Are you Eddie the Baker’s widow?

I met Ed in AA. I watched him for a year before we ever spoke and exchanged phone numbers. Our first date was an AA function. It was a Valentines  dance, Feb. 13, 1978. Together, we worked our program of 12 steps, encouraged each other to do above and beyond what looked possible and we grew together as useful citizens in our community. Our last outing together was at an AA meeting where my Love got terribly sick and ended up taking an ambulance ride to the hospital where he died, 36 hours later. It was so hard to walk away from his body that night in the hospital. So much of that time is a blur to me. A horrible blur.

It has taken me more than eight months to finally walk into an AA meeting again. I have been to three, so far, and each one has been horrid. The first one was a Big Book meeting where two leaders read from a chapter of the Big Book of AA and then comment on each paragraph. It is my least favorite kind of meeting. I left early when one person raised their hand to speak and proceeded to inappropriately carry on about his former sex life during his active alcoholism. People don’t know what to do when that happens because we don’t want to stifle anyone but, for the love of sanity, really???

Two days later, I attended my home group meeting that Ed and I are members of. It was January 5, the 35 year anniversary of my sobriety. I did not want to acknowledge it, I did not want to get out of the bed at all. I could easily have pulled the covers over my head and cried all day long. But, I made myself get up and go to my group. I can’t tell you what was said. I just kept hearing Ed say, “We do it to be a power of example. New comers need to know that they can stay sober for long term and get through anything that comes their way.”  I got there on time and I stayed for the whole meeting. At the end of the meeting I went forward and received a chip (a token poker chip) to show that I was sober for 35 years. I enjoyed a few hugs and sweet words from folks after the meeting. One lady asked if I was Eddie the Baker’s widow. I think I said yes. It was surreal.

The next day, I went to a discussion meeting. The topic was how to deal with tragedy and death without taking a drink. Toward the end of the meeting, I did manage to raise my hand to indicate that I would like to share something, but I was too late. Lots of people had lots to say on the subject. I prayed that the young lady who introduced the topic was helped by some of the discussion. During the meeting, two of Ed’s friends told me how much they miss Ed and what a beautiful memorial service we had for him. That blessed me. As I tried to sneak out at the end of the meeting, I was detained by a young lady who is one of  Ed’s good friends. He called her “Kiddo”. As we talked, I noticed a familiar plaque on the wall behind her. It says,”Success cannot be measured by how high we climb the mountain, but by the obstacles we overcome on the journey.” Eddie the Baker. My husband had it made and donated to the fellowship hall before he died. Ed overcame a lot of obstacles on his journey. He was a power of example to many and many people still quote him at meetings all over Wilmington.

In spite of

The Lord is good to all and His tender mercies are over all His works. Psalm 45:9

The AA twelve step book says that recovering alcoholics need to take inventory of our day. It must be a common thing among alcoholics to have the urge to focus on the negatives of the day because the tenth step reminds us that, “… inventory taking is not always done in red ink. It is a poor day indeed when we haven’t done something right.”

Taking an honest look at my behavior in the day, I am not always happy with what I see. It is easy for me to judge myself harshly and fall into a funk. I must remember that I am just an ordinary person with ordinary short comings and failings.  I must accept the fact that I am not the best of the best nor am I the worst of the worst.

Today, I have done some things wrong. I admit my wrongs and ask God to help me do better tomorrow. If I can do something to make them right, I will do it.

Today, I have done some things right. I thank God for these things.

Now, I leave it all, the good and the not so good, in His capable hands. That is the hard part for me. Do not hash it all over. Leave it. Do not carry it into tomorrow. Leave it. Trust that God can and will handle it all.

I am grateful that God blesses me in spite of my short comings and failings. He looks upon the heart and sees beyond the actions.

