Apr 092014
 

Purpose #1

God has planted his people like strong and graceful oaks for his own glory. Isaiah 61:3

 The Lord is pleased only with those who worship him and trust his love. Psalm147: 11

Because of his love God had already decided that through Jesus Christ he would make us his children-this was his pleasure and purpose. Ephesians 1:5

Go to the Lord for help; and worship him continually. Psalm 105:4

Praise God from sunrise to sunset. Psalm 113:3

Take your everyday, ordinary life-your sleeping, eating, going to work, walking-around life-and place it before God as an offering. Romans 12:1

The moment you were born into the world, God was there as an unseen witness, smiling at your birth. Bringing pleasure to God is called “worship.” God wants passion and commitment in our worship. Every activity can be transformed into an act of worship when you do it for the praise, glory, and pleasure of God.

Christa writes: As a person who dwelled in ingratitude for decades concerning my life and lived in the bondage of entitlement. When I was released from this prison, the sense of freedom and joy was so exhilarating -  that the moments and days were spent in worshiping and devouring, and putting forth praise to God for my deliverance. That is when my love, everything became a BLESSING! Everything he had delivered to me in my life had became an opportunity to rest and rely on him if it was too immense and too large for me to cope or deal with. This was a segment in your profile that really caught my eye, along with the scripture up above about God smiling at our birth; I knew right then and there, that you knew in your walk, that this had been shown to you. The absolute Blessing that came from this transformation of my release, besides JOY, and Peace, and a Deeper relationship with God and a fulfillment beyond my wildest dreams; My voice, I reconnected back with my singing voice. I had sung and was quite involved with the theater, danced ballet for 10 years, sung for 12 years, played the piano for 13 years and JUST THREW IT DOWN THE TOILET, when I found, BOOZE,MEN and MONEY! But now in my worship, I’m singing like a song bird on the wings of God’s Glory. And it is Like I have never sang before, fresh, exhilarating and just so…………..WONDERFUL! It brings me such joy to sing and sing in worship for Him and his Son. My life is all about Praise and Worship in everything I do. God is so Great, as he stretches me, continues to mold, refine and love me as I seek out his Righeousness, Holiness, and become Sanctified in the Holy Spirit to claim my Redemption. I know I’m just a beginner, but I learn fast and when I remain open and completely surrendered and broken, God can do great things through me, he already has! I love you Angel, hope you were filled with Praise and Worship today!!!!!!!!!

 

Apr 092014
 

The Relationship Between Substance Addiction and Domestic Violence

Live Fast, Die Young, Leave a Good looking Corpse

For the first Forty-Five years of my life I maintained a life of High Alert that pertained to this motto.

Live fast; so that the pain would never catch up to me and present itself as a learning tool that would be able encompass the concept of compassion. My workaholism and always being in the captivity of activity keep me as far away from being able to look at my life as well as teaching me to become a champion swimmer in the river of denial.

Dying young never reached my consciousness because my denial was so great. I annilated myself with so much money, men and medication, that dying young was alright because I had experienced it all. I had arrived.

Leaving a good looking corpse was all that was left to hope for. “She looked good in her last days.” I better damn well look good at forty-five with all I had placated myself with.

But happy to say, I have stopped living fast, I haven’t died young, and I no-longer wish to have a good-looking corpse. I want to live out the other 45 years of my life living a life of service and purpose; which has amounted to helping others to understand why one does not want to be living a life of addiction and accepting any form of abuse on any level.

Addiction and co-dependency are often defined as an unhealthy reliance on the control of exterior things in order to fill interior needs. The belief that those hungers can be addressed a physical, material, or financial level alone can perpetuate a continual form of insanity which will keep the alcoholic or the Domestic Violence Victim in the habitual cycle that they are stuck in.

