to allow the past to become a crutch to excuse bad behavior.

Today is my life and I ahve a good life that is filled with hard work and happiness. It is that way because that is what I chose to fill it with. My boss knows I am in scholl to finish my degree and he knows that when I am done that I will have a lot of doors open to me. He asked me straight out how much time he had left becuase he knows that there will be companies that will offer me far more money than he can.

I told him I am looking at July/August as time frame to finish school and than let the bidding war begin. It feels good to know that I am appreciated at work, Lord knows that does not happen very often lol. My future today is based on what I am doing in my life not on what happened to me in the past. The things that happened to me in the past drive me to make a better life for myself and for anyone that I choose to care about. Right now the future looks very bright from here and since my kids have grown and moved out on their own there are no limits.

I can now accept any job in any location that meets my needs and that is both exciting and terrifying all at the same time. I am also being realistic about it all to since it looked great before I graduated with my AAS and than the bottom fell out, so my hope and prayers are that it will not fall out again. I hope my past will help people understand that you are not chained to your past. That it can make you stronger and be a motivator to make for yourself that life you want and deserve. Or you can choose to stay in the past and keep doing what youi always did and expect the world to change to your beat, and we all know that will never happen.

All we have is today and it is our job to make today the best day of our life. Life is after all what we make for ourselves not what other define for us, so make this life great. Have a great day all, God Bless and I love you all.

Growing up Abused

Growing up in an abusive family you gain a very twisted idea of what love is. As a child I found myself being abused by every one in the family that felt they had a reason that they could justify. It is a sad state when you become conditioned to believe that abuse equals love. When they bring God into it by telling you they are showing you God's love, makes it even worse.

They not only screw with your head about what a relationship is they also screw with your head about what God means. For the longest time if I was not allowing people into my life that would abuse me I was abusing myself in a twisted idea of self love. In hind sight what comes out of the fog of time is a far different reality, one that leaves you filled with shame and disgust.

The idea that you would invite people into your life just so they can hurt you, I find unimaginable now and yet so easy to do. In hind sight I know that the people that were in my life in the past were more of a reflection of myself and how I viewed my own self worth than anything about them. To see look at yourself in the mirror and not see someone that is worth living, loving or being loved is hard.

What is even harder is to break the cycle of hurt and pain and open yourself to all the positive things that exist in the light of God's love. Today I can see the love that I know that God has for me and the tenderness that he fills my heart. I think that the fact that I am capable of loving myself and another is a miracle that could never have happened without God being a part of my life.

Today I ahve choices about the direction of my life and the peoiple that I choose to invite into my life. I choices about the kinds of behavior that is allowable and what behaviors will not be allowable. My wish for those that are traveling down the road of recovery from abuse is that they do not loose faith. It does get better with time and it is a lot of work to get to apoint that you can live again. What it takes is a complete transformation in the way you look at everything in life, especially yourself.

I can choose to do that which I have always done and hope something different happens. I can also choose to do things differently than I have done before and see what happens. In changing my habits and beliefs I open myself to all the possibilities and I also open myself to the possibility of being hurt. I have a choice and that is something that I no long am willing to allow those that abused me to take away from me.

I have forgiven those that abused me becuase I believe that they did not know any better. That does not mean that what they did was right, only that we live what we have been taught. When you have been a victim of abuse you tend to hurt others before they have a chance to hurt you. The hardest thing is to allow the hurting to stop and the healing to begin and that takes a great deal of faith in God and yourself. If we want to know what love means look no farther than 1 Corintians and you will see how God defines it and it is unconditional.

Good Night All, God Bless and I love you all