Getting What We Want

Sometimes I know exactly what I want, and when I do I want to get it and get it now. Sometimes it seems like I am not exactly sure what I want, and yet I still want it and want it now. Sometimes I even expect to get what I want, to feel that I have a right to it. When I feel like this and don't get what I want , I get frustrated and upset. When expectations fall apart negativity rises from the rubble.

All to often we slip into believing the fantasy that because we have sobered up and cleaned up, because we have found and are striving to improve a relationship with God that life should be perfect, or at least to go smoothly. IF we aren't careful we begin to expect things to go our way. As it's said in the rooms, expectations are resentments under construction. When we feel life should be a certain way and it isn't, we act like spoiled kids, sulking, whining, throwing fits. It never ceases to amaze me how quickly I can go from 42 to 5. and I have seen others regress just as fast.

God wants us to be happy, joyous and free. It's His desire to bless us with a life worth living. Still, there will be times when we won't get our way, or get what we want on the timeline we prefer or in the way we would like to have it happen. There are times we have to practice patience. There are time that we have to learn that what we want is not always what God wants for us, but that what He wants is always better. Sometimes we have to deal with disappointment. Sometimes we have to remember that it's not about us.

I read something recently. "Smooth seas do not make good sailors." I don't know that it's true, because I have never sailed, but I suspect that it's true. I know the idea being expressed is true. Pushing buttons for portraits in a perfectly lit studio that someone else set up doesn't make someone a good photographer, now matter how good the images may look, but dealing with different lighting in different situations on the fly can make a hobbyist into a true artist. And getting everything we want with no lumps or bumps or disappointments is not going to help us learn to live or mature spiritually. Disappointments test our spiritual strength like supernal free-weights. They show how much we have or haven't grown and if we are ready to move to the next level of our walk with God.

I still remember the thrill I had at age five when I finally rode my bicycle the length of the street we lived on without training wheels, without my father holding the seat, and without falling. It seemed the greatest accomplishment in the world. I don't think there would have been any elation or accomplishment had I simply got on the bike and ridden without first struggling with it. I know that I wouldn't have learned the tricks to recovering my balance if I hadn't become unbalanced. That lesson in balance served me well many times in areas far more dangerous than the seat of a bicycle.

We don't always have to be first. It's OK to drive two miles an hour under the speed limit when that's what traffic dictates. We are not entitled to a perfect life, and God, please don't give us in recovery what we deserve. I can never live long enough and do enough good to balance the scales against the destruction I caused while running and gunning. That's why I need God's grace. So where does this idea of I should have things my way come from?

It's pride. A humble spirit is willing to surrender control and let God dictate the how, the when, the way and even the if.  It's easy to believe in God when we've been given the miracle of freedom from the obsession and power over that which we on our own are powerless over. But can we continue to believe in and trust God when things don't look or feel fair?

The secret of the spiritual is that we surrender completely to God. If we submit our wills to God's will and accept His control and plan, knowing that His ways are not our ways and His thoughts not our thoughts, then what happens, whatever that is, doesn't cause us to be angry and resentful.

When we're walking in His will instead of our own, if God doesn't act like a vending machine and instantly respond to our push button dreams and prayers with the thing we want, in the way that we want it, we don't start screaming and shaking the machine. Instead we can continue in faith and truly mean it when we say, "Not my will but Yours be done." When we have learned to do that more than we don't we will have learned to be happy, joyous and free in a way that getting what we want will never provide.

Weeding Out The Critical Spirit

This morning amidst my daily readings I read this reflection:

A Day At A Time - Reflection For The Day

For a good part of my life, I saw things mostly in negative terms. Everything was serious, heavy, or just plain awful. Perhaps now I can truly change my attitude, searching out the winners in The Program who have learned how to live comfortably in the real world — without numbing their brains with mood-altering chemicals. If things get rough today, can I take a quiet moment and say to myself, as the philosopher Homer once said, “Bear patiently, my heart — for you have suffered heavier things…”?

Today I Pray

May the peace of God that passes all human understanding fill the place within me that once harbored my despair. May an appreciation for living — even for life’s trials — cancel out my old negative attitudes in heart-heavy moments, help to remind me that my heart was once much heavier still.

Today I Will Remember

I, to, am a winner.

