Archive for December 2014

The year in books

I thought I would list out the books I read this year and comment on each of them. I am writing this intro after the fact and realizing that perhaps I should keep a reading journal because I’ll read a book and forget what I read. Absent from this list are 6 daily meditation books, and no I don’t read all 6 every day. Just 4 of them.

1. The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous

Since I’ve already outed myself as an alcoholic… Funny story, though. This past Sunday after church, I was having a problem unlocking all the doors of the car and so the hubby spent a few seconds waiting on me. He noticed my big book laying in the back seat for everyone to see and said, “Well, that’s bold.” And it’s still laying there in my back seat for the world to see.

2. Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions

I read through it, and then when I actually started working the steps, I went through the twelve steps portion again.

3. Jesus + Nothing = Everything

I think it was Chapter 11 that really clicked for me.

4. Trusting God: Even When Life Hurts

I had some serious trust issues.

5. Running Scared: Fear, Worry, and the God of Rest

I don’t remember much, but I remember ordering a copy for Petra. I also remember it stepping on my toes over something.

6. A Place of Healing: Wrestling with the Mysteries of Suffering, Pain, and God’s Sovereignty

I read Joni’s autobiography when I was a kid probably 12. This one made no less of an impact.

7. The Pastor’s Kid: Finding Your Own Faith and Identity

This explained so much about part of why I am the way I am. Because really, there isn’t much difference between a pastor’s kid and a deacon’s kid.

8. Glorious Ruin: How Suffering Sets You Free

This really spoke to me about my idols and addiction.

9. Drop The Rock: Removing Character Defects – Steps Six and Seven

This book was a gift to me. A wonderful gift.

10. The Hunter’s Blades Collector’s Edition

I finally finished the 3rd book. It left me hanging.

11. Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself

I had read this several years ago, but I don’t think it sunk in the first time. It was as if I had never read it, but it might be that I was just reading with different eyes this time having actually been in 12 step recovery. Unlike the first time.

12. Orange Is the New Black

So Petra added me to a book club that she and Andrea created on Facebook. This was the second book. I didn’t even attempt the first one as I had zero interest. But, this was pretty good.

13. Adult Children of Alcoholics: Expanded Edition

Either late last year or early this year I got a meditation book at Al-Anon that is really geared more toward adult children of alcoholics. As I read the daily meditations, I thought, “My dad acted just like an alcoholic.” Only he didn’t drink. He tried when he was young, but he said it didn’t do for him what he wanted it to. Anyway, I have all the characteristics of an adult child because my home growing up was every bit as dysfunctional as if there was an active alcoholic in it.

14. Shame Interrupted: How God Lifts the Pain of Worthlessness and Rejection

I just finished this last night, and I read 3 books between starting and finishing this.

I have no reading goals for next year, though I would like to finally finish the ones I have started. We’ll see.

Wrapping up

This has been quite a year. I did not even accomplish half of my goals for the year. Life got crazy! For most of the year I was not only the only one in this house with a job, but the only one with a driver’s license. That wore me out and sucked up a large amount of vacation/sick time. But Jamie finally got her driver’s license, so the pressure is off to be everyone’s chauffeur. Oh, and we also only had 1 vehicle for much of the year, so I was still on the hook until we got another car.

I got my nose pierced. And I want to get my eyebrow pierced now. I also want a couple of tattoos, but that won’t happen until Petra gets inked.

My mom had a mini stroke. Adding that into the Alzheimer’s mix, she now has 3 distinct personalities. 1, she is still Mom, but has trouble saying the right words. She knows who you are, but can’t say your name. That’s the stroke effect. 2, she is still Mom, but she has no idea who people are. Thanksgiving, she would forget who the kids were, and thought I was Aunt Pearl. That’s the Alzheimer’s. It’s sad, but expected and fairly easy to deal with because she retains that same kind and loving personality of my Mom. But then there is that 3rd one – the paranoid delusional one. This one knows who I am, but thinks people are out to get her. This one infuriates me because she is nothing like my mom. Intellectually I know this is another aspect of the Alzheimer’s, but emotional detachment is not so easy.

