We ALL Have A Past

I'm in Tulsa for the weekend. A little R&R from Nana. Tonight I had dinner with some old friends. Friends that I use to tear it up with! FUN times! We ate at another friend of ours restuarant. A couple of these girls I haven't kept in great contact with but they always manage to show up when I come to town which is nice. Another girl and I talk every couple of months or so. The first 2 girls I haven't been around since I got sober. I can't lie and say it was a little hard watching them drink. Not that I wanted to drink, just that I remember how much fun we had. If you know anything about AA, then you'll know they always say to play the whole tape thru, and I did and a lot of those times weren't so much fun for me. Those girls aren't alcoholics though. They found partners, had kids and settled down in life. Some of them are doing VERY well for themselves and I started judging my insides with their outsides. Honestly, it was making me a bit depressed. But just for a bit did I even entertain that idea. Once I was alone I thought about how different all of our lives are. How maybe they have more in some areas but notin others. Some of them work their asses off for what they have. Some of them can't believe I've survived what I have in life. Most of them never thought I had a drinking problem. That is because they didn't live inside my head and my heart. A drinking problem takes on many forms, not just the whino laying in the gutter. I started thinking about the directions we all take. How, after several years and each going in our own direction, we can still come together and enjoy each others company. I also realized how important my path is to me. The path of sobriety. The path of serenity. The path of spirituality. My life is different in so many ways. The path I am on is not the path I would have picked out. I would have picked the path that 'appears' easier. The path with the most materlistic rewards. Tonight I realized how grateful I am for the path I am on. How grateful I am for following the path my higher power has led me down. I don't know where it goes exactly or what will happen or when. I know that there will be good times and bad times and that I will find the good in either situation. My past gave me a future. We ALL have one. I'm finally learning to embrace mine in order to move on to the future rather than letting my past hold me back.

What IS the purpose?

So a few things have happened since I last posted. I guess the first was that I realized that I have been waiting and hoping that when I meet that one special person they would fill that big black hole that I discovered. I've always hated those girls that HAD to have a boyfriend and whose whole lives were about finding that one. I have a friend that left AA, I believe, because he didn't find enough gay men to date. That annoyed me when all he would talk about is there was no one to date. And yet, here I sit, thinking the same thing. That someone is going to sweep into my life and not just fill the hole (here is the clinker) but totally eradicate the hole entirly!!! Like who, on EARTH, is capable of filling such a giant gargantous HOLE???? No WONDER it has never worked (despite the losers I have picked in the past). So 2 giant leaps forward for me!

And then one half step back. I didn't get my way about something that I thought I had clearly made arrangements to make happen. The events might still happen, but they weren't happening the way I wanted them to go down. Or the way I EXPECTED them to go down! Yeah yeah yeah, expectations. I still have them. I know! But I don't know how to NOT have them yet, so I do. Especially when I take the preliminary steps. So I had a TOTAL melt down Friday. And then I start talking about throwing Nana in a nursing home and leaving. I hate that I do this. I sound repulsive I think when I say that. Like I am whining for sympathy. Circling the wagons to my side. Gathering supports. I mean, if the time is right then that is what I will do if God is the one leading me there, but I hate that my mind immediatly goes there. I feel like I'm the little boy crying wolf. Know what I mean?

So in my meltdown I was questioning why this all was. WHY God put me here to watch like a mouse in a maze. God's little experiment to entertain Himself. Yes the self pity was running rapant. And then, my sponsor sends me this email. She sent it that day but I couldn't settle myself down enough to read the thing until Sunday. I SHOULD have read it THAT DAY!!! But I didn't so I guess I read it when I was suppose to and I think it was written JUST for me. It put it ALL is perspective for me and I felt more than a little ashamed for my hysterics. So here it is. If anyone is reading this then leave me a comment about the interview.

In the interview by Paul Bradshaw with Rick Warren , Rick said:

People ask me, What is the purpose of life? And I respond: In a nutshell, life is preparation for eternity. We were made to last forever, and God wants us to be with Him in Heaven.

One day my heart is going to stop, and that will be the end of my body-- but not the end of me.

I may live 60 to 100 years on earth, but I am going to spend trillions of years in eternity. This is the warm-up act - the dress rehearsal. God wants us to practice on earth what we will do forever in eternity.

We were made by God and for God, and until you figure that out, life isn't going to make sense.

Life is a series of problems: Either you are in one now, you're just coming out of one, or you're getting ready to go into another one.

The reason for this is that God is more interested in your character than your comfort.

God is more interested in making your life holy than He is in making your life happy.

We can be reasonably happy here on earth, but that's not the goal of life. The goal is to grow in character, in Christ likeness.

This past year has been the greatest year of my life but also the toughest, with my wife, Kay, getting cancer.

