Amending

This morning as I was exhaling to let my body go into a difficult (for me) yoga pose, the instructor said, "I find that I often treat others the way I treat myself."

Ah.
She means REALLY, not SURFACELY (the operative hidden word there being FACE).  Because there have been many moments where I haven't been genuine to someone's face... given service while judging, that kind of thing.
During those times, I am more prone to judging myself.

As I've written out my amends and God has made it very clear that I and my body need to be at the tip top of that list, it's been incredible to watch the direction He's taking me.  As I love myself truly and take care of myself carefully, I am more open to loving OTHERS truly and taking care of them CAREFULLY, MINDFULLY and from a healthy place.

My 30th birthday was yesterday, and I used it as an opportunity to make amends to myself.  I bought a new pair of tennis shoes. I bought a pair of pants that fit RIGHT and that are new (as opposed to my usual purchase from a thrift store that fit "pretty good").  I bought some new underwear and a tube of the GOOD foundation I normally pass up because it costs too much and buy toxic foundation instead (cheaper!)  I stepped into a salon for the first time in two years.

 

I went for a walk, did some yoga.  I let myself know that I HAVE WORTH.  The money I spent will come back into my life -it's okay.  No one is going without for Mom to have shoes that aren't ripped.

My entire paycheck (granted, my paychecks are cute and tiny) went to amends, and a large portion of my next one will as well.
While Danny and I grocery shopped, I put in more greenery.  God has made it crystal clear that Alicia's body needs stuff from the dirt.

A few years ago, I had originally planned to spend my 30th in a salon all day -a ONE TIME BIG EVENT where I got a massage, a mani/pedi, a facial, a cut/color/style, brow wax, make-up... then I wanted to buy a new outfit and head out for a dinner date.
But you know what matters to me now?
NOT a once time big event, but a true, deep shift in beliefs and perspective.

So my bed has stayed made.
My room has stayed clean and peaceful.
I've purchased beautiful songs on iTunes that continue to feed and enrich my worth.
I eat better.
I move more.
I have spent time each day with my bare feet on God's earth, soaking up the purity of His lovely creation.

I talk with God, and I ask Him if the key to His Omniscience is simplicity?  He doesn't answer.  He wants me to search more.

This shift and change has been gradual, and it has STUCK.  I know it's time for these amends -they are not a one-time event that will repeat in 10 years when I realize my shoes are taking in water and the elastic on my clothing is shot.
It's just a tube on foundation.
It's just a pair of jeans that like my body.
It's just a bra.

But oh my gosh -the messages those send are priceless.

It's crazy to see how important balance is -how I could take buying things to an extreme, but how I need to smartly care properly for myself as well.

God is guiding these amends.  It's not enough to SAY "I'm sorry" to myself.  I need to change behaviors, and I find that I can not do it alone.
But He leads, He guides, He walks beside.

I have a stout pile of crap -old make-up, towels, shoes... that I'm ready to burn.  It's time to send big messages back to myself, it's time to get rid of inner chaos and ask God to replace it with clarity.
If I can see myself from a third-person perspective, if I can see and believe in my worth, light, identity, and divinity then my good choices become simple.

In turn, and in God's beautiful way, I turn that Seeing Eye onto others.

The Next Thirty Years will have their storms, and God and I are building a shelter within my being.
It is sacred ground -holy, holy, holy.

One good choice at a time, line upon line, day upon day, we are building a liberating shelter.

And it's hard to dance with a devil on your back 

So shake him off, oh woah 

 I am done with my graceless heart 

So tonight I'm gonna cut it out and then restart 

Return to Sanity

In our online group meeting this week, we read Step 2.  One of the questions that follows reads:

What does it mean to be restored to sanity?

The opposite of sanity is, in my own world, the place I go to where every other thought is the thought every spouse of an addict is familiar with:

Am I crazy?

