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.