The Fear Factor, Part 2

In Al-Anon, we’re taught to get out of God’s way.

What I have come to take as an article of faith is that my alcoholic has her own God and that God is not me. That my daughter’s God has her just where he needs her. That whatever God has arranged in her life is ultimately for her benefit. When I got involved, trying to “help,” I was just getting in God’s way.

When I first came to Al-Anon, I grabbed onto the slogan “Let Go and Let God” like a lifeline. I couldn’t imagine letting go of my daughter to fall into a pit. But I could release her to a loving God. I imagined wrapping her up in a warm, soft blanket and handing her over.

And for the most part, with time and practice, I found peace.

But sometimes fear creeps in. Even now.

When I came into Al-Anon, I thought my daughter surely had reached bottom. Then I watched her situation degrade until it seemed quite dire.

I started to wonder if I shouldn’t be doing something. I began to question whether it was right to do nothing. This is, after all, the worst economy since the Great Depression. Maybe it wasn’t entirely her fault. Maybe she just needed a little help.

Then I remembered all that had come before. All the help she had. All the choices she made. I couldn’t deny that she was where she was as a result of her choices. I also couldn’t deny that every time I “fixed” a crisis, she created another. This wasn’t something I could fix.

In the past month or so, I’ve been aware of a growing anxiety, which is just another name for fear. I believe, absolutely, that fear is simply a lack of faith. So I didn’t work on fear. I worked on faith.

I spent more and more time on my knees. I prayed every prayer I knew: the Lord’s Prayer, the long version of the Serenity Prayer, the prayers for step 3 and 7. The Prayer of St. Frances. The Acceptance Prayer.

I prayed prayers of my own composition. Not for anything specific. I prayed for God’s guidance. I prayed to know his will for me. I prayed the courage to carry that out, whatever it was. I prayed his will be done for my daughter. That he wrap her in His Grace and Mercy.

I got serious about meditation. I took more and longer meditation breaks. I intensified my gratitude practice by moving in from prayers to paper and sharing it with others. I took a daily fear inventory. I wrote my letters to God, per the daily inventory handed down through my line of sponsorship.

Then one day, a woman I hadn’t seen in a while rolled into my Wednesday Al-Anon meeting late. She was pushing a double stroller with two sleeping toddlers. Her hair was tied back carelessly and she wore no makeup. She looked tired. She was a little distracted, making sure the kids were tucked in and comfortable.

This woman is my age, and as far as I knew didn’t have any kids that age, so I imagined that these were her grandkids. When we broke up into groups, she was in mine. She shared that her daughter had overdosed and died just before Thanksgiving. So now she was raising these kids.

She said she was grateful for the Al-Anon program because without it, she never would have had the courage to face this situation.

“I knew people died from this disease,” she said. “I used to say that to other people: People die. But I never thought it would be my daughter."

As she spoke, there was a peacefulness about her. There was acceptance.

As I mentioned, this woman is my age. She also has my name. Her qualifier is her daughter. None of this was lost on me.

I went home and prayed for acceptance.

Then I got a call today from my daughter. She’s in a long-term residential program that provides housing, support in looking for work, and drug and alcohol treatment. She’s been sober for 50 days. Completely sober. No drugs, no alcohol, no psychiatric meds.

"It's been a long time since I've been sober," she admitted.

She has completed parenting classes and is attending the facility's drug and alcohol classes every day in addition to AA and NA meetings. She told me she’s “into it.”

I wanted to cry right there on the phone. Of course, I got down on my knees to send up a prayer of thanks.

I always tell my sponsees that this program is to teach us to be happy whether the alcoholic is drinking or not. Often when we get out of the way, our loves ones find recovery. Sometimes they don’t. We are powerless either way. That's between our loved ones and God.

I accepted the fact that my daughter might always be in the category of “sometimes they don’t.” She still might not. I can’t have any expectations. I only know that this felt like an answer to my prayers.

My fear inventory will be blissfully empty today.

But I know that I only get a daily reprieve based on my spiritual condition. So I will continue to flex those faith and gratitude muscles. I will work on acceptance. No matter what happens.

Hubby and I are off to the land today. I’ll check in with everyone on our return. Meanwhile, take care.

Fear and Loathing

I was glad to see two more inmates at our prison meeting last night. That made three, so there were at least more inmates than Al-Anon volunteers.

It was a good meeting.

Last month, my Al-Anon partner decided it might help to turn control of the meeting over to the inmates. So she gave a folder to the one inmate who attended our last meeting and that inmate seems to have taken her responsibility seriously.

Apparently, on another Monday, the Al-Anon volunteers didn’t come, so she held the meeting herself, with one other inmate.

It’s a humble beginning. But it’s a beginning. And there’s nothing wrong with humble.

I thought last night’s meeting was a good one. There was discussion on a number of topics, but it seemed that the common thread was fear.