I used to think that life was hills and valleys - you go through a dark time, then you go to the mountaintop, back and forth. I don't believe that anymore.

Rather than life being hills and valleys, I believe that it's kind of like two rails on a railroad track, and at all times you have something good and something bad in your life.

No matter how good things are in your life, there is always something bad that needs to be worked on.

And no matter how bad things are in your life, there is always something good you can thank God for.

You can focus on your purposes, or you can focus on your problems.

If you focus on your problems, you're going into self-centeredness,which is 'my problem, my issues, my pain.' But one of the easiest ways to get rid of pain is to get your focus off yourself and onto God and others.

We discovered quickly that in spite of the prayers of hundreds of thousands of people, God was not going to heal Kay or make it easy for her.

It has been very difficult for her, and yet God has strengthened her character, given her a ministry of helping other people, given her a testimony, drawn her closer to Him and to people.

You have to learn to deal with both the good and the bad of life.

Actually, sometimes learning to deal with the good is harder. For instance, this past year, all of a sudden, when the book sold 15 million copies, it made me instantly very wealthy.

It also brought a lot of notoriety that I had never had to deal with before. I don't think God gives you money or notoriety for your own ego or for you to live a life of ease.

So I began to ask God what He wanted me to do with this money, notoriety and influence. He gave me two different passages that helped me decide what to do, II Corinthians 9 and Psalm 72

First, in spite of all the money coming in, we would not change our lifestyle one bit. We made no major purchases.

Second, about midway through last year, I stopped taking a salary from the church.

Third, we set up foundations to fund an initiative we call The Peace Plan to plant churches, equip leaders, assist the poor , care for the sick, and educate the next generation.

Fourth, I added up all that the church had paid me in the 24 years since I started the church, and I gave it all back. It was liberating to be able to serve God for free.

We need to ask ourselves: Am I going to live for possessions? Popularity?

Am I going to be driven by pressures? Guilt? Bitterness? Materialism? Or am I going to be driven by God's purposes (for my life)?

When I get up in the morning, I sit on the side of my bed and say, God, if I don't get anything else done today, I want to know You more and love You better. God didn't put me on earth just to fulfill a to-do list. He's more interested in what I am than what I do.
That's why we're called human beings, not human doings.

I'm Susan and I'm an alcoholic

Hi. I'm Susan and I'm an alcoholic. I have been sober 2years 6 months and 21 days. My story is not unique, but it is my story. I've decided to use this spot to record my thoughts on sobriety and working the 12 steps. I've worked my steps once on my alcoholism. Now I am working my steps on my emotions. My emotions are what kept me drunk and high. The liqour and drugs were nothing but a symptom. A cliche, maybe, but true. Just this week I had probably, for me, one of the most pivotal moments in my sobriety. Who knew that a love story that includes vampires and werewolves would lead to such a huge breakthrough. See, my life has been filled with a lot of death. My dad died of cancer (melonoma) when I was 12. Then 12 years later on May 12th I burried my best friend. That was also the day my dad had died. Then in 1998 I burried my younger sister. She had cancer 3 times in 6 years. Ovarian cancer when she died but it was the A.R.D.S. that killed her. Then, 8 years later, on the day I came to take care of my mom and Nana, they found my mom dead in the front yard. I was 2 months sober that day. So death has played a big role in my life. For the first time I was able to see how those deaths left me with a giant hole where my heart used to be. With each death the whole got larger and the skin more tattered. I've tried for years to fill the hole. Fill it with friends and lovers, drinks and drugs, food and shopping. I just thought I was a party girl that liked to have fun. I was always searching for the fun. I was responsible at a young age and when I found out that that kind of life wasn't really getting me what I thought I wanted I let the party girl take over. The whole was still there. I was always shy as a young kid and full of fear. More fears than I care to share right now. I didn't know who I was and am in fact still working on that. But back to the hole. I saw the hole for the first time and suddenly I realized that I needed to give the hole to God. I needed God to fill the hole. ONLY God could fill the hole. We talk a lot about turning it over to a higher power in AA. And I truly thought I had turned over as much as I could. As much as I could envision. And until that moment I guess I had. But there was more and will be more later I'm sure. So I gave the big black hole that is my heart, my emotions, my fears to God. I know that there will be more pain in my life because life has it's ups and downs. I now realize that I don't have to shove the pain away anymore like I've been unsuccessfully doing for years. That obviously wasn't working for me in the words of Dr. Phil. lol For the first time I realized that God would walk me thru the pain, if I let him. So today I've decided to let Him. I'm sure there will be times I will try to take that back. But the fear of the pain, well, I don't have to do that anymore. I will because I've had more time doing that then trusting God. But I don't have to. And just maybe, if I can remember that I'm not God and that I can't and He can, I won't have to suffer that much anymore. So, this is my journey.
One day at a time.