There are many good things I could say about this, and that prayer is one that I should make my own. So why is it that my first thought as I finished reading the last line was, "you're a winner, but you can't spell 'too.'" There I sat, trying to start my day off right, reading various spiritual and motivational ideas after beginning everything with prayer and some quiet time with God, and before I even get half way through the morning quiet time I am defaulting to being a critical, fault-finding jerk. Which raised two questions for me.

The first is why? The second came on the heels of the first, most likely as an escape route from the first question. "Who did it hurt?" Seriously, did my negativity hurt the author of this reading? No. They couldn't hear or feel what I thought. Even if they were to read this blog, a highly unlikely even, I am not putting them down, but rather showing a defect within myself. After all, the error doesn't negate the message they were sharing, is quite probably a typo rather than a sign of ignorance of the difference between to and too, and could have even been the fault of whoever transferred the reading to the website I found it on and not the author.

So who was I hurting by jumping on the error before contemplating the message? The easy answer is no one. I could simply go ahead and think on the message and move on as though the thought never occurred. But the not so easy answer to the question, the truth, is it hurts me. My morning time is spent in an effort to improve my conscious contact with God, and it's hard to improve fellowship with someone while you are acting in direct opposition to their very nature.

No one reading this is perfect. No one I encounter in life is perfect, and that includes me, especially before I have my morning coffee and the first smoke of my pipe. But God is perfect. God is the only one who has the right to look at the rest of us and point out how we fail to measure up.

Yet, He doesn't do that. He looks at us imperfect and broken people through eyes with love and grace filters on. When He sees our shortcomings, it is not to put us down or to condemn us, but rather to acknowledge the simple truth that we fell short while simultaneously pointing out that He provided a way to restore us, to make us more than we could ever make ourselves. If I truly desire to be closer to Him and to be more and more like Him every day, I must look at myself and others through eyes of love and grace.

All too often I fall so short of that. The truth that I don't always show love and grace brings me back to my first question of why. There are many possible surface answers. At times I put others down in order to try to feel better about myself. See? I'm smart enough to see this or that or to see that you're wrong. I know better than you do so I must be better than you. This sounds like pride, but it really comes from a place of feeling less than and wanting to build myself up. Or I might put others down so that I fit in or become more acceptable to a person or group who is also putting that person down. Here the issue becomes approval seeking. Or a root of anger and bitterness could sprout into a weed that chokes the love in my heart causing me to be critical just because negativity within produces negative fruit.

But the deeper truth is that a critical spirit is caused by a lack of understanding, acceptance and nurturing of love. It is a love deficiency. When I see that I am valued and loved by God, as I am, then I don't need to build myself up through any means, especially by tearing others down. God's love builds me up, becomes my measure of my worth. When I love God with a full heart, totally and completely, it becomes His approval I want and need above all else, and the approval of others stops being a motivation in my life, so that I no longer compromise that which I know is right, such as how I am to treat others, in order to belong or fit in with people. And when I refuse to love and forgive, I water the seeds of anger and bitterness and resentment that will make it impossible for the love that I have been given to produce the fruits of grace, mercy, tenderness, compassion and love.

A critical spirit is a love barometer. When I am full of love and walking in love toward God, myself and my fellows, and walking in an understanding of God's love for me, then I will not bear the fruits of criticism and condemnation.  The less love I am living the more I see a critical spirit grow within me and begin to show in my thoughts, words and actions.

I don't have to beat myself up over this, and neither do you, dear reader. For those of us who default to fault finding and tearing others down, we can be grateful that we understand what it means. Use the barometer as an indicator to avoid the storm. When the critical spirit reveals itself, as it did for me this morning, and we recognize it for what it is, we can turn to love as the answer and defense.

Daddy God, I thank You for revealing to me that I have somehow allowed my fuel of love to get low. I see the warning sign flashing, and I am stopping to refuel rather than pushing on. Pump me full of Your love and an understanding of that love. Help me to recognize and accept Your love for me, and help me to see Your love for others.  Fill me so full of Your love that I can do nothing other than have that love overflow onto those I encounter in my life. Instead of being quick to find fault, help me to see the good and positive and to react with grace and mercy and compassion towards others. Help me to love You more. Help me to live out the prayer of St, Francis....

Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace;

Where there is hatred, let me sow love;

Where there is injury, pardon;

Where there is error, truth;

Where there is doubt, faith;

Where there is despair, hope;

Where there is darkness, light;

And where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master, Grant that I may not so much seek

To be consoled as to console;

To be understood as to understand;

To be loved as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive;

It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;

And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

Thank you and Amen.