The cycle that usually presents itself over and over again is The Disease of The Family of Origin. We will continue to repeat the past if we enable ourselves to give it the power that it can hold if we don’t look intensely at the patterns that have passed down thru the generations. My Introduction into my book is This book is about the Disease of the Family of Origin and how we unintentionally carry over our patterns of hurts, hang-ups, and habits into the next generation. The generational inheritance that I receive was addiction and emotional woundedness. The legacy I wish to leave a how we can change our generational inheritance through the power of our willingness, love and forgiveness. There are six types of family of origin dysfunction that can generate or create a later adult addiction or co-dependency:

1. Active abuse: a parent’s pain or frustration is discharged against or protected (enabled) onto a child. Any form of direct physical, verbal, or sexual abuse can be classified as active abuse.

2. Passive abuse. Passive abuse occurs when key elements are missing in a family a child growing up needs fifteen to 20 years of steady, consistent loving from 2 sane, sober, relatively happy parents. And of course one of the greatest ingredient for a healthy child is to come to understand the importance of self-love and the extreme damage when it’s not in place.

3, Emotional incest: Typically, in families where one or both parents are in some way emotionally or physically disabled, a young child will begin to assume parental or spousal responsibilities toward the parent. The etipole complex is now just being brought into the light of the damage that occurs with emotional molestation.

4. Unfinished Business if parents have not made peace with the disillusionments, defects, or limitations in their own lives, the child may pick up their unfinished business.

5. Negative messages about whom and what the child is. These are spoken and experienced messages that destroy feelings of self-worth and become a part of the child’s personality.

6. Split-off feelings or needs. In dysfunctional families, members deny their feelings and bury their needs. These needs will later try to assert themselves, but may do so in very damaging ways.

My book is loaded with examples of the damaging ways I was able to transcend my feelings thru men, money and self-medication.

It took many painful experiences for me to get real with my denial. The loss of my daughter, realizing I had the capacity to kill my spouse before divorcing him became an option, not being able to maintain a life that incorporated me being fully present for my children. Denial became a cloak of self-deception that blinded and shielded me from an honest assessment of my own dependencies. Addictonologists now believe that the emotional and spiritual components of withdrawal from any addictions are far greater significance than the physiological dimensions.

 

My favorite line is: I should have been taken from the birthing room and placed in the recovery room. If there is a 12 step program out there for any thing, I should be in it. My sponsor informed me there are 238 12 step programs out there. That covers me as far as a meeting a day for a year. I wake up and try to decide which addiction is ruling me today. I was told to treat my addictions in the order that they were going to kill me. Self-medication was first on the top of the list. Men were next because of my codependency along with my Love and Sex addictions, which I’m making great strides in seeing the role they play as a Domestic Violence Victim. It was the entanglement of the make-up sex that really keep the cycle of codependency going along with not wanting to end the dependence of needing the unhealthy love entrapment with the cycle of sex. And when I was actively using alcohol as a form of self-medication; I wasn’t able to see what my responsibility was in any of this. We were told not to get involved with another person till after our first year of sobriety, my sponsor said 5 years and then as she says that….she looks at me and says……”because you drank for so long and hard….I recommend 10 years of work before you attempt a relationship, or you’ll just bring in another dead fish.

Money has been very interesting since I have removed my self from the Hamptons where money and my career were my Identity.

Who am I now? I’m a woman who will constantly want and need to ask for help in all facets of my life to uncover the hero that lies within me so that I can continue to heal and be useful in this glorious life that I have been given.

Self- Love

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Apr 092014
 

When I was asked to write for a Women’s Magazine, I stopped short in my tracks and tried to think of a commonality that we all shared and were all battling. I hope to start with this topic and go down the list of what arises when we avoid this important entity to the core of our development in relationships with our loved ones and acquaintances. At the end of each article I will share an important section in my Memoir: Silent Screams from the Hamptons and what it took to finally make the changes in myself to live a Joyful and Serene Life.

 

We women are forever busy holding up our families, our job places, society, and extended families. We’re the caretaker, the breadwinner, the mother, house cleaner, nurturer; and just plain chief cook and bottle washer.

