Today I felt aimless much of the day. I felt like I couldn't commit to a clear cut task because my daughter came home from school and I was babysitting much of the time. Perhaps it would be good to list the things that I did get to do so that I can appreciate my usefulness.

I got to look for some jobs and log them. I got to reply to a response and get the practice of interacting with a prospective employer.
I got to troubleshoot a website for my wife's employer.
I got to read and study about morality, ethics, and religion.
I got to help my son do his book report.
I got to help feed, dress, change and entertain my kids.
I got to keep up and clean our house.
I got to pray with my son.

In the afternoon my mom called and told me that my sister is ill. I pray that God will help her through this and that she can find faith also.

In the evening I got to go to a meeting that I don't usually go to. I got to speak to a guy that I hadn't seen in a while and he got me caught up about a friend who is in the hospital. I felt selfish for not having kept in contact. A guy there told me that he heard me speaking about and that he remembered me from 2 years ago.

Today there were several moments that my son sensed my irritability and he extended an embrace and encouragement even though I was correcting him. He made me proud that he is learning good character. Tonight before prayers he told me that I was the best and gave me a pat on the back.

Thanks be to God.

This Sunday when we woke up my wife was ill. I also felt like I was coming down with something and was late waking up. I was afraid that I would not be able to get the kids going and make it to mass. But I tool it a little at a time and tried not to become set in my mind to not making it and we made it. I had to keep my thoughts from going into thinking that my wife got herself sick by pushing herself too hard to do things that were not necessary. I thought about all the extra stuff that she did for thanksgiving that we could have done without. I tried not to be resentful.

The kids did great in mass and it was a beautiful celebration of the first Sunday of advent. I had a talk with the kids before mass and they really responded. They actually behaved better than I have ever seen. I had to resist gloating about it to my wife. The priest spoke about how people separate themselves from God. He said that we typically only think of the mortally sinful lifestyles but that the most common way that people become separated from God is by making the daily duties of job, home, kids, yardwork, etc. become too important and time consuming that no time is left for God.

I spent all afternoon helping my kid do his science project. I should have started this 2 weeks ago. I was grouchy and resentful much of the time. My son was enthusiastic and he encouraged me to overcome my resentment. My wife got out of bed and helped with the kids and helped me put it together. It turned out great.

In the evening we were late getting to bed and I never got a chance to do my evening review so I am doing this on Monday morning.

Thanks be to God.

Yesterday was both a day of recovery from the busy Thanksgiving day before and a busy day of preparation for our 2nd Thanksgiving event today.

I spent the day helping my wife clean inside, doing yard work, watching the kids, and putting up Christmas lights on our house. At times I was really worried about the cleanliness of the house. At the end of the day I felt like I should have spent more time cleaning than putting up Christmas lights and playing football with my son.

I was up very late and didn't get a chance to go to a meeting or talk to any of my friends in recovery. I think I was resentful that I have to pace out my meeting attendance as a matter of duty to my family. I tend to fault my wife but I realize that this is my self-centeredness.

In the evening I looked at the Christmas lights and was pleased at how beautiful they are.

Today was a busy day from the very start. We had our Thanksgiving dinner at my house with my in-laws. I was worried how it would turn out but it was absolutely perfect. I was nervous about saying grace but was grateful for the opportunity to be the guy who is called upon for this and my son told me that I did good.

I took the time to take a phone call while I was at the grocery store and it was a friend in the program. We talked at length about our holiday experience and about God's power over temptation.

In the evening I got to go to a meeting and I got to share my experience with the solicitations to drink and use and how even though I had neglected to prepare specifically for those situations, I was ready with what was truly important which is spiritual preparedness. None of the solicitations had any power over me because of the spiritual activities that I make time to do even when I don't have time. The only thing that I regretted was that I didn't specify that it's God's power that takes away the power of temptation although that was what I meant.

Today I never worried about my vehicle that is broken down at the shop.

In the evening my son joined be in my bed and we talked about my evening review. He remembered all the questions from the big book and we reviewed my day. That review looked different than the way these turn out and I wondered if that is more constructive than this. In thinking about why that is may be because that review is meant for a specific purpose of reviewing my failing while this is more of a journal.

Thanks be to God for this day.

This morning we had to rush out of the house on a trip to a family reunion in another town. I had some trepidation because my parents were late signing us up and because I had reservations about doing this type of event on Thanksgiving day. I felt like this should a close family tradition. Not only that but I was worried about my truck which broke down last night and probably has a blown head gasket at least.

When we got to the town of the event we stopped at a store and my younger son threw up on himself. We had to spend time buying him some pants. This set us back about forty minutes. When we arrived at the event all was well and we were not that late.

I also have a natural aversion to these events because I am a bit uncomfortable around all of the family members that I don't know that I should know. But this was fine, we got to know people and my kids were well liked and received a lot of compliments. The location was in a beautiful park next to the miniature train station. My kids got to ride the train, see animals and fish in the river directly behind the station and they got to hit a pinata. They said that it was the best Thanksgiving ever.