Goals Rather Than Resolutions

I don't do New Year's resolutions. Even still I have many times succumbed to the idea that the start of a new year is the perfect time to start doing the things that I have meant to do and not done. Then, later, as I fall behind or fail in some way it gets me down. Whether it is from a new year or another time, this blog is a great example of something I have wanted to do, started with good intentions and then failed to keep up with. I have started writing regularly, only to end up with months and months of silence.

This morning I read something in my daily readings that struck me as a much better way to handle such things.

The New Year
Make New Year's goals. Dig within, and discover what you would like to have happen in your life this year. This helps you do your part. It is an affirmation that you're interested in fully living life in the year to come.

This is so much better than a resolution. A goal is something that you are trying to do or achieve, whereas a resolution is a formal expression of opinion, will, or intent. With the resoltuon there is the feeling of I must do this, the way I stated I would, or I have failed. But when I fall short of a goal, I can rethink my approach, try again, and even be happy about the progress made.

Later, in the reading, this advice was given.
Write it down. Take a piece of paper, a few hours of your time, and write it all down - as an affirmation of you, your life, and your ability to choose. Then let it go.
Certainly, things happen that are out of our control. Sometimes, these events are pleasant surprises; sometimes, they are of another nature. But they are all part of the chapter that will be this year in our life and will lead us forward in the story.

I love this. First, to write down my goals, makes me have to stop and really think it through. Is my goal simply something I feel the need to do to earn approval? Or is it something that I can honestly say is worth the the effort and sacrifice that it will take to accomplish it? Is it realistic? Is it something that I feel God wants me to do and or that I truly want to do for the right or for good reasons? Etc. But after thinking it through and setting it down so that the goals can be remembered and worked toward, let it go.

There are things beyond our control that can cause setbacks, or change the direction of a journey. Then, even more importantly, letting the idea of the finished product go allows room for the Will of God to control the journey and the destinataion. If I resolve to do something I may refuse to allow any deviation no matter what, out of fear of appearing to fail, which, if God's will is different, can cause me to strive against the will of God. Also by letting the expectation go, I may succeed as planned, or I may discover a different but even better ending. Regardless though I have not set myself up for a resentment when and if things do not turn out as planned and I do not have to see a different outcome as embarrassment or failure.

The New Year stands before us, like a chapter in a book, waiting to be written. We can help write that story by setting goals.

Today, I will remember that there is a powerful force motivated by writing dawn goals. I will do that now, for the year to come, and regularly as needed. I will do it not to control but to do my part in living my life.

There are goals which I have for 2014 and the years to come. Most I will not list here. But one goal is to focus more on recovery, helping others, and writing more. But this will depend on what God gives me to share, among other things. I pray that the journey takes me where God wants me to go this year and teaches me what I need to learn.

So Far Gone

"I wanna be so far gone in you

So far nothing else will ever do

I wanna be so far gone in you

in you..." 

~ Thousand Foot Krutch

There are times when I look at my life and the situations in it and realize that I've gotten one or two degrees off course. I'm not talking about slipping into the deep end of the pool of self or backsliding, but rather simply realizing that God and my relationship with Him do not quite have the priority that they should have. It's easy to slip into the performance mentality at that point and start thinking of all the things that I should be doing. I need to pray and meditate more. I should read and study more. I need to make sure to put God first in my life, etc.

And there's nothing wrong with those things, especially the last one. The idea of putting God first in my life is a good one. It's even scriptural. "Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness..." I've heard repeatedly that if I put half as much energy in pursuing God as I did in pursuing those things I'd become addicted to that I wouldn't have trouble walking with God. I agree.

I don't want religion in my life. I want relationship with Christ. I don't have to prioritize my wife. When I wake up I don't have to make a choice to put Leah before other things and try to spend time with her. I love her so much that when I have a moment of free time that is also free for her my only desire is to spend it with her. It's not a choice, because there is no choice. I want to spend my time with her, and I do that every minute that I can. I have to try to force myself to socialize some and include others in my life, because it would be very comfortable to isolate and hole up with Leah and shut out the rest of the world. But I can't be of service very well when I do that. I've found the most satisfying compromise is to make sure I do my visiting when Leah can go with me. That way I get to see family and friends more but don't lose a minute with her.

