Do Your Part in Living Your Life

 

What problems would you like to see solved? What decisions would you like to make? What would you like to happen in your career? What would you like to see happen inside and around you? Write it down. Take a piece of paper, a few hours of your time, and write it all down—as an affirmation of you, your life, and your ability to choose. Then let it go. ~ Beattie, Melody. The Language of Letting Go: Hazelden Meditation Series (p. 2). Hazelden Publishing. Kindle Edition.

No, I did not renege on New Years Resolutions.
I’m recommending an exercise in journaling,
in exploring possibilities.
What problems do I want solved?
I want to do worthwhile activities
and not feel obligated to first
procrastinate with computer games.
I want to make serious progress
toward writing two books this year.
I want to actively affirm who I am,
what I am, and my ability to choose.
Then I want to release it but
welcome movement in that direction.

Happy New Day

 

…to promise not to do a thing is the surest way in the world to make a body want to go and do that very thing. ~ Mark Twain

A New Years Resolution is a promise,
and to promise not to do a thing
is the surest way in the world
to make a body want
to go and do that very thing.
Before the end of January,
most people have given up
on their annual commitment to themselves.
That was my history when I made them,
but they seldom lasted a week, much less a month!
Fortunately I belong to a group whose
wisdom about making changes
is living one day at a time
which doesn’t mean you never set long-term goals;
it just means that you are more focused
on bettering each moment of your life,
on a daily basis. So you can set aside
New Years Resolutions and celebrate
each day your commitment to
a happy new day of doing the next right thing!

From Etsy.com

Going Through

 Outside the door hangs heavy
and hinges moan. The sill
grasps the ground itself to cleave
the known by mighty act of will,
as gloom cloaks with soot the heart
of each who watches one depart.

But each who’s ventured through
praises light brilliant, bright,
embracing the beckoning new
though to the dark she sets sight.
Yes, tears outside the door will fall,
not for who passed but for us all.

Image Copyright : Katarzyna Białasiewicz

Pardon My Asking, Lord

 How did you feel when the leprous came,

calling “Unclean!” as the Hebrews required?
Were you repulsed by the old and the lame
reeking with filth and with excreta mired?

Lord, did you hesitate, waffle or pause
before touching the crusted and unseeing eyes?
Did the odor distract from your virtuous cause,
did the man disappear amid lice and the flies?

Probably not.  I guess perfected love
overlooks filth, can set foulness aside.
Love in its essence would tower above
bias, see vile folk beatified.

Perfect, I’m not. But you told me to be
and your life is my model, your spirit my goal.
Lord, hear my prayer. Give me grace, set me free
to bypass my hang-ups, to love every soul.

Let me shake any hand when a tender is made,
hold the patient with AIDS in a heartfelt embrace.
Inmates and homeless I’ll greet unafraid,
Passing to others the strength of your grace.

Image Copyright : Satjawat Boontanataweepol

For Michael

A friend’s still a friend when the shit hits the fan.
You can count on my caring when life’s road is rough.
When you’re down here’s my hand, not just once but again
and again till your confidence rebounds enough.

Disappointment aside, what you do is not you.
A friend’s still a friend when the shit hits the fan,
and I’ll back you up when you’re life’s a snafu.
When you’re down here’s my hand, not just once but again.

I’m not saying it’s fine, all the things that you’ve done;
disappointment aside, what you do is not you.
To do well’s a fine end, an objective begun
and I’ll back you up when you’re life’s a snafu.

Don’t give up. Set a goal. The naysayers defy.
I’m not saying it’s fine, all the things that you’ve done,
but look forward, climb upward, there’s hope if you’ll try.
To do well’s a fine end, an objective begun.

Image Copyright : annebel146

 

Encircled

 Embroiled in boisterous bustle,
goaded towards guilt undeserved,
shackled with stifling shame
I wither,
I rankle,
I wane.

Enfolded in friendship’s fabric,
encased in caressing cocoons,
nurtured by nature’s transcendence
I flourish,
I flower,
I’m freed.

illustration Copyright : Lorelyn Medina

This Little Light of Mine

 

A candle loses nothing by lighting another. ~ James Keller

In recovery we learn we really need
to help each other out. We read in the Big Book,
“Most of us sense that real tolerance
of other people’s shortcomings and viewpoints
and a respect for their opinions
are attitudes which make us more useful to others.
Our very lives, as ex-problem drinkers,
depend upon our constant thought of others
and how we may help meet their needs.”
The culmination of working the Steps
is lighting other people’s candles
which keeps ours burning bright:
“Having had a spiritual awakening
as the result of these Steps,
we tried to carry this message
to compulsive overeaters
and to practice these principles
in all our affairs.”

