My solution is gratitude

I'm chairing a meeting today and the topic is chairperson's choice so I needed to come up with something appropriate for anything we might be going through now. With the new restrictions, a lot of us have had to cancel holiday plans and that disappoints and frustrates us.

My thing was not being able to attend the christmas social at the club. I've been to every one since 1997. What's my solution whenever I start to be consumed by self-pity - gratitude. If I can remember all the things I have to be grateful for, it's hard to feel any negativity while I'm doing that.

So, grab a pen and paper, or a keyboard, and write down six things you have to be grateful for. If you are not out of your funk yet, write six more and keep writing until you realize how selfish you've been feeling.

End of the Year always gets me thinking

Tomorrow, I'll be chairing my, well I was going to say my home group of al-anon, but it's actually not my group. I haven't been to my group since the first lockdown, but I've been attending another group on zoom for about 18 months. Being the chairperson doesn't worry me. Done it before and it really doesn't call for a special skill set. It's just another way to express my gratitude.

A quarter of a century ago, I was broken. These meetings I go to help me to put me back together, a piece at a time. I heard an AA oldtimer tell a story once about putting the man back together and as he did that his world came together. Same sort of thing happened with me. It's not the same world I lived in. I think it's a better one.

The end of the year always gets me thinking. Did I do enough this year? Did I change enough? I spoke at a meeting today and I quoted the book, that line about being of maximum usefullness to God and to others? Nancy and I have the community project we do every year. We delivered xmas gifts to 19 organizations in metro, but surely we could have done 20. Next year, we'll try harder.

April 7 - Acceptance

My sponsor and I went to a meeting a few days ago. One of the topics for discussion was Acceptance. I suggested they try the 12 steps. They were the solution to all my problems.

On the drive home, we talked and I pointed out that acceptance is the basic principle of each step. Other principles embedded in the steps are honesty and humility, but acceptance is the underlying one.

Look at Step 1. "We admitted we were powerless over alcohol - that our lives had become unmanageable." I always get a kick out of those shares that start with, "Well I can admit that I'm powerless but I don't think I've accepted it yet......" Accept is a synonym of surrender. Admit is a synonym of surrender. So is concede, decide, come to terms with, etc. So, it's the same thing said using a different word. I know in one of our books it says that the underlying principle of the first step is that we shall find no strength until we first admit complete defeat. - Surrender.

In step 2, it says, "Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity." Surrender/acceptance again.

In step 3, "We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him." That sounds like acceptance to me.

In Step 4, we "Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves." Acceptance again. After all, what's the point of making an inventory, of searching out and coming to terms with our defects of character, if we're not going to use it.

In Step 5, we "Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs." We already know that to admit and to accept means the same thing.

Again, in step 6, we "Were entirely ready to have God remove our defects of character." We developed this degree of readiness by surrender of our ego, by acceptance.

Further, in step 7, we "Humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings." We wouldn't do that unless we had surrendered to, unless we had accepted that he would.

And it continues throughout all the steps. When Little Johnny told his teacher he was having difficulty with math, she gave him math homework.

If you're having difficulty with the practice of acceptance, with the practice of humility, or with the practice of honesty, do your homework. Work the steps. That's what they're for.

Box With A View

 

Chapter 1 - Box With A View

Excerpt from Diary of A Homeless Man Copyright ©2016 Bernie Schultz

I wake at 6 am, feeling only slightly rested. I didn't crawl into bed until almost 2 am. It was cold last night, maybe minus 4. My bed is cold. I am cold. I can see my breath. It reminds me of a time, in my first marriage, when the furnace oil ran out. Sleeping in the basement was like sleeping outside. But I am not in that marriage now, and I am not in that basement. I am in a sleeping bag, in a makeshift lean-to, under the bridge. It is December and I am cold.

I can hear traffic above me, people leaving their homes, heading off to their jobs and people who worked all night, heading home to their warm beds, unaware that I am here, under the bridge. I need to get up, get moving. I don't want to be seen.

I say a prayer of thanks to my creator for keeping me alive one more night and ask for the strength to get through today. I check my hands and my feet for signs of frostbite. Everything seems okay. I get out of the sleeping bag, crawl out of my shelter, stand up and walk around a bit. My knapsack was my pillow. I fish around inside the front pouch and find half a cigarette. A coffee would be nice, too, but maybe later.

