Meditation Moment

Take a few moments and dare to dream about who your better self is. Remember, the best part of ourselves is also the worst. We do not need to be transformed into someone else; we are simply doing the work of becoming our better self.

...I believe in intention and I believe in work. I believe in waking up in the middle of the night and packing our bags and leaving our worst selves for our better ones.

-Leslie Jamison, “The Empathy Exams”

Marriage as a Mirror

We do not practice our shortcomings in isolation. One of my issues is this habit of getting defensive when challenged. Large or small, any hint of somebody getting too close to my humanity and threatening my fragile ego freaks me out. I understand why I developed such a talent for this strategy and I admit that it is hard to let it go. I can show myself grace over this AND my step work invites me to live differently.

One of the most obvious places it shows up is in my marriage. My husband will offer me a suggestion for improving something - like loading the dishwasher, or how to use my car’s blinker when changing lanes. I am always tempted to come back with something snarky like, “Well, if you are so great at loading the dishwasher, do it yourself!” The problem with that defense is that he loads and unloads the dishwasher way more often than I do. You see my dilemma. I do not want to bite the hand that so often loads my dishwasher with excellence. The truth is, I resent any suggestions for improvement because I do not like to think about all the ways in which I could improve. It is far easier to think about my husband’s limitations and blame him for being so full of….suggestions.

Humility reminds me that I am only responsible for recognizing the truth about myself. I repeat: humility is the capacity to recognize the truth about myself. Period. Full stop. This provides me with a much-needed boundary for behaving. I am responsible for myself; I am responsible to others. My attention rightfully returns to working my own program.

How has selfishness, self-seeking, dishonesty and fear negatively impacted your willingness and ability to look at your own limitations?

Sad But True...

Addiction is when you do the thing you really, really most don’t want to be doing.

-Philip Seymour Hoffman, quoted in The New York Times

Philip Seymour Hoffman - brilliant man who found recovery for decades and ultimately lost his life to the disease became a subject matter expert. His addiction was opioids.

What is yours?

What are you doing that you really, really most don’t want to be doing?

An "As if" Life

If the first part of our work is to believe that God might remove a particular defect of character without feeling any need to text us or put a post on Facebook acknowledging his efforts on our behalf, then it makes sense that we test the theory. We behave AS IF HE HAS REMOVED THE SHORTCOMING. This, of course, requires that we thoughtfully strategize about what that might look like and develop a plan of action.

What if he hasn’t? We will know soon enough. Our shortcoming will continue to show up. Bad news tends to travel fast. This is to be expected so we can also plan accordingly for those incidents. I am weirdly excited about this phase of recovery. I have skills for this work!

If God has not seen fit to remove a specific flaw, I know what to do next. I can do a Fourth Step, then a Fifth Step, repeat the Sixth Step and return to the Seventh Step whenever I notice that my shortcoming is still alive and well. Most often we discover this once we get to the Tenth Step (We continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it).

We are capable of doing this work because we have already acknowledged that our shortcomings are harmful. But we have mad skills so there is no need for fear or self-condemnation.

Meditation Moment

If we could move past the stories we tell, who might we become?

You are past love, praise, indifference, blame.

-Thomas Hardy, “Your Last Drive”