![]() No way was I going to share my experience with this group. I sat in that chair an anxious, short tempered, sleep-deprived wife and mother, exhausted from pretending my life was as perfect as I made it appear on social media. If these people are peaceful and hopeful, I thought, then their stories cannot be as bad as mine. As people began to read aloud, words like peace, serenity, and hope were tossed about as if they were part of everyday life. I quietly took a chair, hoping to make myself invisible to those around me, but the group members welcomed me. People of all ages talked animatedly with each other while holding cups filled with coffee or hot chocolate. I held my head down to avoid eye contact with anyone in the room. I got out of my car and walked into my first Al-Anon meeting feeling like a kindergartner on the first day of school. Then I thought of the desperate promise I had made to myself while lying on the bathroom floor the night before in tears-to give this a shot. What would they think if they saw me here? They would know. With ten minutes until the meeting started, I sat in my car scanning the people walking into the basement of the church and prayed I wouldn’t see anyone I knew. I felt the knot in my stomach tighten as I pulled into the parking lot filled with cars, dread filling my body like helium in a balloon. Love and acceptance is my lifeline, from God around us all.Īs I drove toward the church on that warm, dusky night, I desperately hoped the meeting would be canceled or that no one else would show up. It feels good to help another feel appreciated. The love that we also long for will come back to us. We can let our spouse, children, and friends know we care about them. The greatest contribution we can make to the lives of others is to be affirming. Also we can recall, today and every day that we are all special individuals in this world who are loved, fully, by our Creator. We can let go and let God, and live and let live. What a waste! We do have another choice, fortunately. Instead of experiencing our lives serenely, contentedly, flowing with what is, we often criticize, judge, and feel generally disgruntled throughout the day. ![]() It's human of us to find fault-to have expectations that are too high. However, it's doubtful that we either feel it all of the time from others or give it away. And all the people in our lives, past and present, deserve our unconditional love and acceptance, too. We are all deserving of unconditional love and acceptance. Flattery is so necessary to all of us that we flatter one another just to be flattered in return.
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