Choose Serenity

I read in Hope for Today yesterday that we do not get serenity by chance, but by choice. But choosing serenity is more difficult than just saying the Serenity Prayer. We need tools to get us there. We need to practice using these tools. Some of mine are from Al-Anon, others are from elsewhere. They are:

-Be Mindful, Be Aware of Your Current Surroundings - What Do You See, Smell, Taste, Touch, or Hear?

-Be in the Now, Be Aware of Your Breath - Better Yet, Focus on Breathing in Deeply and Breathing Out Slowly

-Be Grateful, Make a List Using the Alphabet - A is for Air to Breathe, B is for Beauty in Nature, C is for Clouds... Or Name People You Appreciate in Your Life

-"Let Go and Let God", the God of Your Own Understanding - Make Fists and Hold Tight for a Few Seconds, Then Unfold Your Hands and Raise Them Palms Up As If In Prayer

-Live "Just for Today", Make Your To-Do List - Ask Yourself "How Important Is It?" to Get Your Priorities Straight and Don't Forget to Do Something Fun or Relaxing Just for You

-Pray for Your "Enemies" - When You're Obsessing About What So and So Did to You, Ask Their God to Bless Them, to Help Them on Their Path

There are many more tools I use, too many to list here, but this can give you a start and then you can come up with your own. Al-Anon literature has indexes to help you find tools for finding serenity. May you be able to find it whenever, wherever you are!

Killing the Elephant

My blood father has come and gone and I am just now starting to regain my serenity, which to me is my goal in recovery. It turns out that the reason I was fearful of being alone with my father isn't for what he would say to me, but for what I would say to him -and how I would say it. The good thing that came out of his visit and a serious conversation we had one day was that I finally killed the elephant in the room.

That elephant was WHY? Why did you not visit me as a child? And why haven't you visited your grandchildren for 17 years? My father's answers are not as important as the fact that I asked the hard questions and then told him how I felt, both as a child whose father left and never came back and as an adult whose father only visited when it seemed convenient for him.

He was not appreciative of my bringing these things up, but the result was that I told him all was forgiven. I do not know where those words came from because I really did not feel forgiveness. However, I've been practicing forgiveness ever since - of my father but more importantly of myself for having been angry for so long and having expressed my feelings in an angry tone.

I'm learning to have compassion for myself - a little girl who was told to shut up, that her feelings did not matter; a young woman who was told to obey her husband (who was an alcoholic); and a middle-aged woman who believed that her relationships should never have any conflict ever again. I've been wrong about that last one. Conflict happens. It is how I deal with it that matters.

To tell you the truth, I did not deal with my father the way I wanted. I spoke louder and longer than necessary. Yet my voice was heard. He heard me. He said that I was hurt as a child. He said he was a good person who had done some very bad things. When I apologized for being so hard on him, he said he probably deserved it. Then I told him all was forgiven and hugged him. I also said that I was done talking about it.

The rest of our time together was a lot more relaxed because the elephant in the room was dead. It is a lot easier to be with others when there isn't a huge beast in the room. Even though I feel like I am still fumigating my world and needing extra rest and needing to talk a little longer in meetings and with program friends - I am regaining my serenity. I am accepting things for the way they were, what happened, and how things are today.

I am forgiving myself as well as both of my parents and my husband. I feel like I want to hold onto my original resentments because they are such an integral part of who I was most of my life. At least, God, let me have just a little resentment... but that's not how surrender works. I need to surrender 100%. It is time. I believe I am letting go and letting God, for good. I believe I am trusting the God of my understanding to do for me what I cannot do for myself.

I believe some of us have a harder time giving up our grudges. I am one of those people, even though I know they hold me back, they weigh me down. No longer. I'm asking God to remove them from me again, before they drag me back to that bitter, ugly person I was when I came into the program 20 years ago. I know it will happen. I've experienced this miracle before. I can feel them lifting and leaving in their wake SERENITY. Now I can get on with living my life.

It's March!!

I made it through February, which to me is the darkest month of the year. It has less to do with being the dead of winter than with being the month my life changed as a child, when my parents got divorced and we left our house for good. I figured this out a few years back through therapy, so now I'm hypervigilant about taking care of myself every February. And this year, I didn't get depressed!

Although I did get a bit insane towards the end there with obsessive thinking, arguing with my blood father in my head after deciding to contact him and invite him for a visit, to which he has not replied. Then I remembered that I could ask the God of my understanding to take that stinking thinking away from me.

I also did the footwork by writing out a fourth step, and you know what? The next morning I woke up happy. And yesterday I forgot to worry about opening my email should an angry letter be waiting for me. You see, I had invited him but with a couple of boundaries, ones that I needed to establish to take care of me, ones that may have upset him.

From his past behavior, when not getting his way has kept him away, I can make all kinds of assumptions about his current state of mind... however, I haven't seen him for ten years and have had very little contact, so I have no way of knowing how he's reacting now. I can only know myself, and even that can be tough at times.

So I've decided to really give the results to God. My goal in this exercise has been my own serenity. It wasn't working for me to emotionally divorce my blood father, to be totally unwilling to see him. But now that I've made contact and been as civil as one can be while putting my needs first, I know I've done what I can do, for now. Just for today.

Sad and Serene

My sponsor tells me I'm grieving my relationship with my parents, that it will never be what I wanted as a child, a young adult, and now a middle-aged woman. I realized at a meeting yesterday that being sad, which is a feeling one gets from grief, is okay. That I can still be serene. In other words, serenity doesn't mean happiness - jumping up and down with joy. It means contentment and acceptance. This really helped me to realize that it's okay to feel sad. It's part of my process in recovery. Plus, just realizing this lifted my spirits since I stopped beating myself up over being sad. It is what it is, and today is a better day.

A Month of 10th Steps

I thought I was working the 2nd Step this month, but it turns out I'm working the 10th Step, having had to make five as-soon-as-possible amends. I use the word "had" because if I did not, I would lose my serenity, which is the goal of my Al-Anon program.

With making my 10th Step amends, I have figured out the character defect I've been practicing that results in needing to do 10th Steps. It is dishonesty. But more important, why am I dishonest in the first place, especially when I have nothing to hide?

Both my sponsor and a sponsee asked me the same question: why do you feel the need to lie to make yourself look or feel better? The answer is that I'm still learning to love and approve of myself, my big lesson of last year. I guess this year I need to practice unconditional love for myself. Here is a quote from Hope for Today, Feb. 23rd, page 54, that contains the solution:

"No longer do I expect to be perfect, and I don't hide away in isolation for fear of having my imperfections discovered. Neither do I easily give away the precious, vulnerable parts of myself; I wait until I deem the other person trustworthy enough to receive me with love."

In other words, I am not ashamed of my humanity. But at the same time, I am careful whom I share my faults and errors with, through Step 5, Step 9, and Step 10. And I am careful not to harm myself as well as someone else when I make my amends, as it states in Step 9. I check in with my Greater Power and sometimes my sponsor, depending on the gravity of the situation.

The important thing I've learned is that I love myself enough to make amends because when I do, and when I give the results to God, I am given the priceless gift of serenity. I don't just feel this myself. Others can see it, or so I was told at an Al-Anon business meeting this last weekend. What a nice compliment to my program and my sponsor's relentless reminding that my goal is indeed serenity.