2011

It's been a long year. And it's been a year with a lot of changes for me. Learning to detatch from my significant other and what is essentially his business has not been easy for me, but it has been worth it. I feel less tension in our house, more at ease in my own skin too. I have to wonder if this is from working the steps or my ever increasing faith in God. Who cares!! Either way I'll take it and either way I win. I am sooo grateful for the 12 steps and what they are teaching me. I am also grateful that I have God in my life. They are literally saving my sanity; one meeting, one day, one prayer at a time. I truly feel so blessed! I have good friends, my family, my health, my bible study, my 12 step meeting....my gratitude list could go on and on. Everyday I find something new to be grateful and thankful for. Every single day I realize that I have been learning lessons all along and that I have been given blessings galore. So here we go.......out with the old and in with the new. Goodbye 2011.............Hello 2012!!   I cannot wait to see what the new year has in store for me!

I just got bit by the Christmas spirit! All of a sudden I want my house to be clean and sparkling, and I want all of the presents bought and wrapped. I want to go shopping for the perfect Christmas dinner, I want the dining table to look festive, I want to feel merry and bright and I want it to snow. I can feel myself revving up, trying to do too much,wish for too much, just like I always do. And it makes me cranky and unhappy if "things" don't work out exactly as I would like it to. So this year, I will put on the brakes, right now, and remember the slogans.....First things first. Easy does it. How important is it. Keep it simple.
Truly, these slogans will get me through the holidays better than anything I can buy, wrap, dream up or want. And that is, for me, a true blessing in disguise. A lesson learned here.

Grateful

A friend of mine was just diagnosed with MS. MS of all things! And in the background, I can here my qualifier stating out loud that he hates having to warm up his car in the winter. Really?!?! I wish that I could make him feel gratitude for just being alive. To stop complaining for just a heart beat to really look at his life and to realize that he has soo much to be grateful for.
I haven't posted in a while because I was under the suspicion that he was reading these posts thru my Email account and I got scared. But then I thought...so what if he is reading these posts? What does that mean? Why does that scare me? And I'll tell you why. Because telling the truth has always gotten me in trouble. From when I was young and my mom used to say that if I told the truth that I wouldn't be in trouble only to be punished for telling the truth,  to my 30 year marriage to an alcoholic who gets angry when I tell him the truth because he doesn't really want to hear the truth anyhow....Ok, enough of me taking his inventory.
 I decided that I don't want to be afraid of the truth anymore. So I am gonna post what I need to post so I can benefit from it. And if he reads it, maybe he is supposed to be reading it. I just wish that he could realize that he does indeed have so much to be grateful for and not having MS could be the one thing he is grateful for today.