In that place, I am blocked.  I can not hear my own gut -my put-there-by-God-and-filled-with-His-truth-and-light Intelligence -and everything begins to blur and swirl.  I short, everything feels like the way life looks when I take my contacts out and lose all sense of sight (except colors!) and depth perception.
Without the aid and help of lenses, I am legally blind my friends.

I went there this last week.  In that place, I was triggered more frequently and powerfully.  I was emotionally edgy, physically tense.  It occurred to me at one point that this state used to be my NORMALCY.
And I felt a little hope in that -as if what used to be my Standard Mode of Operations was now a sort of Lights Flashing, Sirens Blaring State of Emergency.

That's a sign of healing, right?

I know I'm in that painful place when I can not hear what I need.  I'm indecisive, scared, and anxious.

I recently finished reading a James Allen book, and I found therein a gem that has become a sort of imagery mantra for me (is that a thing?  Imagery mantra?... Something I picture in my mind when I feel like I'm crazy?)

 A return to sanity is, for me, being able to hear myself.

 It's finding and tapping into that depth Allen speaks of -it's a vibrant canyon for me, filled with everything God created to give me... in his own words from D&C 59:

18)Yea, all things which come of the earth, in the season thereof, are made for the benefit and the use of man, both to please the eye and to gladden the heart;
19) Yea, for food and for raiment, for taste and for smell, to strengthen the body and to enliven the soul.

Walking in that canyon at peace with God, climbing and hiking the up and the downs while the world above whirls with drama, intrigue, and dark storms of every kind.

It's my figurative happy place.  I can tap into it now and then, and I hope to someday set up camp there.

I hope to live within it eventually, as Frankl once found freedom from outer bondage within.  This life feels so binding, doesn't it?

I feel so limited in what I can do with the little knowledge I have... I feel the world beyond is filled with rich treasures of knowledge and wisdom.  This life is a life of bondage where we are called on to tap into the freedom that abides in the one place that carries heaven with it: our intelligence within.

It is our safe haven, and it can not be taken from us from any outward perpetrator unless we grant access.

Or unless we've been blessed with PTSD (or other mental illnesses) in which case, we've become victims of thievery of the absolute worst kind: Thievery of our inner selves.

The good news is we can reclaimed or be reclaimed through God.
And THAT, to me, is what a return to sanity to looks like... it's the return of what's been taken -my peace, my serenity, my voice, my worth, my ability to see myself and hear myself and honor that which manifests itself within.
I bring that manifestation going on within... WITH-OUT and THAT.  THAT is my return to sanity.

I speak up for my safety, set a boundary, remind myself that I am worthy of other people's time (a nod here to a great friend who spoke this truth to me and changed my perspective -you know who you are!) and SO REACH OUT.  I pray before, during and after.  I take any glimmer of voice coming from within and obey what it tells me: a walk, a yoga session, a few more hours without my contacts in, moving a picture in the house, taking off the pants that don't fit right, eating something that came from God's Good Earth (My Playground), taking time to put my bare feet in the grass, taking time to rehearse an affirmation:
I am confident.
I walk with my back straight.
I look others in the eye.
I am enough.
I have nothing to hide.
I do not fear my story being uncovered.
I walk with God.
I am light.
I am joy.
I am truth unfurled.

Without God, this is not possible, for it IS God who speaks to me from within.

God is my sanity, and I am his treasure.

Fields of Toil

So often trials are compared to storms -dark clouds, rain, torrent... then comes the rainbow, then comes the rest.

Sometimes He lets it rain.
Dark clouds.
Sometimes He lets the storm rage and calms His child.

A few days ago, I sat on the shores of a lake in Arizona.  I was up in the pines, camping with my family.  We were squeezing out every last drop of summer.  Danny was fishing with the kids, and I'd just finished skipping rocks. I didn't buy a fishing license because
1) It saved us some money
2) I don't know how to fish
3) I have notebooks that love being written in on the shores of lakes in the pines

My toddler and I stuck together because she didn't care about fishing either.  She climbed up rocks, throwing her hands in the air.
"Queen of the world!"