 

Loving ourselves sounds so simple, but how do we do it? Learning more about who we are is a good first step. After acknowledging who we are, we can begin the process of accepting what we can do and what we shouldn’t do. Getting a more balanced view of ourselves when we acknowledge how hard we are working to change. We want love. We deserve love. We must become initiators because as the fulcrum of the family no one else will do it for us.

 

What does it mean to love ourselves all day long? It means loving ourselves even when we feel shame for yelling at a loved one. There will be days when we need to make a conscious decision to love ourselves moment by moment. This is a process that in time we will realize the gains we have made. We will see that it is possible to love ourselves fully, even though we have not become perfect. As a woman, I see how we are so hard on ourselves with never allowing ourselves the ability to become gentle with ourselves. It’s all about performance, accomplishing and providing for everything and everyone outside of ourselves.

 

I’m learning to nourish myself with affirmations. By stopping and making the time to add them to my thought patterns has changed my perception of my self and what I need to start feeling about myself. We have been told that Mom and Dad raised us to the best of their ability, but that does not mean we were given the affirmations or the gentle guidance that we needed as youngsters. Our parents were not able to pass on what they didn’t have, and old patterns die hard. We are sharing our personal stories and being loved for it. We are getting the positive strokes we deserve from friends. We are telling ourselves that we’re worthy of respect, love, and all the good that the universe hold.

 

I have personally found that when we start the process of loving and nurturing ourselves, the rest of the family situation starts to improve. When we start blazing the trails for ourselves, the rest of our loved ones start to follow suit. We teach people how to treat us. When we’re not feeling the love and respect for ourselves, no one else will either. It becomes a cut and dry issue of boundaries. Boundaries that we have learn to set for ourselves and for every one else. When we (women) start learning to ask for what we need and allowing ourselves the space and nurturing that we deserve in order to continue carrying the Herculaneum responsibilities, we will begin to see the necessary changes that self love can bring.

 

 

From Silent Screams from the Hamptons Chapter 17

It’s Not the End of the World But I can See the Edge

 

I was sick and tired of being scared out of my skin all the time. Nothing was ever going to change in my life, until I figured out that it was me who had to change. I was living some else’s life. The person I thought I was had left the building a long time ago. It horrified me that my children were now viewing the movie that I had watched as a child-witnessing parents physically assaulting each other. I had to start the process of breaking this chain of destruction, or my children were going to grow up living these habits, hurts and hang-ups all over again! Somehow I had to halt the violence.

 

 

Christa Jan Ryan was born into a chaotic family, enduring alcoholism, drug overdoses, and violence. The youngest of six children; three of her sisters are triplets, all born with Cerebral Palsy. She has been a professional landscape designer and consultant to the rich and famous of the Hamptons for the last thirty years. Following her heartwarming first book, From the Depths of a Women’s Soul, Ryan’s Silent Screams from the Hamptons has won 2 awards, been on; NPR, ABC, NBC, and Time Warner. She lives in the Berkshires of Massachusetts with her two sons and cat and continues to write about important issues with a renewed sense of purpose and humor.

 

Feb 132014
 

On the early evening of September 16, 2009, my 18 year old son was brutally stabbed and beaten. There is no medical reason that he should have lived. He lost 3.5 pints of blood, is an asthmatic that almost drowned in his own blood. Prayer and God are the only reason he lived. I was just hitting the end button on a phone call with my prayer partner Robin O’Herin; we had just prayed for the covering of the safety our children. Seconds later, I found my son in the door way, in a puddle of Blood and unrecognizable. He had been slashed across his face. It has left a 10 inch scar. He was caught in a cross war of drugs between the Police and the Bloods in Great Barrington.