I never once woke up and said I'm going to put drinking and drugging first in my life today. I didn't have to. It already was. There were times that I isolated and sought oblivion and nothing else. There were also plenty of times that I went to work, spent time with family and friends, etc that I was not alone with my addictions. But they were always right there. I was either using during those times or trying to figure out how and when I could use again.

I could structure and organize my life and put God at the top like a chore on a to do list. But I don't want that. It makes God a burden. Spending time with God becomes something I have to do to keep from messing up my life, to earn His blessing and power in my life, and that's no way to have relationship. I don't want Leah to feel like she has to spend time with me to keep from losing me. I want her to want to spend time with me that way I want to spend time with her. I'm sure God feels the same way about me.

I want to be so in love with God that my love affair with my wife pales by comparison. I want to be so consumed with relationship with Him that I don't try to put Him first it just happens. I want to be unable to go anywhere or do anything without my conscious contact and awareness of God being a part of that time. I want to be so far gone in my relationship with Jesus that there's no area in my life where I can say here I am spending time with Him and here I am not.

For years the first thing I did upon waking was reach for something to chemically alter my body and mind. I didn't think about it. It never got written down on a to do list. It was as natural a part of my day as breathing. The last thing I did each day was ingest something to change the way I felt. And all through the day my life was chemically altered. My desire today is not to feel the need to put God first. Instead I want to be so in love and consumed with that relationship that the presence of God becomes as much a part of each moment of my life that it is as much a part of who I am today as the drink and drugs were in the past.

Three Years Old And Finally As Smart As A Toddler

Three years ago yesterday I wrote a blog entry and proceeded promptly thereafter to get totally trashed and cry myself to sleep. The last paragraph of what I wrote was full of determination and hope, but not enough to keep me from using that night. It reads as follows:

"I thank God for an earthly father who lives an example of Christ-like love and gave me an understanding of the concept of mercy, love and forgiveness rather than hatred, rejection, fire and brimstone. Because of this I can believe in forgiveness from God, because I have seen it in my earthly father I can believe it from a Heavenly Father. I can accept the philosophy of progress not perfection and release myself from the bondage of legalism and expectations I set too high for myself. I don't have to follow you [Someone close to me who had relapsed and died 16 days later four months before I wrote this] into the ground, and while I miss you terribly, I pray that I regain my recovery. I can take a detour back onto the route that God put me on over a year ago that leads to a place of serenity, where I can be happy, joyous and free as God wants me to be. I know we'll meet in heaven one day, but it doesn't have to be soon."

What I felt that night and tried to express may not have been enough to keep me clean and sober as I wrote it or in the hours that followed, but it did indeed signal a change. The next morning I  woke up sick, hurting and shaky and hit my knees rather than reach for a drink. I prayed for God to help keep me clean and sober for just the next 24 hours and that I would be able to make the journey back home as the prodigal son.

I surrendered. The alcohol and drugs had whipped me. I'd only been back out there about a couple months, and I'd lost 40 pounds. Death courted me daily. I knew I only had two choices surrender or die. I surrendered.

And that's all I did on my own. Since that morning after the grace of God has given me three years worth of 24 hours clean and sober all strung together. Every day this happens is a new record for how long I've been clean and sober since I was 13. And that is a miracle.

I did what God told me to do, but only because He gave the grace for me to be able to obey. I did my part of the work in the Spiritual program I chose, but only because He gave me the willingness, ability and energy to do that. I changed, but only because He changed me. He did it all, but only because I let Him. Today I am free from the obsession to drink and drug and have recovered from a hopeless state of mind and body, but only because He tore down  the walls and loosed the chains.

Last night and when I first awoke this morning, I felt on edge, anxious and angry for no reason. I couldn't control my emotions. I took things that Leah said as attacks and persecution and reacted poorly. I took computer problems as signs the whole world was on the brink of disaster and cursed the moon, the stars and Toshiba. In short I acted a fool.

But I didn't want to drink or drug, I only wanted to stop feeling the way I felt. I'm still the same guy who can't always handle reality and emotions, but today, I know that the solution, the peace I seek, the attitude and feeling I change I need is not found in chemicals, or self-control, will power and discipline, but rather it is only found in God's grace, acceptance and love.