I beat my record in rock skipping: FIVE.  And for the fiftieth time that trip, God sent me a Valentine to let me know He sees and cares.
A Valentine skipping stone:

I tucked it in my purse.
My inflammation worsened -it had been flaring up, maybe because I was constantly on the move?  So I sat down next to my daughter and we threw big rocks into the water -squealing with every *SPLASH*
The water felt so good on our hot faces.
She put her feet in the lapping water and spoke to it, "Be nice, water.  Be nice to Alice."

I sat down in our red camping chair, hunkering down so the sun couldn't find me. It wasn't easy -the Arizona sun has a way of finding EV.ER.EE.THING.  Even the lakes around us were evaporating at a weirdly alarming rate, making fishing a pretty dumb idea.

I watched my daughter build a castle out of rocks and sighed in relief as the sun fell behind the ONE cloud in the sky.  My mind went back years -twenty, fifteen...

My Dad owns a farm and a small herd of cattle.  He was the living mash-up of the Oklahoma! hit, "The Farmer and The Cowman."
Oh, the Farmer and the cowman should be friends...
My Dad WAS a farmer AND a cowman.  This meant he grew his own hay which worked out well because he had 6 kids to help him grow, cut, turn, bale and pick up the hay.  After my brothers left home, he BOUGHT A MACHINE that picked up hay.  It was a betraying day for me... picking up hay was the hardest, most grueling part of the hay business and ALL THIS TIME THERE WAS A MACHINE THAT DID IT?!
But I digress.

Those hot Arizona summers picking up hay are scorched into my brain.  Some days I'd ride in the truck with Dad and watch in wonder as the boys in town would help my brothers pick up bale after bale.  Sweat would run down everyone's faces.  Their arms were sun burned and scratched... they could wear long sleeves but the length was torture... worse than scratched arms.
The hay was carefully stacked, row by row.  A special pattern had to be made to keep the hay from falling over, so one boy would stack and the others would pitch the bales onto the trailer.  The tractor or truck would pull the trailer along at a snail's pace.
I think they have a thing called Cross Fit now that gives men the bodies I saw my brothers build throwing alfalfa bales around.
When we picked up oat bales, I could help.  I couldn't pitch them to the top of the stack, but my patient older brother would help me nudge them onto the lowest part of the trailer.  As I got older -12 or so, I graduated to Driver.
I was complete bunk at it.
I was so nervous trying to do it PERFECTLY because the thought of messing up in front of the boys my Dad had hired was just unfathomable.
My first real-life crush was formed out on those fields.

I can still feel that hot sun, the sweat, the parched summer days...
As I sat on the shore and watched my daughter talk to her castle, I felt the metaphor for trials shift in me.
When trials rage in my life, it feels less like a storm and more like a hot summer day.  I'm racing against the tractor to get the bales pitched onto the trailer.  I'm the driver, the stacker, the pitcher... the sun is blazing, and sweat is rolling down my neck... my body is coated in my own perspiration.  With every bale I pluck up, one more is set down on the unending field of toil and sweat.
And THAT.
That is what it feels like.
No clouds, no drops of rain, no torrential storm to send me into respite.  Just sun.

We are taught that Christ is in the Sun (just read it in my scriptures, though I can't remember the reference!), and this is true for me... when I'm on that figurative field with those figurative heavy, rough bales, I am closer and nearer to God than ever.
It is HARD and it is TRYING and I want to give up and spit and lie down and I WANT TO STOP, but trials aren't like that.  Even when I physically lie down in the midst of a trial, there's still a blazing heat going on inside, ripping me apart.
The sun is a healing energy that also burns -it's made of FIRE.

My baptisms by fire has come through Christ and at NO POINT was it easy.