My name is Christa Jan Ryan and I hold all my faith that God answers prayer. I hold Victory over breaking a 35 year addiction cycle of drugs, alcohol, sexual immorality, food, money and any other addiction that’s out there. I should have been moved from the birthing room right into the recovery room. How did I do it? Prayer. I’m the author of 2 Books: From the Depths of a Woman’s Soul, about the death of my daughter and Silent Screams From the Hamptons about the victory over self-medication, men, and money. I’m not a writer, how did I get published? Prayer. I believe that my most painful crucifixions become my most powerful resurrections. The last bit of Prayer work I did before I left the Hamptons on Long Island was to pray with some prayer warriors over ending the drug, prostitution, and handgun ring that plagued the Shinnecock Reservation. 50 Armed National Guard Helicopters arrived and pulled off the most successful bust of the area. Prayer.

Living up here for only a year, barely long enough to let the dust settle, I have come head to head with the enemy that has surrounded the Berkshires with Heroin, Prostitution, and Corruption of the Political Powers that have allowed this reign for way too long. Together I believe we can bring down the enemy; won’t you pray with me:

The Prayer for National Prayer Day

Father God I come before you as a servant who wants to serve you and help Glorify you in the Victory over Berkshire County and its strongholds. You the mighty one, can take down the enemy that plagues this region; that has stolen our youth, destroyed families and torn apart our communities. I will stand on the promises that you have given us in Isaiah 60 and Psalms 144.

Your Word says; That Blessed is the Lord who is my strength, who teaches my hands and fingers to fight for the battle of the Kingdom. My goodness, and my fortress, my higher tower, my deliverer, my shield and he in whom I trust. Bow thy heavens, O Lord and come down: touch the mountains so they shall smoke. Cast forth lightning, and scatter them: shoot out arrows and destroy the enemy. Send thy hand from above: rid me and deliver us out of great waters, from the hand of the evil one that has possessed our children, so that our sons may be as plants grown up in their youth; that our daughters may be as corner stones, polished after the servitude of the kingdom. Violence shall no more be heard in the land, wasting nor destruction within thy borders; but thou shalt call for the walls of salvation and to enter the gates of Praise.

You have promised that you shall build the old waste places; and thou shalt rise up the foundations of many generations and you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of paths to dwell in.

Thy people shall be righteous; they shall inherit the land forever and be the branch of your planting, the work of your hands that you may be glorified.

We ask for all of these things in the name and Blood of your Son Jesus Christ. Amen

Self-Awareness

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Feb 122014
 

The unexamined life is not worth living.   Socrates, From Dialogs

I was able to arrive at self-awareness at the age of 45,when my life exploded before my eyes. The marriage of 23 years was no longer working, I couldn’t make head or tails out of what my 6 diget income to cover my 7 diget overhead was all about. I would fleetingly spend time with my children after many pleas of ‘when are you going to be done working and why are you so stressed out?’ I was becoming a liability to my own life.

To resolve most of what I was beginning to see as ambivalent feelings, I needed to feel a strong and helpful sense of myself. Such an awareness doesn’t happen overnight, and no one’s self-awareness is permanent. Everyone has the capacity for growth, and for self-awareness, through an honest encounter with reality. That was the problem…..I was Dying in My Denial of how I faced my problems. When I stopped avoiding the issues and meet them directly, always trying to resolve them, they started to lose their power that they held over me. Avoidance had always been my side kick.It has always been shown to me that my perpetual state of avoidance was because of my inability to accept my life or my situation that I would continually find myself in. I was a fixer, enabler, codependant-compliant.

The real test came when I was willing to confide and share my first accurate self-survey. When I was able to release the years of dammed-up emotions and break out of my avoidance of emotions that I held in solitary confinement; I was able to actually feel the pain diminish, watch the power they held over me subside and be a witness to having a healing tranquility come over my being. Serenity seeped into the chaos of my life when I accepted that what I was going through was life, and that God would help through my difficulties-and much more. It had been my tendency to recoil from taking responsibility for anything: I would deny, ignore, blame and finally avoid. Then it seemed as one day I was able to honestly look,admit and accept. Here started the new found freedom in the healing and the recovery that lead to enlarging my self-awareness through the experience of looking ,admitting and accepting. Taking responsibility and ownership in what is my part in this was the beginning of being released from   life -long bondage of self.