I have heard fear described as a primary emotion, and that strikes me as true.

When I have any number of other emotions—resentment, anger—fear is what’s really at the bottom of all of it.

It makes sense to me that the daily inventory that was handed down through my line of sponsorship involves writing five things I’m grateful for and five things I fear every day, because those are two of the biggest things I struggle with as an Al-Anon, and they work in opposition to each other.

What I’ve come to believe in this program is that fear is simply a lack of faith. Because if I believe that God is in charge, that he knows what’s best for me, and that he has arranged everything in my life for my benefit. More than that, if I believe that he has arranged everything in the lives of everyone I love in the same way… Then I cannot be in fear. The only possible response is gratitude.

So for me, fear and gratitude are opposites, and the key to both is faith.

Faith is the greatest gift I’ve received in this program.

Of course, I didn’t just tell myself that one day and believe it. I’ve found that faith and gratitude are like muscles. They get stronger the more they are exercised. So I exercise them daily. I exercise my gratitude muscle with daily prayers of gratitude and with a written gratitude list.

I exercise my faith on my knees and in meditation. I exercised my faith by behaving as if I believed these things, and I found one day that I did. Because the other thing that I learned in this program is that I have to take actions for the feelings to follow. First, I had to try. Then I believed.

In All Our Affairs

Yesterday was the day my Wednesday group celebrates birthdays, so I celebrated “officially” and got my chip.

In our line of sponsorship, the sponsor introduces the sponsee, talks about their year from the sponsor’s perspective and gives the sponsee a word or phrase he or she feels represents that year.

My phrase was “in all our affairs.” That’s what my sponsor told me I had done. I had practiced these principles in all my affairs.

She said my marriage had improved because I was learning to say what I wanted and needed for myself. My relationship with my daughter had been transformed. She talked about my service work.

She said she thought it was a quiet year. Not much had happened. Just life on life’s terms. There was, she said, a calmness about me, which she thought might be a gift of the second year. “Don’t get used to it,” she said with a laugh.

I always believe I have an idea about what’s happening on my insides. And it’s always interesting to me to hear what that looks like on my outsides. Call it feedback. Like checking your hair in a mirror.

When my birthday came around, I thought about my year. I wondered what word my sponsor would give me. I like her word. It felt right to me.

But those aren’t the words that rolled around in my own head when I thought about my year. The words I thought of were faith and service. At the meeting I talked about service and how I had benefited from it. I did that because I thought that maybe there was someone who, like me, was skeptical about the claim that I would benefit more from service than those I had helped.

I was wrong.

That claim was absolutely true.

But the thing that most changed in me, I think, was faith.

I was happy to hear my sponsor say that she noticed a calmness about me, because that’s how I feel. Though, for me, it didn’t feel like an uneventful year.

My husband and I have faced what felt to me like pretty major things. We struggled to keep the doors of our family business open. Our incomes from the company and my work plummeted. My daughter’s situation is as bad as it’s ever been.

Here’s the difference. I didn’t freak out. It made me smile to hear my sponsor say that it had been a smooth year because while she is aware of everything I just mentioned, I didn’t seem to get that upset. Hence, she assumed things were not really that dire.

That’s faith.

It’s the greatest gift I’ve received in this program.

I believe that God has directed my life. That everything in it is just as it’s supposed to be. That he’s arranged everything for my benefit. I can only respond with gratitude.

Someone at a meeting shared a saying they had seen taped to their sponsor’s computer. It said: “If you pray, why worry? If you worry, why pray?”

For the last several months, I have doubled the time I spend on my knees in prayer and in meditation and it has made all the difference.

BTW, here are a few things I have taped up on my computer:

“If you don’t hear the voice of God, it’s because you are controlling the conversation” —from Epiphany, on her blog “My Road as I Travel It”

“Resentments are when things didn’t go my way in the past.
Anger is when things aren’t going my way now.
Fear is when I think things won’t go my way in the future.”
—from Kim A, on her blog “One Day at a Time”

“Sponsorship is not placing someone in authority over you; it’s asking someone to hold you accountable.”
—Mr. Sponsorpants

“Go placidly among the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible, without surrender, be one good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly; listen to others, even the dull and ignorant; they, too, have their story.”
—Max Ehrmann, “Desiderata,” from ODAT

It doesn’t escape me that three of four of these came from blogs.

I started this blog as part of my 12th step work. To carry the message. To be of service. Of all the service work I’ve done, I think I’ve benefited from this blog more than anything else. That’s because there’s a tremendous recovery community here online. It’s like attending a great, big meeting every day.

You’ve all taught me so much. I am truly grateful. Thank you for being such an integral part of my journey.

Hubby and I are on our way to the land later today. Take good care and I’ll see you in a few days.