Create in me a clean heart O God and renew a right spirit in me. Amen

Gratitude list

In January of 1977, I was struggling to break free from an alcohol and drug addiction. I began going to AA meetings and I asked a lady who had been sober for six years (consecutively!!!!) to be my AA sponsor. She was vital to my getting clean and sober. She had done it and her life looked pretty serene and functional to me. I, on the other hand, was living in a cottage that was so old and decrepit that the ground beneath it had settled and the foundation leaned. If you were to place a marble on the floor in one corner of the living room it would roll across the floor to the opposite side and land with a soft thump against the floor board. I discovered this by using a beer can. Apparently I had lost all my marbles by this time. My sink had dirty dishes piled high for weeks at a time and whenever I decided to wash a dish (usually because I was out of clean ones) I would find mold on them. I had no money for curtains and so I linked beer can pop tops together and hung them in strings from my windows. Wine bottles lined the walls because I thought they were pretty. Some how, I had acquired eight cats, all with fleas. This was a sad way to live but sadder still is the fact that I had a little girl living in this mess with me. I was on welfare and food stamps and my rent was paid with a section 8. My Mom had given me her car and it sat under the pine trees in my yard because I was too afraid to learn how to drive it.

The further away from a drink and a drug I was getting, the more observant I became of my surroundings. It was overwhelming to me when I realized how much of my life was completely upside down. I called my sponsor one morning when I was on the verge of hyper-ventilating with anxiety and I poured out all my frustration and fears to her amidst a sea of tears. At the end of my tirade she told me that she wanted me to make a list of things that I was grateful for. “What?? Has she been listening to me at all? She is either stupid or crazier than me!” That is what I was thinking but I managed just to say, “What do I have to be grateful for?” She started my thinking process off by naming two things. “How about the roof over your head? How about the fact that DSS has not taken your daughter away from you? Now, you finish the list. Get paper and a pen and start writing and call me back with your list when you are done.”

I was surprised to have a whole paper covered with things that I was grateful for. I have continued to make a gratitude list over the past 32 years. It always contains some of the same things that were on that first list. Somethings I am just constantly grateful for. Here is my “Top Ten” gratitude list today.

1. I am clean and sober and reasonably sane.
2. I have a conscious contact with my higher power. He knows my name.
3. My daughters have grown into a women of faith and integrity.
4. I am married to my soul mate and we have made a good life together.
5. I have made amends to the people I have harmed and I continue to take my own inventory.
6. I have everything I need in order to live comfortably.
7. I have a few real friends today and I can recognize the ones who cannot be real.
8. I am forgiven and I have forgiven.
9. I like myself even though I am not perfect.
10. I recognize self pity and deal with it swiftly by making a gratitude list.

For You have been my help and in the shadow of your wings I will rejoice. Psalm 63;7

Know when…

There are some concerns rolling around my gut. Some pretty significant changes have taken place in my world and I am trying to flow with them but I find myself being swept a little off course now and then. When I first moved from Massacheusettes to the south, I thought I was going to go into full time music ministry. I was very involved in traveling to churches and sharing my testimony interspersed with songs of God’s amazing love. My husband believed in and supported that dream with me for 10 years. Then, I had to come to grips with the fact that God was moving in a different way. I had the choice of  fighting the change by trying to push doors open for that ministry or I could  lay down MY expectations and wait for God to reveal His will for my life. I painfully chose the latter. Funny thing about God, He rarely does things the way I think He should. I am still not sure why that ministry ended but I feel certain that God, not man, shut the doors on that one.

Well, I am at a kinda crossroads of decision in my life again. Not sure if God is calling me to lay down another Isaac or if something else is going on. So, I wait and pray and try with all that I have in me to shut up the voice of my emotions and be sensitive to hear the voice of God. I know that HE has the plan.

My prayer;

Father God, Please continue to direct my steps and keep me from wandering off the path that You have laid out for me. My desire is to accomplish all that You have set for me to do in this life. I give You absolute permission to do whatever it takes to make me more useful to You. It is all about You and NOT about me. I trust You. Now Lord, You know how I hate the crossroads so please speak loud to me and let’s get on with it OK? Amen

This is what I read yesterday: Chaos and confusion can occur when we experience changes in our lives. As we begin to rely on God’s presence within us, our feelings of safety and comfort will overcome our anxiety.

Taken from The twelve Steps for Christians, page 110.

My prayer

“Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to God as we understand Him.” This is step three of AA.

