The Serenity Prayer

Here is the full version of the serenity prayer and not just the short version that we use in AA.  I love the long version because I believe that it helps me to understand it better and it helps me to apply it to my life better.  So here it is:

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.
Living one day at a time;
Enjoying one moment at a time;
Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace;
Taking, as He did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it;
Trusting that He will make all things right if I surrender to His Will;
That I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with Him
Forever in the next. Amen.
By Reinhold Niebuhr

What a beautiful prayer.  And how true!  I think what I like the best here is the reminder that even Jesus had to accept things and people as they were.  He had to accept sin, and the consequences of it.  And he accepted it to a greater degree than I ever will when he paid the price of my sin on the cross.  When I can remember that Jesus experienced the same things that I experience, and yet he did it without sin, it makes me hopeful that I can persevere through whatever circumstances life brings me today.  I know that in the end I will be with him, a God who has walked a mile in my shoes.  To me that is comforting! 

What's Going On?

So a lot has been keeping me busy recently.  I got a promotion at work.  I am no longer a people greeter.  I was moved to the Vision Center and given a $1.30 raise.  That puts me over $9.00 an hour.  This really is a big help, and a huge answer to prayers.  Now I just have to learn everything that they want me to learn for the job.  The manual that I was given is like 400 pages.  Plus I have to do some computer training.  I know I can do it though!  God would never put me in a position that I was not ready for. 

I also have been getting things ready to go to school.  I am trying to get into Grand Valley State University.  I sent in my application and the fee.  I also filled out the financial aid papers and scheduled a visit.  I requested that my transcripts be sent from my last college.  So I guess now I just wait to see if I am accepted as a student.  I sure how this door opens for me.

So I really feel like my life is in a forward motion and it feels so good.  Everyday I think about how far I have come from the days that I could not even hold down a job, and it just makes me so grateful for the life I have today.  Without recovery I would not even have a shell of the life that I have today.  Things have changed so much in 3 years.

I have not stopped crocheting but I am working on an afghan right now and those take a lot longer.  I will post the pictures when I have finished.  That could be a couple of weeks from now.  It is a long process for such a big project.

Now I just hope the weather gets warm so I can go outside and get in some extra exercise that I need for this diet.  I could really use a walk on the boardwalk.  Its just not the same thing to always exercise with the Wii.  The Wii is fun but I want to go outside.

Hope everyone is good, and ta ta until later!

Why I Don't Go To Church

I have never written about this for the pure reason that I have not wanted to offend my other Christian friends but I think its time just to put it out there and be real about it.  There are some things about church and my fellow Christian brothers and sisters that really disturb and upset me.  It upsets me so much that I would just rather stay at home on Sunday than be around them.  I feel I get more out of the connections with my friends in AA than I do with my Christian brothers and sisters anyways. 

Here's the number one reason I stay home.  I find that other Christians are terribly judgemental of everyone.  If I remember from what I read in the Bible the most important commandment was to love God and then to love our neighbor.  This is what the Bible says:
One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, "Of all the commandments, which is the most important?" "The most important one," answered Jesus, "is this: 'Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.' The second is this: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no commandment greater than these." (NIV, Mark 12:28-31).
Also in 1 Corinthians 13 it says in verse 4-6 it tells us that love is not arrogant or boastful and that it is patient and that it hopes all things.  To me that sounds like the opposite of judging.  And then it goes on to say its the most important thing and that without it we are nothing!

4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; [2] 6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

13 So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

Yet when I am around my Christian friends I find that they are terrible judgemental.  Have you ever noticed that when you walk into Church late everyone turns and looks at you.  I can guarantee they are not thinking how wonderful it is that you made it to church.  They are probably thinking something along the lines of how wonderful they are for making it to church on time when you couldn't.  When I am late for an AA meeting people are genuinely glad that I made it.  They even say you are never late for a meeting.  Its a shame I can't be accepted like that at church.
Also, there's this lady I work with.  She goes to church every Sunday.  She professes to love Jesus more than anything in the whole world.  Yet if someone comes in the door and they smell bad or are dressed bad I can guarantee you that she is the first person to talk about that person and how horrible it was for them to leave their house like that.  Well, excuse me I think its horrible for you to leave your house without the compassion of Christ.  Don't claim my saviors name if you are going to hurt people with your words.
Jesus came for sick people.  If we were well he would not have had to die.  Why is it when you go into a church everyone insists on acting like nothing is ever wrong in their lives.  You know that on the way to church in the car they were screaming at each other.  You can see the tear streams still etched on their face.  Yet when you ask how they are, they respond with life is wonderful and God is blessing us.  Don't lie.  Let your brothers and sisters in Christ help you.  That's why people go to drugs and alcohol to fix their problems instead of churches.  Churches don't seem like a place where sick people go.  To me that's sad.  That is exactly why Christ died on the cross.  To save the sick.  Not to be a resort club for the perfect.
I just wish there was a little less judging, a little more honesty, and a little more acceptance in the body of Christ today.  Do you want people to come to Christ.  You have to show them love first.  If you judge them first they will die before they come to Christ and they will die in their sins.  No one ever became a Christian because someone told them that they were scum.  You've got to show people love.  The Bible says they will know us because of our love.
"By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another." John 13:35

I try to ask myself would someone be able to identify me as a Christian based on this statement.  

