Spilt Wine

Last week I had a little scare. I found a suspicious lump, which was concern enough for me to make a doctors appointment to have it checked out. For whatever reason Tuesday night of last week, I got really scared. Partly because I really thought about what it could mean, and my best friend died of cancer a year and half of ago. Also, I know someone who is close to my age, who is undergoing cancer treatment. Fear and anxiety gripped my soul and heart in a way that I have never experienced before. Before I fell asleep that night, I laid in bed thinking of the worse and was completely broken over the thought of dying and my children growing up without me.

Ironically, I am on step three(3) of my recovery, which is to accept God's will with complete abandon by giving Him my will and life. With this scare in my life, it really has changed my thinking on what that truly means. If I am to accept His will with complete abandon, I guess I am to accept the worse, knowing His good will can somehow still be sought and surrendered to. What if it is God's will for my children to grow up without me? Can I really accept such a thing? Ultimately, I don’t have any say in the matter, so I guess I have to accept it. My thoughts on God’s will have always included me as a participant. Now, I have an understanding that we (me) play a very little/ limited role in his Greater will in the grand scheme of eternity. We are just small participants in His great screenplay. He is the director, I am the extra.

Thankfully, the lump was nothing to be concern of. Maybe it was just a means for God to get my attention and for Him to teach me something about His will. God continued to speak to me on Sunday, as the sermon in Church was very relevant to what I had been pondering. The sermon was titled “Everyone wants to go to Heaven, but no one wants to die”. So true.

I am grateful for the opportunity to lean on Him more and to have learned that His will is bigger than my will and life for all that matters. And Yes, I am submitting to His will with complete abandon no matter what.

This is the third step prayer, which I prayed with my sponsor on our knees in the parking lot of Marie Calendars, while it rained.

“God I offer myself to Thee - To build with me and 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 my transcendence 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!”

Its funny how you can go about life learning things, specifically complex things and then one day learn something so simple that you have to ask yourself, "how did I not know this before"? Something so simple… so common sense.

I just learned information is not transformation. I came across this conclusion while in my AA meetings. You can gather a head full of information, but until you apply the information to your life, you won’t see and results (transformation), which I desperately need.

In my spiritual life, I have sat in churches for the last ten years and have gather information, truth, principles and disciplines, but at some point, my spiritual progress staled. I now realize that over the last few years, though I still attended church and read spiritual books as well as the bible, I was no longer applying what I was learning or being taught to my life, which subsequently halted by progression and transformation.

Now I found myself desperately needing transformation and I am applying all that I can learn to my life.

A head full of knowledge is useless without a heart that is willing for application.

If you want a say a prayer that really changes your prospective on your own attitude and behavior towards other people try praying " God, let people treat me today the way I treated people yesterday". I have been making this a daily prayer. Right off the bat, I have been catching myself acting and behaving not so cool towards others and having to make amends. Apologies are hard...

The down side of A.A.

Tonight, I think I had my first real disappointment since I stopped drinking. I have been filling my evenings with ice cream, cakes, deserts, and other sweets, which has taken the place of drinking beer or wine. It has worked really well and often times I look forward to the evenings after dinner for that "something special". Tonight, I had a craving for a nice warm vanilla steamer. I figured not only are they yummy, it probably had less calories than cake, ice cream and candy, which in turn would help me not gain any extra "love" around the waist. It also seemed to be a perfect heavenly treat for a cold November night. So, on my way home tonight I called Audrey and asked if we had milk, and vanilla, which we did. I could smell and taste the steamer all the way home. The disappointment came when I got home and began to prepare my convented drink. When I opened the bottle of vanilla I took a whiff, because Vanilla smells so good. I could smell alcohol in it so I read the bottle, which said 35% alcohol per volume. I was crushed. Really Really disappointed. I thought about making the drink anyways, but in the end, I thought it was best to leave it alone. I am sick enough to start making steamers on a regular basis with enough vanilla to feel an effect of alcohol and I don't want to go there, thus doing anything that would trigger that daily obsession to drink that has been removed from my life. We did have some imitation vanilla, but is sucked and tasted like crap.

So, in the end, it is still better to go a night without a vanilla steamer than a night with alcohol.

