A Small Prayer

It’s funny how the human part of me needs much of everything. The desire for community, safety, companionship, intimacy, success, love, drive my attitudes and actions. I’m always wanting but no matter how much I seek outside myself, it’s never enough.

I play this game of life and yet spirit knows it’s just a game. It’s all just a creation, a story I’m making. It means a lot, yet it means little. How often do I go down dead end roads expecting to find a pot of gold when all there is is a dead end. An end or a beginning or both? When I can look within to find a soul that is just looking to be freed, when I let all earthly desires go like sand through my fingers, I find peace and love unconditional.

God, let me be free today and help me to stop looking for false happiness. Help me find something real, something that lasts.

Help me to know you and feel close to you, all the moments of my life.

Bless Every “Hard” Experience

In times of suffering and struggle, when we perceive things as bad, wrong, or not how they should be, there are always hidden gifts to be found.

For example, when some of my past relationships had ended, I had a hard time letting go.

With each one, I held onto the pain and confusion having no idea what was behind the inability to let go.

Intellectually I knew that these relationships weren’t working.

Intellectually, I knew it wasn’t what I wanted.

What my mind was telling me was that I missed them terribly because I loved them and getting over it was just a waiting game.

It wasn’t until the last relationship ended that through finally honestly asking God for knowledge and power in this area of my life, had I been granted the gift of awareness that what I really was needing was to work on facing these painful things that were holding me back from a new level of freedom.

I wasn’t awake to the fact that while I loved these people, what I was really missing were those opportunities to loose myself in something else, using them to distract myself from, and avoid the things that at the time were too painful to deal with from within myself.

And that was when I became free of it.

It wasn’t the specific person at all.

My soul was finally ready for this deeper understanding.

My soul was ready to face these things I needed to be free from.

I never would’ve seen this while I was in it.

I thank God for the opportunity through pain and suffering for the chance to know him and myself better.

Help Me God

God help me forgive the man who stole my phone today.

A phone I had for less than a month, after losing my last one to a wave at the ocean.

He doesn’t see that by harming another he is really harming himself.

Help me let go of the anger, frustration and sadness felt from the senseless act at the hands of another.

It’s just a phone, contact numbers, pictures and writings.

It just happened a few weeks ago and I dealt with it then.

I can do it again.

It’s not really about the stolen phone though.

It triggered things much deeper, like these surface things always do.

It was just the wind that blew down my house of cards.

Help me let go of the violation I feel by this latest loss.

Thank you for helping me not stay a victim but have another experience of taking my power back.

Help me to accept this and learn what I must learn from this experience and not loose faith in human beings.

Thank you for keeping me in the light and allowing me the willingness to not stay in the darkness.

I cannot do this on my own.

I need your help.

Comfort me.

Be with me.

Keep me safe.

I trust in your will.

Knowledge and Power

God grant me knowledge and power.

Help me to quiet my mind and see with my soul.

Allow my knowing to be clear and give me the courage and power to carry out your will.

Help me be loving and tolerant of others.

Please remove my fears.

Help me to forget everything I think I know for a new experience today.

Help me remain humble and teachable.

Help me to be in the moment so that I may experience the beauty and joy that exists all around me.

Help me to always look at the world with childlike wonder.

Keep me from retreating, holding back and being closed off from loving and caring for others.

Help me to be open to what is.

Keep me from being locked in this idea of self and see where I can be of help to those I may reach.

Allow me to release my past and who I think I am so I may grow towards who I am meant to be.

Give me courage to live in and speak truth unattached to the result.

God please just for today, replace my fears and resentments with trust and belief in your will for me.

May thy will and mine be one.

God Help Me

God please carry and protect me because I cannot do any of this on my own.

Help me to have strong roots to stay grounded and brilliant wings so I may fly free.

Return of the darkness

It’s easy to forget, the further I get away from the time I lived in complete darkness, that I am blessed to still be alive on this planet. It’s easy to forget everything I should be grateful for when I have the disease of alcoholism. The odds of surviving alcoholism aren’t good. It doesn’t mean it’s not possible to live a life that’s free and joyous, it’s just that people like me have to constantly work at it, constantly connect with a higher power.

This weekend reminded me of how fragile I am.

Looking back on things I seem to have more clarity than when I’m “in it”. My ego was hard at work before I was even conscious to it. I was already in a downward spiral of lack of faith and heightened fear. I was forgetting everything that had become clear.

My connection was fading.

I felt like I needed to go back to see my boys. I went back to the town where everything “happened” thinking I would be alright.

So I went.

When I got there my thinking mind went to work to screw me. I was not in a good place. But I was there. Every place I went I had horrible memories flash before me. It had happened when I had made previous visits but this time was different. It was vivid and “real”.

I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I felt uneasy. I felt and underlying anxiousness that would not go away. I prayed “God help me” over and over.

It seemed too late for that.

When the second night finally came I was not prepared for what was to come. A situation came up that I was totally not in a place to deal with. Suddenly not only did I not trust myself but I didn’t trust God or anyone else. Thoughts of a drink or a drug seemed inevitable. I just wanted the terrible feeling to go away. The worst of it had gone on for hours. It seemed like an eternity.

I felt completely at the mercy of my circumstances and my alcoholism. My mind would not allow me to accept help. It was almost over.

My life flashed before my eyes, especially about the last 6 months I have spent sober. I thought to myself how sad it was going to be, to end this way. I mean end this way because I wouldn’t last long if I went back to alcohol and drugs. I know it. I lived in complete hell. I can’t even stand the memories of it. The disease has progressed too far for me to live like that anymore. I wouldn’t come back.

I don’t know how I asked for help when it felt like everything in me was fighting it. Maybe my previous praying did work. I know it was God.

It wasn’t me.

I made it back out of my old home town. I am back in my safe bubble, fragile, overwhelmed and a little lost still but I’m alive, sober and grateful. I’m focusing on building back my connection to the universe and everything in it. Life is happening around me. I’m saying yes to everything. I’m opening up to people, helping those around me, telling the truth and asking for help. I’m humbled once again.

I never can assume that I am guaranteed another day or that I can rest on the spirituality of yesterday.

I only have today.

And to the person who took a chance and answered my call for help, thank you. You have no idea how you changed the course of my life that night.

I am constantly reminded that living a spiritual path takes effort in the day I’m in.  Amazingly enough, when I am consumed by problems, taking the focus off the problems and focusing on my spiritual maintenance makes all the problems fall away.

Focusing on how I can replace fear, anger, judgement, guilt and shame, with love for myself and others changes everything. For a girl like me, starting my day with a spiritual reading, followed by prayer and meditation, is a necessity.

I can only shift from starting my day driven by ego to allowing spirit to guide me by plugging into to my power source which is God.

I laid in bed for 20 minutes this morning after waking, trying so hard to fall back asleep, instead of just getting up when my body woke me.  During those 20 minutes, I got a good look at my alcoholism.  My mind just was waiting for me to wake up so it could start shouting at me. Thoughts came of the days before, past judgements on myself, what could happen in the future, what could go wrong and I was having conversations with people in my mind that I wished I could have had differently.

Thoughts circled in my mind round and round until I just had to get up and connect with God. I asked for help to be loving, kind and gentle with myself and others.  I sat with a girl who I am guiding through this journey as well and helped her through conversation and direction.

We had an amazing conversation and connected through our similar experiences.  Getting out of self, I felt a calm and peace.

Being loving, giving of myself and sharing the solution to suffering is true fulfillment.

Love is the answer to all my problems today.

I can only connected with God in the present moment.

I must slow down to be present.

I find peace and love only by grounding myself in the now.