Peace is only possible for me when I let go of expectations. When I’m trapped in thoughts about what I want and what I should be coming to me, I’m in a state of fear or anxious anticipation and this is not conducive to furthering my self-awareness. When I’m in one of these states I look for fear. Fear is always the corroding thread of my distress: Fear of failure,fear of others’ opinions; fear of harm and a multitude of other harmful fearful thought. There can be no serenity when I’m captivated with the future, or regretting the past. My self-awarness of the moment and what is happening in the moment goes down the toilet. For me it has been a full-time job to be in the mindful moment of what is actually transpiring with what I’m feeling.

So much of my growth in self-awareness has been being able to abort all feelings that are no longer serving my serenity and peace of mind. All of my life had been dependant on other people for my emotional needs and security, but today I chose not to live that way. I have given up believing that any human power can relieve of that empty feeling or feelings of validation that I can only attend to with Gods love. When I am in this state of self-awareness, I can achieve a greater potential for myself by developing an ever-increasing willingness to avail myself of the guidance and direction of God and what he has called me to do and be a part of.

From; Silent Screams from the Hamptons   Chapter 19   Calling All Angels

Page   180

In the grips of my alcoholism, I was close to spiritual death. I began attending a church for the first time in thirty-five years in search of spiritual direction. I had heard good things about a new Pastor and his wife, just arrived missionaries from Equador. Through themI learned about a God of second chances. This stirred a sense of divine spirit that filled the empty void in my life with a power of love. I started to become quieter in my think and move from my heart.

Christa Jan Ryan, Author of
Silent Screams from the Hamptons  and  From the Depths of a Woman’s Soul

Nov 212009
 

What was so extraordinary about this God of mine? The waves of love I felt from him when I sought out his company. The vastness, the hole, the void of emptiness and isolation that he filled immediately. I became surrounded with a peace and sense of serenity that I had never experienced or felt in my life. I spent my entire life not wanting to feel anything about anyone. It had been too dangerous to become emotionally attached to the loved ones who only let me down or hurt me terribly. This I could risk and found obtainable and accessible every time I needed it.

As for his power and performance that I heard so much about, I decided to test it being the Doubting Thomas that I was. Prayers became the epitome of what I was looking for in a spiritual relationship. But I needed to see some proof of what this was all about before I became compelled to spend any more time seeking out this relationship. So my feeble prayer life began; asking for signs, phone calls, confirmations of my doubts and fears that needed to be relieved. Each of them got answered in one form or another. My faith started to build little by little, until I was given so much hope and reassurance, that I was able to feel that I was really going to be alright or better yet I was alright.