Coming home from those fields was the best -dunking myself into bath water, filling my body with water, eating a good meal, and sitting down.  You can't beat that feeling.  It measured up to the feeling you get after spending a day branding cattle and coming home to wash the stench of burning hide and human sweat off.
Nothing in this world has come closer to me than the way repentance feels than a long shower after a full day pitching hay or branding cattle.  Even rounding them up is less intense.

So it is with trials -after the work, the sweat, and the seemingly unending output on my part -there is living water to be had in abundance.  It's there all along, but after the trial it seems more precious.

God is in the sun and the water.  He's the most miraculous gift -the most present, the most mysterious, the most attractive.
And so we find that another sort of romance is flourishing on my Fields of Toil... I desire God, and unlike the hired hand I longingly stared at through my coke-bottle glasses, God actually knows I'm there and what's more?  DESIRES ME with a passion far deeper than any I've cooked up.

Because He desires me, He gives me Fields of Toil.
And that's where the metaphor shift is vital for me... I see the point of pain, I see a purpose -a loving purpose in pain.  Pain becomes necessary -thereby making it endurable.
My pleas to end it all, my declarations of self-weakness dissipate and I stand under the hot sun, knowing now, as I didn't five years ago, there's something great at the end of the field.

Knowledge, compassion, growth, clarity.

God has led me in the path of healing these days -physically healing.  He's led me to resources that will aid in boosting the negative ions in my life.
Negative ions are found in waterfalls and mountains, in nature -they energize and build us up.
Positive ions are found in electronics and man-made structures -they drain us.

There must be a balance.
And as I think of the rain falling, I see a gift from God, for especially in lightening there is a SURGE of negative ions, and we are uplifted thereby.

The world is my university -the sun my teacher, the rain my gift, the earth my healer.
And God is in them all.
And God is in me.

Itchy Inside

I've been working my dailies daily... just like their little name implies.  I've been doing the hard ones and the good ones and the soothing ones.
Pray -connect with God.
Read scriptures
Connect with self -yoga, journal, take a meaningful walk fraught with introspection
Eat a healthy breakfast
Stay off social media from 5pm -10pm

It's been good, it's been good FOR me. 

But these last few days, I've been crawling inside of my skin.  I've been rearranging everything and snapping at people who don't need snapping at (who DOES, actually?)...

My chi -which I've recently discovered is A REAL THING -is OFF 100%.  Where my gut usually directs my decorating and my decisions, I'm fuzzy.

Today after spending hours redecorating my kitchen -one of my favorite rooms in my little trailer -I just HATED it.  Every jot and tittle.
And guess what?  KITCHENS DON'T MATTER.  In the great scheme of eternity and THE BIG PICTURE, my kitchen is not important.
So WHY?  Why am I wringing my hands and fussing over something I usually can decorate in a flash the way I like it?

It hit me in the middle of a pile of lace and hammer and nails: I haven't written.

In all of my dailies, I haven't let my fingers feel the click-clack they hunger for, beg for!  I haven't taken time out of a rainy afternoon to let words flow.  I've journaled with my pen, but for me -I don't care what the experts say -I NEED THIS KEYBOARD.

And as that realization hit, my soul was wracked with pain and sorrow and every other diva emotion a girl can be DROWNED with because my computer is BROKEN and we can't buy a new one because my body is BROKEN, so our money is going to medical bills.
All of the money.
Except the little we are setting aside to throw a fiesta for my 30th next weekend.

I will have a new computer soon, but I don't have one now and my Step 4 was VERY clear about my patience.
*ahem* my LACK of patience.

And then, like magic, like the magic beans that Jack's mother threw down in frustration... my computer which was on but refusing to give me anything but a BLACK STARE booted up.
Apparently, my husband has a little trick that sometimes works and sometimes doesn't and today it did because

Jesus loves me.
And Danny is sick of me itching on the inside and rearranging the house.

Now if you'll excuse me, I've got more typing to do on my other blog.  I've also got to move 2,000 (not exagerrating) pictures from my phone to my dying computer.