Image Copyright : Juri Samsonov

ReZOOMing

 I’ve done well this Christmas

eating acceptably throughout the month,
not perfectly but close to it.
I’ve not been pulled into the insanity
of excuses for a special time,
fear of offending people
who tried to prepare special foods for me.
I have no need for New Year to come,
inviting me to resolve to do better.
I believe had I indulged in special foods
I would not wait that week before beginning
but that I could pick up the pieces
and eat sanely again, resuming the food plan,
or, for more of an impact on my compulsive eating,
think of the process as reZOOMing, hurrying back
to sanity in dealing with the addiction that’s controlled me
for sixty years, from early teens until my seventies.
How about you? Are you content with your choices since Halloween
or eager to resume sane living and reZOOM a healthy lifestyle?

How does a full-grown human learn to express exuberance? Perhaps it is not possible to retrieve what was once lost, but this program of recovery comes close. The more I practice being “as a child,” especially when I take steps three and eleven, the more my spirit is seized with an untamed joy demanding expression. ~ Anonymous, Overeaters. For Today (Kindle Locations 3421-3424). Overeaters Anonymous, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

The more I practice being “as a child,”
especially when I take Steps Three and Eleven,
the more my spirit is seized
with an untamed joy demanding expression.
Today is a day of exuberance,
a day of joy, a day of childish joy,
a day of glee. The more you can live
a day of childish joy, today or any other day,
the closer you can come to the two greatest goals…
“Love the Lord your God with all your heart
and with all your soul and with all your mind.”
This is the first and greatest commandment.
And the second is like it:
“Love your neighbor as yourself.”
Live with childlike exuberance
this day and all other days!

The Innkeeper's Christmas Eve

 https://youtu.be/JIR1HPHN-AU

Fix It, Please

Remembering Sam R. Breedlove, June 22, 1915–December 24, 2005, and Alma Ellen Anderson Breedlove, May 2, 1916–December 3, 2006.

We wore out the book titled Fix it, please,
and the phrase wriggled into the family’s speech.
A roller-skate broken or two bunged up knees,
the technique to rid mossy socks of a leach–
it wasn’t a problem. If Mom didn’t know,
the answer was simple, to Daddy we’d go.

From college we’d call or make pilgrimage back
when puzzled by life and befuddled by men.
Then husbands and children with fast-track
careers, that recipe’s lost, can you tell me again?

The years are relentless, the questions become
how to counsel our own as they fly from the nest.
Mother won’t meddle but asked, wise words come,
and Dad can explain and the best answer suggest.

The doctor believes he’s repaired Mother’s heart,
a pacemaker backup when hers doesn’t start.
Now Daddy’s not sure just what pills he’s to take
and the old hurdler’s steps make his daughter’s heart break.
Now where’s the foundation, the bedrock, the hold?
Somebody please fix it! They can’t be this old.

Burden Broken

a speck of dust
a grain of sand
one after one
two piled on two
day follows day
and builds into months
years of accretion
crush fossil to dust

a faux pas not mentioned
a truth tinted pink
a falseness foisted by
yesterlie

one after one
two piled on two
day follows day
and builds into months
years of accretion
crush life from life

a fossil forgotten
a crystallized heart
a dormant dread deadly
sarcophagus

spade after spade
two piled on two
pound upon pound
weights crushing constricting
force Teutonic shift

The burden surpasses both cipher
and scope, yet a marble-weight
added induces relief.
Mass matter lies shattered,
the heart wriggles out,
the weight of the ages through truth
flutters free. 

A GI's Gift

 Olive drab is basic pain,
endless hikes in drizzling rain.
Blue is Christmas TDY,
raucous joy so I won’t cry.
Red courage stains on desert sands,
youth drained out in cruel lands,
white-knuckled fear, all fossilize
this PFC with gaping eyes.
That’s the gift I give to you,
olive drab, red, white, and blue.

Image Copyright : Philippe Renaud

Amistad

 Friendship is warmth in cold,
firm ground in a bog,
peace in the eye of turbulent storm.
Friends make absurd profound,
impenetrable simple, convoluted uncomplicated,
mundane intense, and infuriating comical.
Friends bless me with sustenance,
brace me with encouragement;
relieve me with intercession and gallantry.
Alone I quiver, bend, back down.
With friends I confound, defy, prevail.
To my friends, I long for eloquence and
settle for a heartfelt, “Thank you."
To the universe, I shout, “Thank God for friends!”

Image Copyright : Kirsty Pargeter

Tomorrow's Yesterday

 It’s more comfortable to sit in a corner 

than to sort out a meaningful path,
to stay in stasis at yesterday.
I meant for my life to matter,
I yearn for difference tomorrow
though comfort means to sit around.