I roll up my sleeping bag, tie the laces on it, put it in a garbage bag, and shove it far into the lean-to. I cover it with snow and branches, and then I start my day. It's only 6:30, too early for the AA club to be open, but the cleaner gets there at 7:00, and he will have coffee on. I usually give him a hand with his chores in exchange for a hot cup.

Along the way, I stop at a coffee shop and check the dumpster out back. There is a clear plastic garbage bag filled with half a dozen bagels. I take those and put them in my knapsack. At the clubhouse, the cleaner already has the coffee made. He sits outside, smoking, waiting for me. He gives me a coffee. I share my bagels with him and we make jokes about eating a continental breakfast.

Afterward, we clean up the clubhouse. It's not hard work and it's warm inside. The cleaner gives me a few smokes, we play a game of cards. At 9:00 I head down to the public library, to check the job boards. I used to work there, before everything changed. I hope to get a job there again, but I wonder how I will manage to get shaved and showered if I ever get an interview. At least I wouldn't have far to walk to get to work. That makes me chuckle and I know I'm not beat yet if I can still laugh.

At 11:30 I head over to the soup kitchen to stand in line for a hot meal. I always get there early so I can get in, get fed, then jog back down to the club for the noon meeting. Sometimes, they have donations of breads and pastries. I manage to score two loaves of day-old bread. Something to put between the slices would be nice but it's only Tuesday and the food bank isn't until Thursday.

The meeting topic is gratitude. I share that I am grateful to be sober and alive so that I can face the challenges of day to day life. They know I'm struggling but they don't know I'm sleeping under the bridge. I don't tell anyone. It's only been a few weeks since I stopped drinking and although I am hopeful this time, I still am weighed down by pride. I think a few know what's going on, because they have been where I've been.

The meeting ends at 1:00. I stay to help them clean up. It's warm here and there's leftover coffee and donuts. By 2:00 I am back on the street. I panhandle for a bit, make a few dollars. I use it to buy a package of mock chicken at the store. Sandwiches for supper is better than no supper at all.

I wander the streets until 6:00 then I head over to the club. There's a meeting at 7:30 so I help them set that up and in return I get a hot coffee to go with my sandwiches. The meeting gets over around nine, cleanup takes until 9:30.

I managed to save two dollars from my afternoon of panhandling so I head over the coffee shop to see about getting a bowl of soup and a small coffee. I eat and drink slowly.

A few AA members are there and we chit chat. One of them asks me where I'm living these days. For a moment, I think about lying again. And then I remember I'm supposed to be honest. Under the bridge I say. He lets me crash on his sofa that night.

When I wake up on Wednesday, I'm not cold. For that I am grateful.

April 5 - Negative to Positive

It was explained to me once that Gratitude is not about having everything you want, it's about wanting everything you have. Nancy has been my wife for almost 21 years. I proposed to her on New Year's Eve, 1998 at a dance put on by the entertainment committee of a spiritual fellowship we belong to. We were married the following New Year's Eve, in 1999, the eve of the millenium. I planned that part well because if I ever get forgetful and can't remember how long we've been married, I just have to look and see what year it will be and that's how many years. This time it's 21 years.

Over the years, I've done a few things to keep the moment alive. At 10 years, I wrote a story and had it printed in a magazine that is published by the Fellowship we belong to. It was the story of our first date.

At 15 years, the dance was being held in the same church it had been held at the night of my proposal, so I re-created that moment and had a friend videotape it.

Basically, we've been at the dance each year, to let everyone know that we are still together and still committed to the relationship we began many years ago.

This year, due to Covid-19, there won't be a dance on New Year's Eve. At first, I was disappointed. But, just because there isn't going to be a dance doesn't mean we won't be dancing. I have lots of music and something half decent to play it on. I've also taken steps to create a similar ambience here in our home that might make us feel we are at the actual dance.

There may be a pandemic going on but Nancy and I will still celebrate our wedding anniversary the same way we do every year; there just won't be a hundred people here to celebrate it with us.

And there is one other piece of bad news. I hear the Mayor canceled the fireworks they put on for us every year, but I think when Nancy kisses me at midnight, I'll see those too.