- Today I am grateful to wake up and have my family with me.
- I am grateful to have my health.
- Today I am grateful to know there are ALWAYS options.
- I adore my husband and child.
LIFE IS GOOD BABY!
I love Christmas. Last year we were doing renovations so we never decorated and it felt like we didn't celebrate because of that. So this year I have already started. I know it is early but I needed some good cheer in the house. I love Santa and have a small collection of some cool ones. I think this one from Jim Shore is pretty cool and I just might have to add it to the co-lec-zion. It just makes me happy when I look at it. :)
In yoga class today I had a really "happy" moment. At the end of class when the lights get dimmed and we lay in corpse pose resting I got a really cool eh uh um vision? Maybe it was a feeling? Whatever it was it tickled me, made me smile almost as if I was watching a small child laugh and play. It seemed like a white light with a big smile on it only I could not really make out the smile it was intuitive. STRANGE I know but hey I will take it. It was my "happy" moment. A connection to my own inner child? A connection with a power greater than myself? Positive energy looking me in the eye with joy. 
During my meditation this morning I read from The Secret. I have to share with you this part..."All stress begins with one negative thought. One thought that went unchecked, and then more thoughts came and more, until stress manifested. The effect is stress, but the cause was negative thinking, and it all began with one little negative thought. No matter what you might have manifested, you can change it... with one small positive thought and then another." The Secret p. 127
So the male unit was out at a early meeting and the child was still asleep and I was AWAKE. I have to first give a once over in the family room before I can meditate. Windex the coffee table, fluff the pillows and put away the throws. My next step is to lay out my yoga mat, get my GODpillow, meditation books and candles. Check, check and check. Now I make the tea. Sometimes green sometimes black sometimes herbal. Today was black. I sit, legs crossed and light my candles, three today. With each candle I say aloud a persons name. It has been the same two people for several years now and recently I have added a third. These names are of suffering alcoholics who can not seem to get sobriety. Prayer is the only way I know to help those who don't want help. So I light my candles and think healing thoughts towards each person. Now I sit. Only for a few moments to quiet myself. I read two meditations, sip some tea and sit again. Back straight, shoulders down, palms open and facing up, eyes closed and head pleading to the sky above. I sit.
I am really so tired but don't want to go to sleep. I crave the quiet. This time of night is my only quiet. I mean no dog barking, no TV, no telephone, no radio, no chatter. The only sounds I hear are the air purifier humming and the click of the key board. It seems I need to process my day. My husband can go straight to sleep. My brain needs time to shut down. I can only get the quiet once the rest of the house is done. So I wait, every night, patiently for the quiet. Once it comes there is such calm. Peace. Ease. I can exhale deeply.
My son has had the privilege of growing up in a sober home. He has never seen his father or me drunk or high. He has never seen us smoke cigarettes, although he has seen pops with the occasional cigar. Yuck! He has grown up in the rooms of AA and attended Al-Ateen. He has the support of a great family counselor who thinks he's great and he feels the same about her.
This is the question I want to ask people whenever I hear them say "you may not like it but I will come to you and tell you the truth if you like it or not." I have heard this shared in meetings many times. A friend of mine with 16 years of sobriety had someone approach her and tell her she was going to drink. Then went into some of her character defects. My friend walked out of the meeting in tears. WOW! If I had that ability to tell you all who will drink and who won't. WOW! I would be really a very special person. WOW!"We "constructively criticized" someone who needed it, when our real motives was to win a useless argument. Or, the person concerned not being present, we thought we were helping others to understand him, when in actuality our true motive was to feel superior by pulling him down. We sometimes hurt those we love because they need to be "taught a lesson," when we really want to punish. We were depresses and complained we felt bad, when in fact we were mainly asking for sympathy and attention. This off trait of mind and emotion, this perverse wish to hide a bad motive underneath a good one, permeates human affairs from top to bottom. This subtle and elusive kind of self-righteousness can underlie the smallest act or thought.