So now, like the toddler I am, I will run to my Papa crying instead of trying to fix my injuries myself. Like a toddler I will crawl into His arms and let Him kiss it all better. Like I toddler I will not hold it against myself that I didn't walk perfectly and something went wrong, but will lose all sense of everything but the moment and Papa and that now everything is Ok.

This is what I've learned in three years. Not how to walk perfectly or run without falling and scraping a knee, but how to turn to my Creator and cry out Papa and to know that He will answer with love. And that love is enough to fill what needs to be filled in my life so that today, at this moment, I crave no other enhancer or numbing agent to get through the day. I am grateful.

Moneyball and Me

My wife does not like baseball, nor does she enjoy movies with baseball as the backdrop or central theme. SO it surprised and blessed me when I checked to see what disc had arrived from Netflix the other day and discovered that Leah had added Moneyball to the queue. It was a sweet and thoughtful act on her part, and I felt grateful that she loves me so much.

Yesterday as I worked on editing images from a recent wedding Leah and I shot I put the disc in the player and relived a little of the back story of the miracle season the Oakland A's had in 2002. No, they didn't win the World Series, but they made the playoffs when all the experts and fans expected them to be one of the worst, if not the worst, team in the American League that year. They'd lost their star players and had a budget smaller than the average Hollywood film I remember going into the season as a Rangers fan being glad that no matter what else happened at least we wouldn't be last because we were so much better than the A's.

Wrong. Texas finished last in the West, although not last in the American League overall, thankfully, while Oakland finished first in the division. It wasn't supposed to happen that way! Every factor that could be seen by everyone, experts and armchair coaches alike agreed the A's were doomed to fail! So what happened?

Well, I don't want to recap the movie. I might ruin it for those who haven't seen it or bore those who feel about baseball as my wonderful wife does. It's an awesome story if you're in to that kind of thing, so give the film a look see. But to answer the question in a general way Billy Beane, the A's General Manager, did something different and unexpected.

Beane saw another ball club getting direction that he didn't understand from someone he wasn't sure had the qualifications to be giving said direction. He admitted he didn't have the answers himself and gave this new approach a chance. He opened his mind to a new way of thinking and took advice from a source he would not have considered before.

He didn't have instant success, but he didn't quit or demand the path of instant gratification. When the whole world seemed to be heckling and second-guessing, when we all said what he was doing would never work, that he would be as big if not a bigger failure than before, he stayed the course.

The results were amazing and beyond even die hard Oakland fans' wildest dreams. Another team, the Boston Red Sox, put the principles that Beans used in Oakland into place and two years later broke the 86 year championship drought. I won a large pot when the Red Sox won the World Series for the first time in what seemed like forever.

So what's the point? Am I just rambling about a movie I really enjoyed? No. I saw in this story an example of recovery and life the way it is meant to be. I, like many others, have made some extremely bad choices running my life. I woke up one day to find myself on the bottom of the pile with little hope of digging my way out of it. I didn't have the resources or skills. There was no way to get a new result using the same old thinking and living the same way that I always had. I simply couldn't happen.

Society looked at my record, my past, tallied up the results of my mistakes and wrote me off. I didn't blame them, because I did the same thing. Then I opened my mind enough to listen to others who had started doing something totally different.

There is another way, an easier softer way, to live that actually produces better results! By surrendering to God and letting Him show me what needed to be cut from my life and what needed to be added, I abandoned the self-centered, look out for number one way of the world that had failed me so miserably, and adopted a new way of thinking and acting and making decisions.

My life began to change. I didn't have instant success, and I still had detractors. More than one person doing the same thing I was doing looked at my early struggles and said this guy is never going to make it. But I found my miracle. Today I have been clean and sober for two years, ten months, and twenty-five days, and that my dear reader is a miracle. I have proven over the years that I could never have done that on my own. I needed to surrender to the still small voice of God, do it His way instead of mine, and stay the course.

I still haven't won the show. There are areas in my life that still need a lot of improvement. But I'm in the playoff hunt again. I have a chance to make a difference. I have a life worth living. And I have my own Red Sox. Another man saw what was happening in my life and started listening to the same advice, practicing the same principles. After a lifetime of mistakes and using, he died clean and sober and restored. He won the show.

