Thanksgiving

Thanks for recovery is the core of our prayer today. Recovery is thanks for the courage to address the challenge. We don't always make the perfect decisions but we know we have God's grace. God's grace means knowing and feeling His presence even in our anxieties. If you have stress related to family issues and the availability of alcohol or drugs at gatherings, step back and feel God's presense reassuring you that you can make the recovery decision.

Happy Thanksgiving

Blessings---Penny

In the book "To Kill a Mockingbird" Atticus encourages his 11 year old daughter, Scout, to consider how a situation looks from the other person's vantage point before becoming angry and frustrated. Scout becomes aware of what this really means when, late in the story, she stands on the porch of a reclusive neighbor and realizes how the neighborhood looks from there.

Recently a friend talked about her frustration and anger that her daughter could not hold onto her sobriety. "If she really loved me she would stop. She knows how frightened I am for her," was essentially the mother's exclamation. For those of us who find "sustained" recovery a challenge, a comment like this can cause our own frustration and anger. "She doesn't understand the compulsion of this disease,...how hard I try...how helpless I sometimes feel."

Our addiction directly affects at least 4 other people. We each need to step onto the others "porch" and take a look from their vantage point.

Blessings-Penny

interesting question

In the movie "A Kind of a Funny Story" the therapist for a 15 year old struggling teenager asks the question, "When was a time in your childhood that you felt complete joy--a sense of abandon?" As my husband and I drove home from the movie, we thought about that question for ourselves. (We each grew up in active chaotic homes. Each of us had a parent with the disease of alcoholism.) We had difficulty naming a time of complete joy. There were good times, but in reflection, there was also a sense of anxiety. Someone might learn the secret.

Was there a time in your childhood you felt complete joy? Is there a way to recreate some of that joy in your life of recovery?

For me the sense of freedom that comes with recovery is close to joy.

Blessings-Penny

Anxiety

In a recent issue of Vogue magazine, the writer Nora Ephron wrote an article that talked about the anxiety created by having a mother who had the disease of alcoholism. She wrote of the fear of her mother visiting her in college--the fear that her friends would find out that her mother was alcoholic---the fear that the secret would get out.

So many of us grew up in homes where a parent had the disease of alcoholism and addiction. One consequence of growing up in a home with addiction is an ongoing sense of anxiety. The anxiety that the secret of addiction/alcoholism creates stays with us for the rest of our lives. That anxiety creates a feeling that we need to control everything in our lives and the lives of those around us. For our own recovery and personal growth, it is essential we become aware of where we hold the anxiety---how the anxiety plays out in our daily lives, our relationships with those we love, and our relationship with God.

Where do you hold the anxiety and fear? In your shoulders, in your fists, in the tightness around your mouth, in your clenched jaw? Do you want a drink or drug to relieve the tension? Can you tighten up that part of your body when you become aware of the stress and then relax? Can you smile that you are becoming increasingly aware of where you hold the tension?

Where does the anxiety, the need to control, interfere with your relationships with those you love? Do you yell? Do you tell them how to live their lives? Or do you let them exoerience the logical consequences of their own decisions? Tough to do.

Where does the fear enter your relationship with God? Do you listen? Are you open? Do you read nurturing meditations? Can you trust? Do you reach for His hand? He promises to be with us. He promises!!!

Blessings-Penny

Disease

Do I really, at my core, believe addiction is a disease or do I hold onto the lie that I might have some control over it? If I believe I have heart disease or diabetes, I pay close attention. Each day-several times a day- I monitor my diet; I exercise; I check my blood sugar; I watch my stress levels. Even if I've been diagnosed with these other diseases for several years, I still pay close, daily attention.

But, so very often, with addictions of alcohol or drugs or gambling or sex or shopping or food, after a while I let my thoughts return to the "good times"--before the addiction took over.

Do I monitor daily that I have no power over the addiction--but I do have power over my decisions? If I do what I have always done, I will get what I always got! Do I reach out for the hand God has extended?
Blessings-Penny

amazing

A couple of days ago I was doing some fall yard cleanup. I took an armload of cutback flowers and stuff to the mulch pile and tossed them in. Out of the corner of my eye I saw something green and white in the dark brown mulch. On further inspection here was a gorgeous Easter lily! It's fall here--we've had snow showers! But to my utter amazement an Easter lily is blooming in my mulch pile. We had a lily plant to celebrate Easter and when it was "done" I had tossed it into the mulch pile. Over the summer it had put down roots and bloomed "where it was planted." A delightful, unexpected surprise.

Am I able to "bloom where I am planted?" Am I able to take root even if the surroundings are not ideal? Can I be an unexpected surprise in some "mulch pile?"

Blessings, Penny

Needs

What makes it so difficult for many women to ask for what they need for themselves? Recently I have heard 2 women framing their problems as stress in their lives. When encouraged to explore that "stress," they were each able to articulate a need that they had difficulty expressing to those involved in their stress issue...a need that once fulfilled would at least decrease the stress. Clinically,they were encouraged to use the well known "I statements" when expressing their need rather than the "you statements"that can come across as accusatory.

And on further exploration they each were able to acknowledge that the stress created by not engaging in the difficult, sometimes scary work, of expressing their needs to someone else, they were setting themselves up for an emptiness. That emptiness, that loneliness felt like a spiritual emptiness at times. They were reminded to pray. To seek an intimacy with God. God knows what our needs are and He wants to be with us in the seeking. He promises to be with us in the seeking.

Do we remember to take the hand He offers us?

Blessings-Penny