Okay, let's keep on walking through this...

This fear thing has made for one of the most interesting days in a long time. I may be a little all over the place with this so bear with me...if you are interested. I have a job working with someone in the program I worked with eleven years ago when I joined a custom carpet manufacturer as an artist and designer. He was newly sober then and I hadn't yet start my heavy drinking. We got on well then and do today. We have great respect for each other, too. This job has the potential to be the best job I have ever had. I can be as creative as I can dream of, the hours are flexible and I can make noon meetings Monday through Friday. There is also a potential for good money.

I signed on for the most minimal of pay last September and I stayed with that pay until a month ago when it was upped a little. To explain it totally would take a long time and telling a lot of the details would be breaching a confidence. But it has been frustrating for me, time and time again. If someone were to tell me the story as I know it, I would tell them they are fighting it too hard and it seems time to let go of the whole thing.

It's not what I want to hear me tell myself. The plan isn't going the way I want it to go.

I went to bed last night praying hard about this. I woke this morning and prayed hard about this. All during the day today I prayed hard about this. I asked for the grace to hand it over, for the ability to trust. I know I did not get sober for God to just drop me by the wayside and I know that things will work out they way they are supposed to work out. And I have been really trying hard today to turn it over, let it go and trust that it will work out. And I know there is a part I need to play in all this. That there is some action I need to take.

I just can't see what it is. Is it so subtle that I am totally missing it? Is all this to teach me to let it go, to trust my Higher Power completely? I don't know how to do that, but I will give it all I've got and I have been trying my best. Do I need to accept the fact that I have been the dog chasing its tail and getting nowhere? Or do I wait until he gets back in this country and have another talk? I need to pay my rent and I don't have a paycheck.

Today's noon meeting was a speaker meeting and it was great. A straight woman who is a regular at that meeting is moving with her family to another city and today was her last meeting. She shared what Lambda Center has done for her. And her share stunned me. It stunned me right into big ole teddy bear tears. When she found Lambda and what it had to offer, she knew she wanted to go to the meetings there but was afraid she would be ousted because she is heterosexual. She dresses the part of a little boy looking lesbian, admits to same and has been told so by many. So she referred to her husband as her spouse, gender non-specific. Then she was told she was, of course, welcome. She told that she gets so much affection from the men and her husband isn't threatened when she comes home smelling of cologne. She commended the center as a whole for the strength, hope and experience she had been so freely given. The experience of spending so much time in a gay and lesbian recovery center made her question her own heterosexuality. She determined after all that time that she is indeed straight. And she wondered what was keeping her there, that she was so involved in Lambda. She had heard of much struggle with alcoholism and heard heroic tales of coming out. She wondered. Then this past spring her fourteen year old daughter came out to her as a lesbian. That, she said, was what Lambda had been preparing her for all those years. She is now very active in PFLAG (Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays). It was all I could do to hold back the tears.

After I got home this afternoon I put on a tape I had gotten in 1987 when I had visited an ashram in upstate New York for a two week meditation retreat. Listening to the songs took me back to the bus ride into New York City and the incredible newness I felt. Today my heart expanded to an incredible space. The tears flowed, heavily. I sat here and dove into those feelings as they came rushing up and I found incredible joy. It was overwhelming. I was able to just sit inside myself and feel such incredible love and support for who I am, where I have been and what I am doing. I am on my path.

How incredibly lucky.

And when I go to bed in a few minutes I will again pray really hard for some grace to trust. To turn it over. To let it go. All so it can work out as it is supposed to work out.