I've ALSO got to tear everything off of the walls in my kitchen.
Because my CHI IS NOT AT EASE.

Hopefully after I've typed and gotten stories out and my skin quits crawling inside of me, I'll stop caring about the kitchen walls.

Self-care is of the utmost, and here's my reminder to me:

DO THE RIGHT KIND, Alicia.
And make sure that the next 25 paychecks go directly into savings for a new computer.

"A life with death inside and chi-wrecking walls outside is no life at all." ~Alicia Deets

It's too yellow!
Too old lady!
Not enough eclectic, like I had mapped out in my mind!

Maybe after I'm done writing, I'll embrace the COTTAGEness of it and have a hot cup of tea while I work on things that actually matter like love and family and the state of the union.
Maybe.

Building Towers

I don't remember Heaven, not really... but it seems that part of me -perhaps a bigger part of me than I can grasp -suffers from severe homesickness. It's an ironic sort of homesickness -the more I feed it, the more it grows.  And I realize that it isn't actually a sickness at all but a HEALER in every way.

When I first sat down and really talked with Danny, it felt as if something deep within me was all at once excited and rested to be... could it be?... reunited.  I didn't know Danny.  I had never met him.  It was simultaneously the weirdest and most natural feeling in the world.

The part of my brain that's forgotten Heaven was confused and scared.  The part of my brain (? soul?) that remembers Heaven sort of exhaled, as if it had been anticipating my meeting Danny for years.  His voice was strange and familiar.  His hands were new and also home.  His hug was the hug of a newly-found friend and also the hug of someone I'd sung, "God Be With You 'Til We Meet Again" to.
It felt good.
It felt scary.
It felt natural.
It made no sense and complete sense all at once.

A piece of homesickness was given remedy that day.  It was proof of Home.  I'd felt for some time that there was a Home for me out there.  Meeting and marrying Danny was a piece of my Home Puzzle... but there's SO MUCH MORE.  I can feel it.

There's a part of me that hungers -ever hungers -for something MORE.  I don't mean materially, don't mistake me.  I mean -emotionally?  Is it emotion?  Or is there something out there that is MORE, even, than emotion?
I've always had this hunger.
I've always been a deep-feeling, passionate person, and as such I've always felt a constant dissatisfaction with the world at hand.
That's not to say that I've dismissed joyful moments or failed to live and bask in the present -though at times, many times, I have.  I'm only trying to say that I've got a hole in my heart.
I've heard some in the SA world refer to it as a "God Hole" and while I believe that, I still feel like my hole is more aptly titled, "The Home Hole."
I am not at home, no matter where I go.  I used to pity Christ when He spoke of having no place to lay his head, but pity isn't what Christ sought at all... Christ simply spoke truth of how He felt about Earth.  It wasn't His home, and He wasn't at home in it at all.  Earth was where He went for a mission.

I've sought to fill my Home Hole in so many ways -SO many.  I've sought out intense emotions, trying desperately to reach a level of unearthly emotion, trying to feel ANYTHING strongly, powerfully.
I've sought for years for more and more proof of home, and in so doing I've developed My Vices.
My Vices, unlike my Home Sickness, are ACTUALLY sicknesses who also grow abominably the more they are fed.  They bring no healing.  They are malignant.

The more I shop, the more I eat, the more I tear down others, the more movies I watch, the more I dive into the Earth and try and make it my home... the larger grows my Home Hole.

I think of the descendents of Noah, building a tower toward Heaven.  So often I was taught that the Tower of Babel was a symbol of wickedness.  But yesterday as I looked up in the darkness at the ceiling over my bed, I thought about those inherently GOOD people building what they felt was a needed and necessary building.



They sought to muscle their way back home. This I understand!
They gathered up their friends -they all spoke the same language and they all had the same hole in their heart, and they built a tower to home!  To Heaven!  But they forgot -again, let's hold hands with irony -about God. They formed and fed vices with their tower. Their tower became their house of worship, but they had replaced God with their own selves and in so doing had built up A House of Vices.
But God didn't forget about them, just as He's never forgotten about Alicia.
God took from them their unity of voice which they were using for desecration, and He cursed them with the inability to understand one another, thereby saving them.