Dyed My Hair

Before

After

So, I have not posted on here in a couple of days.  I have been working on a couple of projects for Christmas and I can not post the finished pictures until after Christmas because I do not want to ruin the surprise.  So I have not quit crocheting, I just can not show you what I am working on because it will ruin the surprise for someone else should they look at my blog.
Well, I was on a quit smoking site today and I read a very good quote that I would like to share with my recovering friends.  "A trigger is not a command."  That is so true, too.  Just because we are triggered to smoke or drink it is not the same thing as being commanded to do it.  It is not like we are being forced.  This is how we need to look at it.  I think in early sobriety I looked at my triggers for alcohol like they were commands.  That is probably why I relapsed so many times.  Luckily, I can learn form my mistakes and now I have almost 3 years of sobriety.  Now I can take what I learned from quitting drinking and apply it to quitting smoking.  And I am proud to say that as of today I have 2 months and 3 weeks smoke free!

Don't Quit 5 Minutes Before The Miracle

Recently a few of my freinds have been going through some hard times and as I am watching them struggle it is reminding me how important it is not to lose faith.  Sometimes in life it can seem like hope is gone and we are as far down as we can get.  I have been there and I know how that feels.  But something that I have learned from being in that spot is that usually when I am at the darkest spots in my life, those are the times that I am closest to a new dawn.  I don't know when I am in the darkness that God is going to make the sun shine again, but he is. 
When I was at the Unity festival this summer one of the artist talked about one of my favorite bible verses.  Phillians 4:7 "And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus"  What this artist pointed out is something that I had never thought about before.  See I had always focused just on the peace part of this verse.  What I failed to see was that at some point in my life there would be a time that God would give me peace when it would make no sense for me to have peace.  That is why it transends all understanding.  At some point my life may be so bad that no one will understand why I am at peace when everything in my life is going haywire.  Now, how can I have peace like this.  I think I know the answer to this today.  Because the God I worship has conquered this world.  Nothing in this world can hurt me.  John 16:33 ""I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world." 
So don't quit before the miracle.  And don't lose your faith.  God has come through before and he will come through again.  Maybe in the struggle you will find your blessing.

Inspired to Blog

So last night instead of going out and running all over the town with a friend like I usually do I stayed home for a change and watched a movie.  The movie that I watched was "Julie and Julia"  which was a movie based on the true life stories of two women.  One was Julia Child the American woman who wrote a book on cooking french food, and the other was Julie Powell, a young woman who became famous because she spent a year cooking all 520 or so recipes in Julia Child's cook book and then she blogged about it.  What made people fall in love with her blog was that she was so inspired and so honest.  She was authentically herself.  She knew who she was and she wasn't hiding it, she was embracing it, and that is what people fell in love with.  So that is what inspired me.  I have always loved to write but in some ways I feel like my writing has been inhibited and not as honest as it can be.  So here's the challenge.  This blog is going to be the authentic me.  Its going to be about the things I love like crochet, reading and my cats.  But more than anything it is going to be about my thoughts before the editing.  I am not going to hold back.  What you see is what you get.  I am tired of writing about the weather or how nice the weekend activities have been.  Sometimes I think as adults we become so good at holding back that we almost forget how to let go and be authentic.  So now I will express myself authentically.  If you disagree with me that's fine, I didn't write this blog to impress you. 
   So what else is this blog going to be about?  One of the things I am going to blog on is my crochet projects.  Here is a hat that I made this summer for my niece, Lilly, who is 1 year old.  I have included a couple of pictures of the hat for you to see. 

The other things that this web page is going to be about is the books that I am reading.  The reason I want to write about this is because I really have a passion for reading.  I feel as though I really can escape when I can find a good book to read.  My favorite books to pick up and read are usually Christian fiction, or inspiration, or science fiction.

The last thing that this blog is going to be about is my life in recovery from drugs and alcohol and my recovery from anorexia, and my new recovery from smoking cigarettes.  Everyday I thank God for freedom from these chains.  I have 7 years free from Anorexia, 2 years 9 months free from Alcohol, and 2 months free from cigarettes.  Everyday God gives me a beautiful gift and I want to share this gift with the world.