My gratitude

My sister and I are doing a Bible study class together. Just the two of us, so it's really personal and intimate. I love being able to say what I think a certain passage means. I like being able to interpret the meaning of a passage and apply how it relates to me and my life. The same can be said of my Alanon meeting too. I like the way you can "take what you need and leave the rest". I like how the program makes you think about certain situations and things in a different way than before. Maybe not different per se, but in a manner that I wasn't accustomed to. I also like how Bible study, Spirituality and Alanon seem to cross over each other, at least in my life they do. Last weeks Bible study was about gratitude. The ABC's of Gratitude. The homework  assignment was finding something to be thankful for that coincided with that letter of the alphabet. My A was Alanon for soooo many reasons; the main being that it saved my life. It truly did. Cannot imagine where I would be today if I hadn't found my way there. Some of our answers matched even though we had not compared our gratitude lists until we had met again for the next Bible study. It was kinda like a WOW moment for the two of us. She didn't have anything for the letter Z but I did. Zipping my lip was what I had written down. Another gift from the program. Nowhere else had I ever heard of or learned the necessity of shutting my mouth. Of learning to just    Shut.    My.    Mouth.
Cannot believe the difference that one little lesson has made in my life. Huge! It's not keeping silent like I used to do to avoid an argument or to even punish my qualifier for pissing me off by getting drunk and passing out. It's not even being silent cuz I had "lost" my voice and was unable to defend myself when he, in his active drinking, had become emotionally abusive to me to the point where I had learned to cower and keep silent so as not to give him anymore ammunition. No, this silence feels healthy. This Zipping my lip is more like a life saver type of thing. And I feel like it has saved my life and probably his life too, if I'm being honest. This Zipping of my lip is of a calm nature, very Zen like. Dare I say reverent and maybe Holy???  I have learned to Let go and let God. It seems an amazingly simple thing to do, yet it was something that took me 29  years to learn how to do. Grateful to the program for teaching me how to unclench my hands, and my jaw and to just let things go; to just let things be AND for my Higher Power, Jesus Christ himself, for making Himself known to me and for letting me know that I am loved, forgiven and redeemable. Amen. Loving these gratitude lessons that show me how blessed I really am!