The contract I worked on ended, and we switched to a new one with a new company. I got a 4 week paid staycation out of it which was great for the first 2 weeks. Those last 2 weeks, I was calling the security office nearly every day asking if my stuff had transferred so I could go back to work. And the first week back, I filled in as site lead while the site lead was on vacation. 4 weeks of nothing and then a week of everything because I was the only one left with working accounts. I still don’t want to be site lead. Oh, and I took a 10% pay cut. It hurts. But I love my co-workers.

I was forced to admit that I’m an alcoholic. By forced, I mean I was told I needed to quit for a while and I couldn’t. For those who don’t already know. Assuming more than 3 or 4 people read this blog anymore. Once I did the 3rd step, I realized I essentially rededicated my life to Jesus, and decided to get rebaptized as a matter of owning my faith as my own. And I am 11 months sober. One day at a time.

Throughout the year while working on my recovery through therapy, and through a 12-step program (which a LOT of people could really use), I have learned a lot about myself, and have come to terms and dealt with issues that I had never dealt with. I have grieved, and I have forgiven. I have learned to accept responsibility for my actions and reactions, and how to ask for forgiveness. And I’ve learned a few things along the way.

1. Life is more peaceful when you cease to be a victim/martyr.

2. Other people are responsible for their own choices and therefore their own consequences.

3. Life isn’t meant to be lived in isolation.

4. Trying to live up to a manufactured facade of other people’s expectations (real or perceived) will drive you insane.

5. It is okay to feel. Emotions are God-given. But let them be indicators and means of healing rather than living by them. Life isn’t sunshine and roses. You take the good, you take the bad.

Getting back

You’ve heard for years “You don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone.” I learned something recently. Sometimes you don’t know what you lost until you get it back. I was at Hobby Lobby a few weeks ago with my daughter. She was taking entirely too long (from my perspective) to pick out yarn, so I was just kind of wandering around. I was in the art section, and looking at paint thinking how much I enjoyed painting when I was a teenager. It fell to the wayside once I made several new friends that I was hanging out with a lot, and definitely once I got a guitar. But as I was standing there, I decided that maybe I would dabble in painting again. I certainly never was (and still am not) good at drawing. I’m not being overly critical of myself in that area. I got somewhat better at drawing through drafting, and doing rough sketching, but that came from actual training. And it’s all really simple stuff too like a really basic bookshelf or table. Painting was different though. I think I had a fair amount of talent that would have improved over time. Had I pursued it, that is.

I really didn’t give much more thought to that, but I did buy some paper and watercolor thinking I would like to give it another go. I haven’t done anything with it, but the desire is there. And maybe it won’t end up like that drawer full of jewelry making items that I stopped messing with. I do have a tendency to attempt things and then lose interest. Case in point, crochet, knitting, and that sewing machine that hasn’t seen use in years. My daughter picked up and took off with crocheting, and is way better than I am. I found knitting much easier, but I may be a bit too ADD for all the stitch counting and trying to remember whether or not I’m doing a purl stitch in the middle of a row.

A couple weeks ago, I had the urge to write poetry. Like painting, I haven’t dabbled with that since I was a teenager. The thought of actually finding my old dabblings half terrifies me, but again, it’s another thing that just fell to the wayside. At the time, it was my way of working through a loss. I suppose my blogging over the years has had the same sort of therapeutic purpose, though the really deep and painful things go in my paper and ink journal. But much of that I did either semi-superficially (the blog) or sporadically (the journal) when things got really crazy in my life.

Now I have been known to overdramatize to an extent some of what I write. It’s a gift. 😉 My poetry epiphany, though, isn’t. It was a dramatic realization that I have something back that I had lost though my years of self-medicating – my dreams. I described it to my therapist this way, “I feel like a teenager again without all the teenager crap.” That little bit of ideological wonder that I had before I started numbing and turning cynical.

It’s like I have myself back – the self I didn’t allow myself to have, or allowed to have. The child I couldn’t be when I was a child.