I don't take credit for Thomas' success. Beane didn't leave Oakland and Boston won their World Series without him. He saw what someone else was doing and did what they did. Boston saw what he did and took it further. I didn't change my life. God did. And I didn't find a new path. The principles I put into practice have been around a long time. And while I made myself available to listen and help, Thomas did his part of the work and God did all the heavy hitting.

But that's the point. That's the secret to success in recovery and in life. Realize that there is another way, make a connection with the One who understands how things need to be done, listen and put what He said into action in such a way that not only you have success but where others can see what you have and get it for themselves by doing what you did.

There is another way. It doesn't make sense to a self-centered world, but I promise that it works....and it costs a lot less too.

End Of The Year Ramblings

I don't think I am unlike the average in that as the year winds down I start doing a review of how things went. For me, this process began  about a week and a half ago, a little before Christmas. Depending on the day or the minute I looked back, this was either a pretty darn good year with quite a bit of progress in several  areas that I have been praying about, or it was a rough year and my Pollyanna perspective on progress made was naive and foolish because things aren't any better. But what actually happened in 2012 is locked, done and unchanging. What is changing to cause the fluctuation I listed above is my attitude, my perspective and the amount of self-centered thinking I am allowing to occur.

In January I celebrated my one year anniversary of my marriage to Leah. That's a blessing. Sometimes I still can't imagine how I got so blessed. This is most certainly an amazing testimonial of God's grace in my life, because I had certainly not done anything to earn or deserve such a perfect match for me or a good relationship at all, much less a second chance to be a husband. Leah is amazing, and the almost three years we've been together has been so wonderful. I look forward to celebrating our second year anniversary next month.

In January I lost two special people in my life, Derrin Montrose and Crystal Rose. Leah and I still feel that loss almost a year later.

February is normally a hard month for me, and one that in my drinking and using days my intake of mind altering substances usually at least doubled. This year had the added pain of Crystal's birthday so landing so quickly after we lost her. But in many ways this was the easiest February I've had in over 20 years, and I made it through without having to fight the desire to drink or drug.

In March, I turned 41, and I actually see that as a good thing. I never expected to live this long, and those that know my story know that it is a miracle of God that I have. More than that though, I never expected to be glad to have lived that long, if by some miracle I did. For years I hated my birthday because I hated my life. Today I have a life worth living and can celebrate the day of my birth instead of seeing it as a curse. I am so grateful for that.

Sometimes it's easy to feel sorry for myself when I think about April. Leah's birthday was in April, and I wasn't able to get her what I wanted to for her birthday or do any of the special things that I imagined would be nice to do. We simply didn't have the money, which served as an excellent diving board into the pool of self pity, since my contribution at this point was as "house husband" or "domestic engineer" and I hadn't brought any income to the table in a while. But that is me feeling sorry for myself or angry at the wreckage of my past. Leah appreciates what I contribute to our home. And she and I had a good time together celebrating her birthday. I know that I need to continue to work on determining my value based on what God says about me and not on how I perceive the world or society would determine my worth, or by money, or not on my past.

In May I celebrated my two-year sobriety anniversary. The longest period before was 15 months. In May I extended my previous record by nine months and celebrated being clean and sober for the longest time period since I was 13 years old. On top of that, the days and months following two years continued to be smooth and fight free when it came to the obsession to drink or drug, or rather the lack of it. I am grateful.

In May I also started a recovery oriented chapter of the No Rules Riders RC. I am pretty proud to fly the No Rules Riders patch on my vest, but the chapter patch I designed is far more special and important to me. I lived my life to raise hell for far too long, and now, thanks to finding relationship with my Creator and working the spiritual  program of recovery and the 12 steps, I can be a part of the God's miracle work in razing, meaning to level or completely destroy, the hell of bondage and addiction. I once was a prisoner to alcohol and drugs and so much more. Today I am free to ride the road of happy destiny, a twist on a quote from the Big Book, and not only am I free, but I can help others find that same freedom. It worked for me, so it can work for anyone who works it.

In June, the Hell Razer chapter NRR made it's first recovery run. A simple little ride with some friends to a meeting about an hour and a half from home. It turned out to be a God-thing. Their speaker for the night didn't show, and the guy who rode with us ended up speaking and sharing his 20 plus years of recovery experience, strength and hope. I am so grateful to have been able to experience God working in such a way.

