A friend of mine that I have known for many years was kind enough to tell me that as long as he has known me, my life has been out of balance. He commented that it seemed I was always "Chasing" after something.
Now this came from a good guy, I always value his suggestions, and there is in fact a great deal of truth to what he said.
Balance. If you are "in the rooms" you will sometimes hear this as a topic for discussion. And if you have been around long enough you probably have been given some unsolicted advise from someone that can see your life clearly, yet is still very blind to their own lives. Typical recovering drunk telling you whats wrong with your life while his has been way outta control for quite sometime. Oh well. Enough about that rant.
Balance is something that is constantly elusive even for those folks that do not have depression and or substance abuse issues.
Our lives are always out of control in some areas. I know that when I was drinking and drugging, I paid no mind to balance in my life. I suppose I drank enough booze to balance out the cocaine that I snorted and the pot that I smoked.
The thing about balance is this: there will never come a time where everything in your life is in balance. There are always areas in our lives that need our attention. When things are good at work, things may be disfunctional at home. You get the idea.
If you drank and drugged or had severe depression or bipolar, or for those of us that are most fortunate to have both, we cared little about balance. Now that we are getting sober, we realize that life can get very messy sometimes. But that is just the way life is. We often tried to escape this fact by doing what we do best!
Thats something that you don't hear that often in the rooms. Life gets very messy and there aint nuthin y'all can do about it except accept it! If you aint gettin down and dirty, you aint livin life!
So my dear friend was right. I am always chasing something. However, I am right where I am supposed to be. I did not want to tell him that from my perspective, his life was waaaaaay outta control. It is funny how we are able to see our own faults very clearly through others. That is just the nature of the beast.
thats all for now...........Keep the faith
Fake it til you make it is a term that is used frequently. Some folks use it when they are struggling with a belief in a higher power. It is more like a blind faith that they place their belief in. I could never get the hang of faking it. It was either there or it wasn’t so I guess I can not relate to those that fake it. I didn’t need to fake it because every time I came to the turning point, I was brought to my knees, this time I was flat on my back. Everyone has their own turning point but the result is always a belief in a power greater than us.
It is a paradox. Going through some extreme pain to come to the realization that we can not do it alone. We give into the higher power that has been carrying us all along. It comes as a great relief that we do not have to face our lives all alone. After the realization, we get a sense of hope and faith that we are safe. A sense that everything is going to be alright. Looking back we can see that we were always o.k. We just never gave it a chance. Free will is a hard thing to control. Free will can make us arrogant and it can give us a feeling that we are in control when in fact we have very little control over things and even if we did have control, we would probably louse everything up. I am not very good at just letting things be. I am too impatient in just letting them unfold. I can look back at many instances in my life where I jumped the gun. Hind sight is 20/20.
For me, it is not just developing a belief and a faith that everything is going to turn out the way that I want it to, it is a feeling that no matter what happens, I will be o.k. That is my faith. When I am able to get into this mindset, I can see how things just fall into place without me getting in the way. I couldn’t plan it any better. Fear does get in the way of everything. But the only thing that can cast out fear is love. Love has the power to get rid of fear because love is unconditional. Love is an acceptance of the way things are. Love is allowing a person to be who they are and what they are. Love has no boundaries. If anybody has told you that they love you, you can tell if they really mean it by seeing how they are when you are at your worst. Are they still right there beside you, or do they run for the hills? Many people use the term loosely, or they have developed their own definition of love based upon their own values and morals. That type of love is cheap and superficial and it doesn’t do anyone any good. It just causes more pain.
So if you are struggling with the concept of a power greater than yourself and are getting tired of faking it, just get honest with yourself and ask what it really means to you.
Keep the faith