Worshiping (Near) the Porcelain Throne

I have an image of people all over the world, on their knees, in the… bathroom.

Before I joined Al-Anon, I never had any idea how much worship takes place there, but it seems to be prevalent. A near epidemic.

The first person I ever heard talk about praying in the bathroom was my sponsor. She has two children and a husband in her home, and sometimes a sick mother. So there’s very little privacy. She said it’s the only place she can be alone and close the door.

Her prayer partner calls her every morning at 6 a.m. and she goes to the bathroom and drops to her knees.

Since she told me that, it seems like I’ve heard a million variations on that theme. Well, at least several.

Usually, I hear that in an open AA meeting. In a time of crisis, at work, in a bar, the speaker heads for the bathroom and falls to their knees.

I believe in praying on my knees. It’s a gesture of humility. In fact the whole idea of prayer is a gesture of humility. It is an admission that there is a God and that it is not me.

I confess that I, too, have begun praying in the bathroom. Not at home. There, I like to pray at the edge of a bed. But when I help out at our family owned business. I’ve become accustomed to a short, lunchtime prayer break and it avoids the possibility of interruption and awkward explanation.

It’s a manufacturing facility, so the bathroom is not nice. But it’s at least a one-hole affair, with little squares of carpet on the floor. And I know who uses it.

I’m still a little creeped out about the idea of resting my knees on the floor of a public bathroom in someplace like a bar. I think that’s a real act of faith.

Just saying.

Faith and Gratitude

Today, my husband and I will meet with our accountant to do our small business and personal taxes. In preparation, I filled out that little booklet the accountant sends out. It was sobering.

This year, my husband and I, combined, earned significantly less than my salary alone at my last newspaper job. I quit that job years ago when our family business was doing well and freelance work was plentiful.

Then the recession hit and decimated both print journalism and our business.

Three years ago, we had enough money to pay cash for a plot of land. This year, the payroll company at our family-owned business didn’t withhold any federal income taxes from my check because I didn’t make enough to warrant it.

I’m not sorry. If I hadn’t quit, I would surely have been laid off by now. And, honestly, I hadn’t realized the extent of the decline of our fortunes. If anything, I have gained a deeper sense of gratitude over the past two years, thanks to the program.

Sure, we had to cut back. We got rid of all non-essential services. We didn’t go out to any swanky restaurants or take vacations. For the past two years, I haven’t bought any new clothes. I used to be a frequent flier at Amazon. The only new books I bought in the last two years came courtesy of a gift certificate I got for Christmas. I can’t tell you how excited it made me.

But I hardly felt impoverished. We entertained at home more. Got acquainted with the 10 cent books at the public library’s Book Barn. I may not have found the latest best sellers, but I discovered books and authors I might never have tried otherwise.

If we needed anything, we eventually found it at the senior center thrift store. And if I may say so, I love my new leather boots all the more because they cost me $2.

The boom years meant we fared better than many people. We are frugal at heart, and don’t like debt. So we didn’t have much debt beyond our mortgage. And the national credit crisis, which hit just as we began building, meant we had to pay for construction of the new house only as we could save the money, so we didn't take on more.

It meant doing much of the work ourselves, and being flexible enough with our vision to take advantage of materials when we found them at fire-sale prices. But we found great satisfaction in doing that.

There was one awkward moment when we ran into a group of people we knew. They said we should all get together for dinner. Yes, we should, we chimed in, then wondered how on earth we would manage that.

Instead of waiting for a dinner invitation, we took the initiative and invited everyone over for a fancy brunch. I made Dutch babies, basically giant, lemon sugar-dusted popovers; baked eggs with spinach and ham; fresh grapefruit and bacon.

But the brunch cost us next to nothing. Flour and eggs are relatively inexpensive, and the only thing we had to buy was the spinach. We had everything else in the pantry or freezer. The grapefruit came fresh-picked from our neighbor’s tree. We handed out bags of lemons from our own. It was a wonderful morning and we both agreed we enjoyed it more than a fancy dinner we couldn’t afford.

We still manage breakfast a couple of times a month at our favorite local restaurant. We split the chicken fried steak. My husband eats the chicken fried, and I eat the eggs and pancake that come with. With milk and coffee the check comes to $12, with a tip.

And if we really want to splurge, there’s a nice little BYOB where we can split an excellent pizza, a couple of salads and the best apple pie in the state. Our check never runs more than $25.

Sometimes the business felt tenuous. Once, we’ve had to collect outstanding debt to make payroll. But we’ve always found the money when we needed it. We’ve sold some things, but we didn’t need them anyway. They were easy to let go.

Our lives still feel rich. We still have our home. And we have each other. Every day, I thank God for what we have. It’s my take on a gratitude list. Every day that list grows longer. And every day I refuse to live in fear because today I have faith, and a program. I may not always follow it exactly, but I have it.