How boring – though safe – to sit around,
sucking my thumb, a tot in a corner
hiding from fear of tomorrow,
fear of the forks in the path
but heck, does it really matter
whether I fear the unknown or yesterday?

How soothing is the fiend yesterday?
Resentments dance with shoulds around
oughts and regrets. A trivial matter
lurks there for years, leaping from a corner
into my way, blocking the well-chosen path
to imagined triumphs and honor tomorrow.

What if I fall on my face, humbled tomorrow
as I have been these countless haunting yesterdays?
Does nobility, courage of the chosen path
shine brightly, or does disaster peek at me around another
inevitable blind corner — ubiquitous “theys” say only todays matter.

I could have been a contender. I could matter
in grand schemes of the history of tomorrow.
Does fame – or infamy – lurk around that corner?
When I look at the future as another yesterday
will it seem to have changed for I was around?
Will admiration trace my innovative path?

Like Merlin, God lives backwards, the path
clear from one end as the other, matters’
meanings unmuddled. He turns around
and surveys, satisfied, countless tomorrows
and the coming versions of yesterday
laid out clearly, unblocked by turns and corners.

God’s present, around as I ponder each path
knowing what a corner may hide. It doesn’t matter
I can’t see tomorrow. It’s my God’s yesterday.

A Soldier's Salvation

 esse’s combat boots

stand at attention
beneath the bunk’s mattress
perched on broken wire.
Over paper-thin soles leather
long scraped of shineable surface dries,
still stained with the day’s encounter
with Georgia mud
except where the hole lets an old broken toe breathe.
The sharp clap of a slamming door
drives Jesse to the floor.
He shakes his head at the power of fears
half a century old,
straightens the boots,
and kneels,
praying to his sponsor’s higher power
that this army lives up to its name.

Self-Acceptance

 

Our entire life – consists ultimately in accepting ourselves as we are. ~ Jean Anouilh

How old were you when you began
to accept yourself as you are
…or as you were then?
Have you accepted yourself,
or do you persist
in fleeing what you expect you are?
Many who have found their way
to the Rooms of Recovery
soon realize they never did in the past.
With the changes that happen as we work the Steps,
we come to accept ourselves
whether or not we like what we see
but as we continue, we evolve to like ourselves
and allow you to like us as we evolve!

Progress

“We progress from hurting, to healing, to helping. We awaken to a sense of wholeness we never knew was possible.” ~ Adult Children of Alcoholics Solution

Progress.
From Hurting we come to Recovery.
From hurting we soon move to healing,
of becoming a part of Recovery,
to being in Recovery.
Then we take our proper place in Recovery
by taking our rightful place
by moving from hurting newcomer
to passing on what has been given us,
helping others to find the path
we have walked so they, too, come full circle:
12. Having had a spiritual awakening
as the result of these Steps,
we tried to carry this message
to compulsive overeaters
and to practice these principles
in all our affairs. 

No More Blame Game

 

The best years of your life are the ones in which you decide your problems are your own. You do not blame them on your mother, the ecology, or the president. You realize that you control your own destiny. ~ Dr. Albert Ellis, psychologist

A group of us talked this morning,
all of us old enough to be grandmothers.
We talked about sisters rather than mothers,
but that came from current interactions,
our mothers no longer in our lives.Blaming mothers,
sisters, fathers, the media, the climate
and whatever may be changing it, and politicians
and other factors for problems in the world,
especially in our lives might once have been easy,
but time enough has passed to know blaming does no good.
How fulfilling it is to finally accept we each control our own destiny!

Image Copyright : Victor Koldunov

Do You Suffer from Self-hate?

 

Healing the division between the feeling and unfeeling self begins with the willingness to accept our vulnerability and to forgive our self-hate. ~ Adult Children of Alcoholics/Dysfunctional Families, ACA WSO Inc. Kindle Edition.

Do you hate yourself?
Many of us in Recovery do, or did!
For those of us in Overeaters Anonymous,
it’s often the cause and/or the result
of our compulsive use of food,
either excesses or deprivation,
and that’s often true
of other addictions as well.
Are you willing now to heal
the division between the feeling
and unfeeling self, beginning
with the willingness to accept
your vulnerability and to forgive your self-hate?
Can you stop the noise in your head chanting,
Nobody likes me, everybody hates me
I think I’ll go eat worms!
Big fat juicy ones
Eensie weensy squeensy ones
See how they wiggle and squirm!
It’s not what should be.
Remember the second greatest commandment,
And a second is like it:
You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
See? the assumption is you love,
not hate, yourself!