Monday, August 13, 2012

A Bit More Personal Post

I have been kind of debating with myself as to whether or not I really wanted to create this post, but I feel like someone out there could really benefit from the message, just as I did.  I'm not ashamed to tell you that I attended Al-Anon meetings.  I'm not going to get into detail here, but for those whose lives have been impacted forever by a loved one's use of alcohol, Al-Anon is the answer to your prayers.  Anyways, I used to attend these meetings up in South Dakota once to twice a week and I really enjoyed the sense of peace I gained from my attendance.  I had purchased a couple of daily reader books (a lot of my Today's Thoughts came from these books), but ever since we moved down here I haven't even really cracked them open.  Sure, they had been stuffed down in a box for a while and I could have unpacked them, but I chose not to.  I thought that I had learned enough to keep me sane and would be perfectly fine roughing the waters - I was thousands of miles away from the alcohol abuser and "reasoned" that the principals learned from the books wouldn't really apply to me any longer.  And boy was I wrong.

I finally reached a point over the weekend when I realized that I had gotten back to my old self - the controlling, manipulative, cynical Rachel that I had hoped and prayed I would never have to face again.  I had forgotten everything that I learned up in South Dakota and allowed myself to return to the state of darkness and despair - something I hoped I would never have to battle my way through again.  So yesterday morning I was woken up by something (could have been Hubby's snoring or Grizzly rooting around - who knows), but I was fully awake instantaneously.  That's weird for me.  It takes me a minimum of 10 minutes to be fully awake in the morning, depending on how fast I can down a cup of coffee...or two...sometimes three.  I suddenly got the urge to read - to read my Bible, to read a Beth Moore daily devotional book that I received from my dad, and to read the Al-Anon literature.  So I did.  I grabbed a pen and a journal my sister recently sent me in a goodie package, filled up my coffee cup, and headed out onto the lanai.

What I read yesterday morning was the only encouragement I needed to completely convince me that I was doing what God intended for me to do by picking up and reading those books.  I paged my way through each of them to the entries marked for "August 12" and was moved by what I read.  It was one of those God moments - when you know that it was Him who woke you up and Him who lead you to that literature and Him who was trying to speak to you.  The words that I read still rang loud and clear in my head as I read my passages this morning and even still now as I'm constructing this post:

I must learn not to expect or demand.  I will look for, and appreciate, positive and desirable actions, and not concentrate on the negative. I must, in other words do something constructive about my own attitude.  Let me learn to accept things as they are and stop manipulating them into changing.

 Of all of the 365 pages in that particular book - out of all of the books I could have chosen to read, or even activities I could have chosen to do that morning rather than read, that is the page I was led to.  God is good.
Posted by at 7:09 AM
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