There is a prayer in the Big Book of AA that goes along with this third step. It goes like this: “God, I offer myself to Thee – to build with me and to do with me as Thou wilt. Relieve me of the bondage of self that I may better do Thy will. Take away my difficulties, that victory over them may bear witness to those I would help of Thy power, Thy love and Thy way of life. May I do Thy will always!”page 63 of Alcoholics Anonymous, chapter called “How it works”.

This prayer launched me on a heartfelt search for something worth living for. Something much larger than me was beckoning me on to a destiny that I never could have imagined at the time.

I will always remain grateful to Alcoholics Anonymous and the principles of the 12 steps that have led me into the good life that I live today.

I came to AA because I was desperate to find something worth living for. Alcohol had decimated me. Suicide was a frequent thought along with the notion that my life would never be any better than it was right then. Believe me, THAT was a depressing thought. I had no idea how to live without alcohol and drugs.

God put AA folks in my path. They had peace and joy, two things that had never been present in my life. I was not looking for God. It would have been good enough just to have a desire to live and not die. Little did I know that I would find peace and joy when I turned my will and my life over to God as I (little) understood Him. In this respect, AA saved my life.

Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob were 2 hopeless alcoholics on a desperate search to unlock the chains of alcoholism. They loved God, they prayed and sought Him and were still bound to alcohol until Bill Wilson had a spiritual awakening. He reached out to help Dr. Bob who was hopelessly engulfed in alcoholic destruction. These men put together a program of recovery for alcoholics who wanted to overcome their malady. The first AA group had been formed in 1935, in Akron, Ohio.

This is a very brief synopsis of AA. It is a program made up of spiritual principles which, when put to use, WILL lead alcoholics to God. God is the power that keeps an alkie sober. So, if you are disheartened by a lack of success after going to AA meetings, I humbly suggest that you give up. Give up trying to do things your own way. Just turn yourself over to sober people at first and let them guide you into the footsteps they took to sobriety. Sober alkies who are working the program cannot help but introduce you to God who has the power to get you sober and KEEP you sober. Follow instructions. Read the book. It says; “Remember that we deal with alcohol – cunning, baffling, powerful! Without help it is too powerful for us. But there is One who has all power – that One is God. May you find Him now.” pg59, chapter 5, How it Works.

When you find God, turn your will and life over to Him. He can be trusted to do a much better job with your life than you have been doing.

Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. James 4:8

A mustard seed of faith

 Most of us think of God in the same terms we think of our parents. My Dad abandoned our family when I was two years old. He basically rejected us. When I was 8 years old, my Mom couldn’t take proper care of me. She gave me to my older sister who provided a normal home life for me. It didn’t remove the rejection I felt from both my Mom and my Dad. I began to seriously wonder what was wrong with me that people couldn’t love me. I thought my sister and her husband must have been some kind of a saints to take me in. I tested their love for me all the time.

Fast forward to me at 24 years old, alcoholic, bar room drinker with a child of my own that I was incapable of taking care of. I was suicidal. Hopeless. Completely devoid of any self worth and desperate to change my life. I was angry, rejected, self pitying and belligerent. I was a fighter. When I got drunk, all my self control disappeared. I punched people on a fairly regular basis. People who were once my friends started avoiding me because I was trouble. If I wasn’t swinging at them, I was getting us all kicked out of some establishment by starting a fight with someone else.

Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. I had a hard road ahead of me. If God was like my parents. it would only be a matter of time before He rejected me too.

By the end of step one, I realized that I was completely unable to help myself out of the dilemma of my alcoholism. I was still clean and sober but that had nothing to do with MY will. That was because I was learning to depend on this Higher Power. I was beginning to believe that there was a God out there who actually cared about me. I was beginning to grasp faith. Somewhere in this journey, I had stopped asking Ruthie’s God to help me stay sober. I was learning humility by kneeling next to my bed and sincerely asking “God” to help me stay clean and sober. I was no longer running the show. I could honestly see that whenever I was in control my life was a mess. This revelation was growth.

As I continued to practice asking God for help in all of life’s situations I grew in faith. God never let me down. He didn’t answer every prayer the way I wanted Him to. There are three answers to prayers.