My Vices look like theirs, though their story is ancient and mine is circa 2010.  My search for home often (or eventually) lacked a God-center and by default was mortal-centered.

So often I've reached for food, for money, for beauty and validation -so that I might reach Heaven in some way.  I didn't understand Heaven, really, and that's why I did it.  My innate was crying out for home and I sought out home as best I could with where I was and what knowledge I had.
And God, in His familiar mercy, is saving me.  Though my saving doesn't involve a curse, it does involve a lot of pain... and therein I can empathize with the descendents of Noah.

Glennon Melton has said:

"People think of us addicts as insensitive liars but we don’t start out that way. We start out as extremely sensitive truth tellers."

I built my vices from a hungry place -I was starving for Home.  I sought it out in the wrong places, but I sought it out regardless.

I built my Babels and they all failed me.
I love C.S. Lewis's thoughts in The Screwtape Letters.  He speaks at this point as a Devil:

Prosperity knits a man to the World.  He feels that he is "finding his place in it," while really it is finding its place in him.  His increasing reputation, his widening circle of acquaintances, his sense of importance, the growing pressure of absorbing and agreeable work, build up in him a sense of being really at home in earth which is just what we want. ... The truth is that the Enemy, having oddly destined these mere animals to life in His own eternal world, has guarded them pretty effectively from the danger of feeling at home anywhere else. 

As I am facing my 30th birthday next month, I find that I'd much rather be 30 with the knowledge that has come with 30 than be 21, sitting in the dirt with my building blocks, trying to muscle my way back home.
It is a really yucky and hard place to be.

Ironically (yeah, we're still there), the most rested place I've ever been is completely racked with homesickness.

Give me not of this world, God, but offer up pieces of Home on Earth that I might make myself Fat upon my Longing for Home.
Give me a rose, a breeze, a baby's curl.  Give me a song filled with strains of Home, and a evening spent in the company of those who kept company with me at Home.
Give me meat and bread of body and soul.
Shower thy blessings upon me as I reach my hungry, childish arms up toward Thee.
I cry unto Thee for comfort, for love, for peace.

Give me no place on Earth to lay my head for therein lies risk of losing my peace-giving sense of Longing.

This is my Sabbath prayer and my Step 7.
Amen.

Curious Case of The Inferior Decorator

Last night, our family went looking for a video we'd taken a few years ago of my son singing a tune from, "Calamity Jane" -a musical starring Doris Day who is by all account much too adorable to be Calamity but also much too adorable to be criticized.  It took us awhile to find it because my picture and video files aren't organized -if you know me personally, you aren't shocked over this fact.  We rifled through the years, playing video after video.  I saw my kids grow from diapers to size 8 jeans before my eyes.

It was surreal watching little clips of our life back then.  What stood out -besides the obvious cuteness that is My Children -was the background.  My house.  I watched the decorations shifting and changing, the mess always constant. 
It looks nothing like my house now.  There's still a mess, but it sings a different tune now.
I listened to my voice behind the camera and I felt a gnawing ache in my belly -I ached because I KNEW what The Girl Holding the Camera was going through.  I could see the date each video was taken and I knew, roughly, what was going on around then. 
I remember the month after my rock bottom when God blessed me with three separate highly contagious illnesses that spread through my entire family and kept EVERYONE AWAY and ME AWAY FROM EVERYONE and I sang great and giant praises unto God for it.
I remember the months I spent in bed, trying my best to just GET UP.

And strangely, I remember trying to decorate my house but not really knowing what the heck to do.  I remember trying one thing and then another, never quite content.  I'd spend a day on a wall and walk away at the end of it exhausted and discontented, too tired to bother messing with it for months.  I'd stare at it and just feel... off.
I began to accept myself as an Inferior Decorator.
"It's just who I am," I shrugged myself into apathy.