In July Jesse Rayne came into our, mine and Leah's, life. This was somewhat a silver lining of losing Derrin and Crystal, as we never would have met Jesse had the other not happened. Jesse has been a real blessing to me and Leah and become one of my best friends. I am grateful for him.

In August I wrecked my motorcycle when a college student pulled into my lane on a wet weekday afternoon. There's one that could have easily been a serious negative for the year but really wasn't. I walked away from the wreck. Ok, I rode away in an ambulance, but after some cat scans and x-rays, I walked out of the ER a few hours after the wreck. That's good enough for me. I received no serious injuries in the wreck, and I am grateful to God for that. This wreck turned out to be a blessing in and of itself as the CT Scans showed some spots on my lymph nodes. That caused some fear and anxiety as one might expect, but it reminded me to rely on God. I didn't feel the need to escape or change my reality. I didn't figure I was dying so might as well burn out. In other words, I handled this baffling situation in a way totally opposite to the way I had always reacted in the past. God's miracle working power continued to be demonstrated. Several months earlier I had admitted in a meeting that I didn't know if I could stay sober facing a life threatening illness such as cancer. In August and the following month and a half I had to face the very real possibility that I would find out. My program didn't fall apart, and God remained faithful.

In September God made a way for me to have the treatment I needed. Leah and I met with the Thoracic surgeon and scheduled the biopsy for early October. That brought new fear as I hate going under anesthesia. But once more God was faithful. I felt peace instead of fear the morning of the surgery. Everything went well, and a week later I learned that I had received grace once more. I didn't have cancer. The disease that was causing the problem in my lymph nodes was not life threatening if treated, and it is treatable. Thank you God.
Suddenly I felt even more grateful that I hadn't thrown my recovery away in valley of the shadow. The light revealed that death would have to wait a while. Had I returned to my drinking and using only God knows if I would have survived another relapse.

In November I celebrated my fifth Thanksgiving since prison and my third with Leah. Reviewing the previous few months I had plenty to be Thankful for. Leah and I learned that her son and his wife are going to have a baby and saw the first sonogram of our grandchild due in June. Hell  Razer NRR participated in the local Gypsy MC Toys For Tots Drive and helped that worthy cause.

Suddenly Christmas was upon us. I survived yet another apocalypse, and fared much better than I did the last one I survived. I got to see both my brothers and their families. Things came together just right for Leah and I to be able to see her son and his wife. We didn't get to see her daughter this year, but Leah did get to talk/text with her. I had the blessing of being hired to shoot not just one but two weddings this month. Through the blessing of Facebook I learned that my nephew had to have emergency surgery this morning to remove his appendix and that the surgery went well.

For ever horrible, scary or bad thing that happened during the past twelve months, I can easily see God' hand in giving Leah the grace and strength to go through it. I am grateful for that. I am grateful for my life with Leah. I am grateful for my recovery and how it stood the test of some pretty serious trials this past year.

I am not one who makes resolutions. The victory I have had in my life and in my recovery is not my own. It is proof that there is a God and that He has power that I do not posses. Everything that I determine to do on my own or in my own strength is pretty much a set up for failure. But I do have some goals for 2013. I hope to grow even closer in relationship with my Heavenly Father. I hope that whether 2013 is great or horrible or the mixed bag that most years are, my program will remain strong because my conscious contact with my Creator will not be broken.

I hope to write more frequently and regularly. I hope to ride more and worry less. I hope to use my camera more in creative and artistic ways and also with the result of contributing more financially to my family.

I hope to share my experience, strength and hope more and to help others who suffer the way I used to suffer to recover from alcoholism and addiction. I hope to be less critical and more loving. I look forward to becoming a grandfather and hope to be a better husband, son, brother and  friend than I have been. I hope to continue working the spiritual program of recovery in my life so that these things that I hope for have a chance of coming true. Basically I have hope for 2013, and that is also a miracle because I am grateful for the hope I have today and four years ago hope was near the very top of my fears list.

Thank you God for the miracles and progress in my life over the past four years and especially over the past 12 months.  I am grateful that I know that the good in my life comes from you and that I haven't earned it, because that frees me from the weight of having to earn its continuance. I am grateful that You have begun this good work in me and that You will be faithful and are able to complete that work. Thank you from freedom from fear of the future and from having to measure up. Thank you for 2012, the good and the bad, and for the chance to see what 2013 will bring. My I be faithful to calling with which I have been called and may I do Your will always. Amen.