A.A. quote of the week: "Poor me, poor me, pour me another drink".

Not so free gift.

Earlier this week, my dad gave Gracie a turtle, which he explained to me on the phone as having its own little box and food. So, I agreed that he could give Gracie the turtle. I figured it was a cheap pet, costing me nothing and that the turtle may get Gracie off the kick she has been on wanting a puppy. Needless to say Gracie was ecstatic to receive such a gift from her grandpa. She has given the turtle three names, which change from day to day, Nicki, Flower and Butterfly. Audrey did a little investigating on the Internet and spoke with a representative at the pet store. It turns out that the little box that Flower-Buitterfly-Nicki resides in is of course too small and that the little reptile needs a twenty-gallon aquarium to live in. Luckily, Audrey’s parents had an empty fish tank, which has since been turned into a turtle sanctuary; however, it turned out that there is some other turtle paraphernalia that needed to be purchases, such as a the correct turtle food, a heating lamp, spring water, and some sort of UV-Ray light that costs somewhere in the neighborhood of eighty dollars. So far, this free turtle has cost the Wallace family house hold thirty something dollars and we are on the hunt for a barging on a UV-ray light. When all needed reptile accessories are purchased, a puppy may have been cheaper.
Way to go grandparents!

I was driving home this evening and as I was listening to the radio, it was announced that Barack Obama was the projected winner of the Presidential Election. All of sudden a wave of emotions and feelings fell over me. At first, I felt sad and disappointed that John McCain didn't win. I truly believed that if anyone deserved to be President, based on merit, sacrifice, and accomplishments, it was McCain. I was surprised I felt this way, because though I supported and voted for John McCain, I felt I would be OK and satisfied if Barack Obama won. Then, as I continued to listen to the radio, I heard the cheers of thousands of Obama supporters and my disappointment subsided. I began to feel a little bit of excitement and hope (yea, I know "hope" is his catch phrase). I even got a little weepy that such a historic even has taken place in my life time.

I hope that President Obama can instill a sense of pride and unity this Country has been missing for a long time. I hope that he can steer this country back to prosperity and that he becomes the great president that so many people say he will.

I am glad I got home in time to watch and listen to Senator McCain's secession speech. It was elegant, graceful, humbling and first class.

I am also glad I got to watch President Elect Obama's speech. I am grateful and humbled that I got to witness history tonight.

They said this election year will produce a record number of voters. After standing in line to vote this morning, I believe it. It's an exciting time, one that I believe Gracie and Jacob will read and learn about in their history classes to come. No matter who wins the vote tonight, American History will be written. We will either have the first African American President or the first Female Vice President.

I was born to laugh
I learned to laugh through my tears
I was born to love
I'm gonna learn to love without fear

Pour me a glass of wine
Talk deep into the night
Who knows what we'll find

Intuition, deja vu
The Holy Ghost haunting you
Whatever you got
I don't mind

Put your elbows on the table
I'll listen long as I am able
There's nowhere I'd rather be

Secret fears, the supernatural
Thank God for this new laughter
Thank God the joke's on me

We've seen the landfill rainbow
We've seen the junkyard of love
Baby it's no place for you and me

I was born to laugh
I learned to laugh through my tears
I was born to love
I'm gonna learn to love without fear

Born- by Over the Rhine.

I heard someone qualify the other night at an A.A. meeting. It was his nineteenth sobriety birthday and he shared a little bit about his past. He said 20 years ago, he was a homeless drunk. He was sleeping in a shack in Woodlake behind the Nazarene Church. He said the pastor of the church allowed him to live in the shack and gave him money every morning for odd jobs around the church, which he later used buy his alcohol. He also said the pastor also made sure he always had something to eat in the evening. I started thinking about the Pastors actions. Most of us, including me wouldn't do such a thing, because that would be enabling the sinful behavior, right? But what would Jesus do? ( I really don't like the WWJD cliche, but I fits.) I honestly don't know what Jesus would do, but his story reminded me of something that I had forgotten about. Its not our job as Christians to change people, thats the Holy Spirit's job. Our job is to love people, which was what the pastor had done, and subsequently, the Holy Spirit did change the person, from drunk, homeless, and hopeless, to a sober, christ loving, business owner who is grateful for a new start at life.