But you know what?  It isn't who I am.  Am I a professional decorator?  Oh, gosh no.  But guess what I'm not?  I'm not an inferior anything.
I looked at those shifting walls last night and I realized that I was witnessing what happens to a woman when she's completely out of touch with herself. I had neglected myself and been neglected by those who loved me.  I had sustained abuse and wasn't aware of it.
I only knew that my walls were off.  I didn't realize it was because I WAS OFF.
I was out of touch, and I had no idea how to hear myself, how to listen.

Today, I'm typing from the same computer I've typed from for years.  I think of the things these keys have held -the truths, the pains, the tears, the laughter.  I've bonded with this dying, geriatric lap top and I wonder if it sees what's happened.  I wonder if it sees what I see.
The day I opened it up for the first time, I was set on TELLING.  I was set on writing and telling and teaching others.
I love teaching.  It's one part of myself I've never truly lost, though for a time it went completely haywire.  I blogged daily about anything I felt worthwhile, which was truly, truly everything.  Everything, that is, except the truth.
I blogged about mediocre custard filling and posted rushed tutorials on how to make zipper flowers -something I was pretty bunk at, but felt a nagging feeling to shout it from the rooftop anyway.
I poured the sparse amount of life-blood in me into showing others stuff.

I can see why.  I understand my hunger and need to be validated and seen.  I get that.  Given a rewind button, I'd probably do the same thing.  Maybe in a different way?  But knowing what I know about myself, I'm sure I'd run back to that numb, out-of-touch place.

I can't tell you how many times I literally fell asleep on my floor from exhaustion.  Dropped, plopped and woke up at 2 am, flat on my belly, carpet print on my cheek.
It felt absolutely natural to be THAT busy.

Since those videos were taken, things have changed.  They didn't change right away -I didn't even realize HOW MUCH had changed until last night.  What's more: they're still changing.
As I've worked -REALLY worked -recovery, I feel as if I've woken up.  Chancing blasphemy, I'd say that Jesus kissed Sleep Beauty and together, we're building a kingdom.

The glorious proof lies on my walls -I'm not discontented anymore.  I love my walls.  I can HEAR what I want, what I need, and what brings me joy.  I find myself throwing things away and making room for what really thrills me. 
On Saturday, I wore my glasses all day because -I SWARE -my eyes told me they were tired of having contacts forced on them.

As I began working recovery, I was still focused on helping and telling.  I walked into meetings wondering what I had to offer THEM.  I felt a responsibility to use my words to shift the direction of conversation (should it wander into no-no territory) and I would calculate WHAT to say and WHEN and HOW and I made sure I looked nice too.

Somewhere along the lines, Socrates bonked me on the head and I realized that
I
KNEW
NOTHING.

I'm not the first person he's rattled with this profound, life-breathing mantra.

As that truth sunk in (it took a long time), a new world began to unfold.  Suddenly, it wasn't about Alicia and what She had to offer the meetings, people, internet and nature... it was ABOUT the meetings, the people, and nature.
The Sleeping Beauty that awoke wasn't ME at all... not really in the sense I thought -it was my innate, my secret, silenced innate.
And as she awoke, she was STARVING.  She'd been starved for years, and she bloomed as she ate.  I nourished her when I could, and she became louder with every bite of Soul Food.
She is strong today.
She is a strong student.

She walks into nature and wonders what it might teach her.  She looks into the eyes of passing strangers and wonders what parts of God they carry inside of them.  She walks into meetings and wonders what there is to learn that day -because she knows there is SO VERY MUCH, more more than will ever fit in one speck of a lifetime.

She is curious, and the older I get, the more child-like she becomes.  She is my Benjamin Button which is uncanny because WE BOTH have had a school-girl crush on F. Scott Fitzgerald since the 10th grade.
It's all very Barbra Mandrell singing, "I was [flapper] when [flapper] wasn't cool."