I now know that God works steadfast for the new believer and as we gain trust and faith in him; he moves the bar up a notch of expanding where and how we need to place our faith and trust in him. I would not be here where I am today if I hadn’t sought out Prayer and Meditation as if my life depended on it. The story of my sobriety, how I got Sober, the sale of my business and house, the Gardening Job,the Store,the Sober House, the Law Suite, the book, the play,the film……The list is endless, were all inspired and empowered by God. MY Prayers have always been about asking for the help for me be the Person, Mother,friend,sibling,worker that he needs me to be to be effective in this troubled and dying world. What is his will for my life? What is he calling me to be or do? These all have been answered. Some faster than others, but always answered as long as I am obedient and take the action. The one major ingredient to my success as a Sober woman has been putting my Belief in Jesus Christ and what and who he was to God. God gave him life to show to all of us that we too can tap into all the same qualities and resurrecting powers that Christ was given. Compassion, healing. tolerance, and forgiveness to name a few. Every morning I pray for the Christ like qualities that can help me live over the top. The Christ I have found compares to nothing like the Christian Legalistic form of Christianity that has tortured the century’s with its vengeance of self-righteousness and self- justification of thus being an ‘Holier than Thou’ pretense. The part that sealed the deal for me is that the 12 steps were indoctrinated by the Oxford Group at the turn of the 1800’s early 1900’s and derived from the Sermon of the Mount, when Christ delivered one of his most powerful messages of the Beatitudes. Which when you search and explore to the core is the premise of the AA and AlANON programs. They walk hand in hand. Christ talked a lot about to get or go anywhere with God we have to humble ourselves before him and seek out humility as part of our fiber in service to him. Jesus, the Beloved Servant, was God in the flesh. His actions and life while He was on earth show us clearly God’s character and concerns. He was so compassionate toward the downtrodden that Isaiah describes Him as careful not to break a battered reed. He would not extinguish a wick struggling to stay lit. He proved again and again His compassion for saint and sinner alike. But the gentleness was underscored by His great and awesome power. The very Savior who could speak kind and encouraging words to a woman in adultery could as easily raise the dead, drive out demons, and control the very forces of nature. The power that resurrected Jesus from the dead is the same power that He offers to resurrect us from the living death of our dependencies and to alter the course of our lives.

Thru all of my faith and belief, I have been given the direction to be able to get thru ANYTHING and feel comfortable in every risk he has asked me to do. Believe me…….there wasn’t a fiber in me that wanted to leave the safety net of a very posh and secure life I had as a Sober Woman in the Hamptons…..but push he did until I was able to listen to what he was directing me to do and when I got it….every door flew open. It has been breath taking and exhilarating this ride I have been on with him. I have felt so much of his Glory and Power of success and contentment but most of all fulfillment.

I remember the day, like it was yesterday, when he told me in meditation to go down and Section 35 my son Macartney. The Judge would not put him a rehab. And I was like…..what……God you told me to do this. Everywhere I turned everyone told me to do it again and by the 2nd or 3rd time the Judge would take me seriously. As I started to drive back down to the Court….It was loud and very clear….I heard God say to me….LET HIM GO…..he’s mine. I almost crashed my truck. Macartney came back from the courts and moved out of the house into another horrible situation. I cried for weeks….he said again…..’I need him to do something….stop interfering’. I Let Go and Let God. Well we all know what happened on September 16th where our lives were altered forever. He is now facing a Law Suite that we were just informed Thursday that it was a slam dunk by the Berkshire Common Wealth Law System of a 20 million claim of which I will get a third and manage his for him while he gets the help he needs. Money will not erase the scar or take away the trauma or make my son whole again. But my prayers have been for my finances…….never to think this would happen…….and also the change in the community that is going to happen when this law suite comes forth that the ‘emperor has no clothes’ and that there is ‘trouble in paradise’. Its all been interesting, and thank you God I didn’t drink over this because I would have missed the complete reason that it happened in the first place.

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Who is God to me?

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Nov 142009
 

November 14, 2009

It is said in the Big Book that God is either nothing or everything. When I first started in AA and visiting the rooms, I would glance and briefly read the steps and walk by and look at the literature that was out on the tables. As the fog lifted and I was able hear and concentrate on what I heard speakers saying and focus on what we were reading out of the AA literature; the spiritual awakening started. Quotes and sayings started to grab my attention……Alcoholism is a spiritual disease. It’s a disease of the attitudes, perception, and perspective. What??????????????????How could this be? Who were they trying to kid? was my immediate response. I never had bottoms like these people; I just wasn’t able to figure out my life because it had all gotten so complicated, chaotic and overwhelming. So many things were so strategically positioned that helped shape my bottom. An insane business that required 80-90 hours a week, a home that was a full job just to maintain by itself, 2 boys that didn’t have a mommy, my mother who was dying, an abusive husband that no matter what or how I did anything, couldn’t appreciate what I was trying to do to keep everything floating. My answer by now was; drink more and find someone else that would have more respect for what and who I was. Eventually it came down to the concept of wanting to save a marriage that was unsalvageable, and be more of a mother to my children that my mother hadn’t been to me. In the year that I was told not to make any changes, I was completely devastated as to what I awoke to; or woke up from……..the emotional blackouts that I started to recall were so debilitating. Both from my childhood and various occurrences thru-out my marriage of the physical, emotional, and verbal abuse that resided in our lives. Staying married to this man for my children growing up to watch, was not an option.

