Searching and Fearless

Confront the dark parts of yourself, and work to banish them with illumination and forgiveness. Your willingness to wrestle with your demons will cause your angels to sing. Use the pain as fuel, as a reminder of your strength.
-August Wilson-

Inventories...we all do them at one time or another. We take stock of what is in our pantry before going to the grocery store and we make our list accordingly. Each season we look at our wardrobe to figure out what we have, what we need, what no longer fits, what needs to be discarded or donated, and what might be salvageable or even made almost new with some attention and mending. In business, inventories are designed to give us the information that we need to make decisions and plans for how to move successfully into a thriving future.

An inventory is a fact finding mission. Still, it is easy to get caught up in judgement. Who knows the annoyance associated with going to the grocery store and buying something only to find, as you stuff it into your already full cupboard, that you already have 15 other cans of whatever it is? Ok, well, maybe just me - I am obsessed with always having enough tomato sauce. But I would venture to guess that we have all been through the big closet raid - trying on pants that haven't seen action since Madonna was making bad movies and skinny jeans were the ones you wore when you weren't feeling bloated - and men didn't wear them at all. If you are anything like me, time has taken it's toll and, well, those pants bring up all kinds of feelings and judgements, don't they? Our questionable taste and that extra pound or two (ha!) collide head on with each other to create an epic session of self loathing and shame...do they not?

And so it goes with Step 4. We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. By embarking on this journey, we commit to taking stock of our fears, resentments, indiscretions, and responsibilities. We count specifically and remember in detail the people that we have injured and harmed. We seek out and own our part in the situations and events that have injured and harmed us. It is not an easy task and while it provides many opportunities to judge and berate, it is also ripe with opportunities for growth and compassion towards ourselves. This is the crossroads that step 4 presents to us after the understanding and relief that we find in steps 1, 2, and 3. When all of the unearthing is finished and our findings are laid out in front of us, how will we choose to use the facts that have been revealed? Will we use the information to expand our spirit or diminish it?

It is no coincidence to me that my step 4 work comes about in the spring season...around the same time as Lent. In Christian faiths, Lent is a time of observance for the sacrifice of Christ and preparation for the new hope that is coming through His resurrection. In nature, Spring is a time when the frozen ground of winter thaws into fertile soil ready for new growth and abundance. In both, we sacrifice. We remember. We prepare. We humble ourselves. We dig in the dirt, and analyze the light, the weather, and last year's successes and failures. Instead of getting stuck on what we didn't know last year, we marvel at how what we didn't know last year has taught us the things we need to know this year in order to plant the most amazing garden ever. Likewise, by practicing compassion with ourselves as we work through step 4, we are creating the space, conditions, and light that encourage spectacular new growth inside of our own souls. It is not always easy, and it hardly ever comes naturally - we have to choose it, and work at it to overcome the years of training that have taught us to do just the opposite.

I am not there yet, but I know that in the end it is going to be worth everything that I have to put into it...I have faith.

Nunc ceopi. Now I begin.
What was is past
What will be is hidden in the future
It is only now, this day, this moment, that counts.
Not what I did yesterday, or what I may do tomorrow...
Now I begin.
As long as there is life, there is the chance to start over.

7 Years...Amen

At times this world can be so beautiful, it's hard to take it all in.
But don't you be afraid, just let it rain...and say Amen.

~Jen Foster~

August 23, 2010 marks 7 years of sobriety in my world...7 years since my world fell apart...7 years of slowly picking up the pieces and figuring out how they all fit back together...

August 23, 2003 was a Hell hot day in Dallas, and I guess I could say that it was the worst day of my life. Then again, I suppose I could also say it was the best. We all have moments in time that alter not just our circumstances, but the very essence of who we are...and, for me, this day and the weeks, months, and the immediate years that followed held many of them.

So much has changed, in fact, that I cannot even recognize the person that I was before I got sober. That person had such different values and perspectives than my own - and yet, there is proof of this existence in a handful of writings, photos, and legal papers that I keep in a box underneath the bed that I sleep in today - 700 miles from where it all happened. Most days, it might as well be 10,000. Some days, it feels more like 10. Always, I am aware that the road back is as short as the journey here has been long.