1. yes
2. no
3. not yet

God answered in the way that was best for me. I had come to realize that I did not know what was best for me. I was developing a trust that God knew far better than I what was good for me.

At first, AA was my God. They were a group of people that were doing what I couldn’t do. They were staying sober. They were relatively happy people who lived a generous way of life by using the principles of AA. They used these principals to point me to a faith that was honest and true. I am so grateful that my sponsors never allowed me to put them on a pedestal and worship them. They assured me that any success in their life was due to God and Him alone. AA was introducing me to God as I understand Him.

 Finally, I began to let go of the reigns of my life.

Step one scriptures

It was a crazy process that got me to the place where I could finally admit defeat and recognize that I needed help if I was ever going to be free from my obsessive, compulsive drinking and drugging. I could not change my behavior on my own. I wanted to stop being a drunk. I desired to be a good mother, the kind of daughter that a mother could be proud of and to be a good and trustworthy friend.

“I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do. No, the evil I do not want to do – this I keep on doing.” Rom 7:18-20

This is where I was at the end of step one. Powerless. Recovery begins with the admission that I am powerless. I cannot manage my life or anyone elses life. I am powerless over people, places and things. My life is unmanageable.

“But, He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness (powerlessness).” 2 Cor. 12:9

In the fifth chapter of the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous there is a paragraph that reads, “Remember that we deal with alcohol – cunning, baffling, powerful! Without help it is too much for us. But there is One who has all power- that One is God. May you find Him now.” It goes on to list the 12 steps which are suggested as a program of recovery.

The 12 steps are a way of life that point us to God. Not a light bulb or a doorknob. God. A power greater than ourselves.

In step two we came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. More on this later.

Step one- powerless

I have been thinking about AA and how the program inspired me to live a spiritual way of life.

When I first came to AA in 1977, I did not know if I believed in God or not. My mind was quite scrambled from several years of drug and alcohol use. My sponsors suggested (rather strongly) that I find a power greater than myself. That seemed ludicrous to me. At the time a doorknob had more power than I did. But, to humor them (and just in case they were onto something), I complied. I had to ride the coat tails of my sponsors on this one because I was at a loss to comprehend what this higher power might be. So, Ruthie told me that I could use her higher power. I was to pray to this higher power every day and ask it to help me stay away from a drink and a drug just for that day. This is where I began to humor them albeit a bit rebelliously. The first few times I would get up in the morning and go directly to the toilet. While seated I would ask Ruthie’s God to help me stay clean and sober for that day. As silly as it sounds, it worked. I knew it was Ruth’s God keeping me sober because I had tried to do this before and failed within hours. This time, I was putting several days back to back without a drink OR so much as a joint. Did I want to drink? Heck yeah! Did I have opportunities to take drugs? Oh yes. They came right to my front door. During this short period of time, I even found the strength to give away my prized marijuana plant. I grew it from a seed and it was a big sacrifice for me to give it up. I decided that I would follow every suggestion these people gave me because they could not do anything worse to me than I had already done to myself. Just maybe this AA would work for me.

My sponsors wanted me to get into the 12 steps right away. I mean by the time I was 3 months away from a drink they had me at a step meeting. Step one says, we admitted we were powerless over alcohol- that our lives had become unmanageable.

The key words to working this step are:

1. open mindedness
2. willingness

Ruthie told me that I would not be able to stay sober for very long if I could not accept that I had no power in myself to stay away from a drink. Weird, I thought.  I tried my best to understand my powerlessness. Some one at a meeting put in such a way that the little light bulb over my head flashed on. They said, “When I drink, one is too many and 100 is not enough. I have no control!!! “

That is why people die of alcoholism. Alcoholics don’t have a shut off valve. We drink until we break!

Ding, ding, ding. We had a winner! I got it.

Once that first drink was in me, I had no control or ability to decide when to stop. I could not stop. I drank until I fell down. I was powerless over alcohol. Alcohol became King in my life and alcohol called all the shots. Alcoholism could kill me. My life was truly unmanageable.

I told my sponsors, “Well this sucks. Let’s not leave me here for too long.” In their wisdom, they said, “You are now ready for step two.”