My sponsor would say it continuously; I don’t know how you’re staying sober. Went to meetings, continued to work the same insanity, and finally dealt with the ex a few towns away. The only thing I didn’t do was pick up, and started to pray as if my life depended it on it….which as I think back to….did. In my gut I knew I was in trouble, Trapped in a marriage where my spouse would not want me sober; meant he had no more control over me and my predictable drinking and behavior was no longer manageable by his standards. We ran a business together, so my financial welfare was so dependant on him and his signature. Every decision, action or reaction, or non-action was based upon what and how he responded. When I left him I had no courage, sense of self, self-preservation, or sense of self-worth. Where and how was I going to be able to find what I needed to maintain a Sober Life?

It began with a wanting and willingness to give this idea of God a try. Small prayers and requests of just wanting to abstain from alcohol and caving in to Chris’s demands of accusations. Then grew into having the ability to relocate into a healthier environment, where I could produce enough work to sustain me. Step by step, hour by hour I was able to do something else than what I was used to; which was caving in and throwing my sense of self worth into the toilet for his life and demands. As I turned more and more to God the chaos and fear started to evaporate and dissolve. Fear and Faith can not share the same room is what I started to see. What the hell is this faith thing and how much of my life was based on fear? Was I able to walk a life that everything was going to be alright if I could Let Go and Let God? Let God do what?????Everything that I had no control over……which was everything out-side of my self.

Frightening from a person whose life and dreams had been shattered by 7. My life was about unsafe situations which didn’t seem to end with my childhood. MY entire existence was about CONTROL!!!!!! Is it possible that so much of my drinking career was about recreating the toxic environment where I new I needed to fight or flight from???? Why did I keep recreating these chaotic insane situations? Step 2 was ushered into my life. Having God restore me to sanity. Wasn’t quite sure I knew if this was going to be able to happen. Left to my own devices I would continue to find myself in trouble or battling some new found situation that was unmanageable. So if I’m insane and can’t manage my life Sober, how am I going to know Gods will for me? What does it look like? Feel like? What are the actions that are to be taken when we are in God’s will?

I was leaving an AA meeting one morning when one of my favorite contractors and old partying body asked me if I could chair the Promises meeting in Wainscott. He had already had a speaker. It was rainy and cold and work wasn’t so important and I knew enough to say yes. I was feeling close to a drink those days and my sponsor had pounded into to me….MEETINGS>>>>MEETINGS>>>>>>>MEETINGS. So off I went. So for the first time after being in AA for 1.5 years and cold sober for 6 months white knuckling it, I sat and really listened to the promises. I almost wept out loud. They were finally in my consciousness and right then and there certain things that had been happening now made sense. God was doing for me what I could have never done for my self.

I remember on that day saying to myself, “what the hell do you think you want to do now”? It’s already quite clear so many countless miracles were unfolding that there had been and could be no other explanation than God. I had made such a mess of everything…..Could God do a better Job? Absolutely, there was such a mystical feeling of awe with the way Gods was working in my life. Things started to open up with Doors swinging wide, and feelings of despair and uncertainty started to abate. Longer periods of peace and serenity came my way with a deeper understanding that I was becoming intimate with a loving God who was crazy about me and was all for this new sober life that I wanted. I had so many miracles unfold that blew my mind, and it all lead towards a loving hand that was protecting and guiding me. The unexplainable became explainable. I was an ordinary drunk empowered by an extraordinary

God.

 

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