Every year on this day, I make a point of going back there in my mind and making a concerted effort to re-experience the "highlights" of the two years after my active addiction ended. Police cars, courtrooms, handcuffs, strip searches, work detail, letters home, family visits that never happened...endless days, and nights that seemed even longer. I don't force my mind back there to punish myself - I do it to remind myself of where I can never be again. For whatever the reasons I will say out loud that I stay sober...the real thing that keeps me clean is the pure and unadulterated terror of returning to that place. There is nothing that I fear more - and nothing makes me more grateful to be alive, and to be who I am now than the humbling memory of the path that led me here.

And then I think of how the story has changed. I think of how broken I was, and how strong I am now - mainly because I was just too dumb or hard headed to understand that giving up was, indeed, an option. 7 years - more than 2500 days - have passed since then, and each and every one of them has begun and ended with a prayer of thanksgiving to the higher power of my understanding - an entity for which I have no name...only the concept of a universal energy that encompasses the ideals of truth, love, compassion, wisdom, kindness, tolerance, patience, humility, forgiveness, mercy, and faith. The hours in between are filled with steps counted one at a time in the hopes that enough of these steps taken consecutively will eventually come together to create some sort of productive and meaningful life that is worth at least an honorable mention. It's a work in progress. When I stumble, I get up. When regret threatens to choke me, I fight myself out of it's grasp until I can breathe again. When the winds of change blow so hard that forward movement seems impossible, I go through the motions anyway...step...step...step...step. Eventually, the storm will calm and I will be on my way once again. Building my life upon these foundations has brought immeasurable joy and blessed me with the ability to reach beyond my comfort zones and into the places where my dreams await. There is less fear, and more risk (calculated as it might be) with the understanding that any given failure will not be my last...or necessarily even the end of the story at hand.

Looking out into the rain at the dawn of the 8th year of my second chance...I acknowledge the battered and broken person that has become a mere whisper in my mind in the darkest moments of night...and I celebrate the strong, hopeful, (and ever so slightly neurotic, many would say) individual that has taken her place. And each breath I draw into my lungs is released as a prayer of gratitude to the universe...

...Amen, once again.

Just a Tiny Speck...

“True humility is intelligent self respect which keeps us from thinking too highly or too meanly of ourselves.
It makes us modest by reminding us how far we have come short of what we can be.”
~Ralph W. Sockman~

Humility and Gratitude comprise the foundation on which my recovery stands. While they are separate concepts, you really can't have one without the other if you truly understand the meaning of each.

It took some time for me to fully grasp the concept of humility and to be able to apply that to my own life. I have always struggled with low self esteem and a negative self image. When I first started out in recovery, I often mistook those attitudes for humility, thinking that the less I thought of myself, the more I was humbling myself. Consequently, I ended up beating up on myself and harshly judging myself for every mistake that I made and every flaw that I perceived in myself. As a result, I often found myself swallowed up in feelings of regret, guilt, and depression. These feelings would often render me completely hopeless - and send me back to the desire to escape from my own "badness" - a desire that was one of the driving forces of my addiction to begin with.

Humility is NOT the same as self degradation. It is not about feeling like we are not as good as other people, but about realizing that we are not profoundly different from them either. On our best days, we are still flawed, and on our worst days we are not nearly as bad as we often believe. Humility is about finding the place where we can acknowledge our genuine selves with all of our scars, bruises, and other imperfections and also find an understanding of the roles we play each one of them. It is about truly "getting" that the profound list of blessings in our lives are truly the manifestation of a higher power at work and cannot be accounted for by anything that we have done or not done on our own. I can still remember the exact moment in which I TRULY felt a sense of humility in my recovery. I was at a meeting when I really understood for the first time that the ONLY difference between me, as I walked to the front of the room to receive my 3 year chip, and the newcomer walking to the front of the room to receive his desire chip was that I had simply been doing it longer. To this day, while I am proud of the years of sobriety that I have achieved, I never allow myself to get too far from that understanding.

Today I find that the more I understand that I do not have all of the answers, the easier it becomes to find them. When I acknowledge that I did not get to where I am by myself, I become more compassionate with myself and with other people that I encounter. The more I reach out from a heart that is open to feedback, the more I find myself surrounded by people that help me to move to the next level, and the next, and the next. The more I subscribe to the idea that I am just a tiny speck in a vast and infinite world, the more meaningful I feel within my own little part of it.

The more I humble myself, the deeper my gratitude becomes.

And that is my strength...