What I'm trying to get out here, pal, is that
I
CAN
HEAR.

Which is really, truly something because I didn't know I couldn't until I saw those videos and saw from a third-person perspective what Soul Blockage looks like.

From where I sit now, I can smell the fragrant lilies that I knew I needed from the grocery store last night.  I can see the old cookbooks stacked in a wire basket where a gigantic pile of papers and fabric used to be.  I can feel the familiar tick of the keys I love so much, the kind that feed my soul but (unfortunately) not my belly.

My innate is my teacher.  She is Christ within, teaching me as I listen that though I don't believe it yet, I AM WORTHY.  She prompts me to do crazy things like clean the window over my sink, and I obey... five minutes later as I watch the sun set through a clean, clear window, a message is sent, "You are worth clarity.  You are worth this peace."

She prompts me to rest on the couch, to rest my soul, to meditate, to rest in God.
She prompts me to find the present.  She prompts me to let go of the past, the future, and others.

Her power is beyond comprehension.
And today I can let go of the days behind me when I tied her up and shoved a sock in her mouth. Today I can reach inside of myself.
And I can listen.

This is a miracle, and it bringeth about miracles... like walls that remind me of her:
 

Monsoons

Arizona Monsoons are brilliant.

Arizona Deserts are moody and impatient.  They turn from parched to drenched in seconds and right back again. 
Last night, we saw a storm in the distance.  We gathered up mowers and toys, moved the dogs inside, filled our little oil lamp up, and unplugged big, expensive electronics.  The storm moved quickly in, lighting up the sky.
Rain pelted everything.
Danny stopped up leaks in our leaky house (leaky houses are more healthy than unleaky houses, just so ya know) and I played the piano.
Our kids tried to relax, but with each big BOOM their eyes got wider.  They looked to us for our reaction... if Mom is okay, then I'll be okay.

"Aren't you glad we live in this little cozy house?" I came up to my kids from behind and wrapped my arms around them, tickling them as I added, "Instead of a GIANT HAUNTED MANSION?!?!"
They squealed and screamed and ironically relaxed a little.

I went into my room to get more yarn for the scrap blanket I'm crocheting (gotta do something with all this sick time.  Hey!  Why not make an ugly blanket for the kids to fight over when I'm gone?) and realized as I switched the light in my room on that I was
SO
TERRIFIED.

The fear dark thunderstorms bring is familiar.  It's the same now as it was when I was 8.
The darkness is what does it.  I've literally slept through a Monsoon Flood during the middle of the afternoon.  But a darkened storm?  My timbers shiver.

I realize the storm, the rumblings and the grumblings, brought on the same stress that my marriage used to (and sometimes still).  You never know when there's going to be a BOOM big enough to rattle you, and the only clarity you're given is bright, instantaneous flashes of light so electric they can almost be blinding.
In the darkest place of my marriage, those electric lights were just as scary as the thunder that followed.  In fact, the closer the light came -the more and more I saw what I could do and started DOING IT -the louder the thunder got, the more the storm raged around me.

With each brilliant flash, I was scared.
Could I stand up for myself?
Could I say I was unhappy?
Would I?

I eventually would when it seemed that any other option (meaning NOT speaking up) seemed more hellish than I could fathom.  The ending result was MORE light.  And, unfortunately, more storm.

I was scared to change, scared to detach from the dark storm, scared of confrontation, scared that I wouldn't be enough on my own.

Lightening is confident.  It makes everything around it brighter -lights up the darkest skies.  It brings fire and gives us some of the GREATEST photo ops.

There is lightening inside of every soul.
It can be scary in the middle of a storm, but you know what?  I think it needs to be.  Because the STORM is scary... the storm needs somebody it's own size.
And lightening is equal to the storm.

Do rainbows come after storms?  Is there peace and tranquility?
People say so, but I generally find there's simply more storms.  I also find there's more beauty in the rainy season than any other.