I had 3 strong solicitations to drink with the group of guys that just happened to be the guys that I knew best. I noticed that those guys shared a common bond in their shared experience of getting loaded. The thought of what it would feel like to be drinking there crossed my mind. I was grateful that I didn't feel like I would like to do that. My mind thought about how much it would suck also and immediately rejected the idea. I also remember what it used to be like to feel like I needed to be part of that group that shared that experience. I was grateful that I didn't feel like that anymore also. I was also grateful to be comfortable interacting with the normal people also even though most of them were different than me in many ways.

This evening I reread Fr. Barron's article about the vampire craze. I picked up on a theme that was my experience. When I lived a pragmatic, secular life I objected to the notions of eternal life, spirituality, or the supernatural if they related to God and religion. But when it came to things like clairvoyance, esp, demonic possessions, spirits, etc. I was fascinated and much more open minded. At some point in my life I realized the incongruity and I tried to reject them. I tried to reject any belief or fascination but i could not seem to deny things like deja vu and uncanny synchronous events and the idea of spiritual guides. When I would catch myself I would blame it on having been conditioned by religion. Later it was through science fiction that I became more open minded. I read about the possibilities of alternate dimensions, energy beings, and mental telepathy. I noticed the similarities of these ideas to supernatural phenomena. This opened the door for the possibility that these could be plausible and do not require evidence because they are outside of the nature of this realm.

As I write this this evening I have a profound feeling that I have regained clarity and willingness about my addict nature that had been elusive lately.

Today I was home with the kids all day because they were out of school. I had to stop myself from griping too much this morning. Then my son had a fit of defiance at mid day and I had to catch myself from using anger again. I was able to recognize excessive obstinacy early on and avoid too severe of consequences and correct it without a major break down for either one of us.

I got to have lots of good times with the kids today even though I was very preoccupied.


In the evening I took them across town to pick up a swing set for the club. On the way home my truck broke down.

I am grateful that I didn't break down in the middle lane of the highway that I was able to get to the shoulder.
I am grateful that I had water and was able to get the kids some food.
I am grateful that none of them were too afraid.
I am grateful for free towing from our insurance.
I am grateful for our frined who owns the car repair shop.
I am grateful that it looks like I have a blown head gasket and not a blown engine.

Today I had a dream about my wife. We had been separated for a long time and I was telling her that I had realized that she had become a part of me.

Thanks be to God.

This morning I decided to go to a meeting to encourage my wife to go to hers. The meeting turned out to be a traditions meeting on tradition 10. I revisited the parallel of the relationship of this tradition to the fellowship and the principle of self examination to myself.

This afternoon I was planing to pick up the oldest kid at school and I began to dread walking. I realized this was because of the behavior of one of the kids that walks with and the dynamic with my son. I talked to my wife about it and she encouraged me to go. When we walked everyone behaved and we all enjoyed each others company. I got to guide the boys to be kinder to the one little girl. I was grateful for the shared experience of walking home in the nice weather.

I thought alot today of the talk that my wife and I did last night. I thought about how this sense of shared mission really brings us together.

Thanks be to God.

Today was a busy day. We had a thanksgiving lunch at my daughter's preschool from 11 - 1. Before that I tried to rewrite my story in order to get my thoughts in order for a talk that my wife and I were scheduled to give at a treatment center on their family night. I found myself struggling to focus and needing to change many things. But I couldn't stay on track and I kept wanting to go in depth on things that would just have made the talk way too long and irrelevant to this crowd. I also didn't seem to have that creative sense of inspiration that I usually have for this.

All day long it just didn't seem right and I was deeply distracted. All I could think about was a discussion I had with my wife in the morning in which she opened up to me about her lack of a spiritual life. Since this talk was to the family I felt like a fraud and hypocritical. I felt like we would be up there talking about how great sobriety and the spiritual life was but knowing that maybe things weren't all that great.

Then I got an intuition that this was a spiritual attack. I stopped and asked God for help. I realized that I was placing too much expectation on my wife and that I might just be going through a low point in the biorythmic cycle. I decided that I would take it easy and that however imperfect our talk might be that just our presence would be helpful.

As we pulled up there tonight I felt stressed about the timing of trying to do this talk while my wife is in school, and our daily lives are so busy especially with the holidays. Then I thought about what it must be like being in treatment at this time. I became grateful for the opportunity.

Our talk went well. I was a little disappointed at some things I left out. I told the story of how I considered that the God idea might be a mind trick or purely a psychologically powerful idea. I spoke of how this gave me enough to work with and find belief. What I left out was that when I thought of this idea that I realized that this resonated deeply within me. That I realized that I had an innate desire to believe. I thought of the ideas by the observations of Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung of the psychological archetypes.

In the end the evidence for God that convinced me was not from cosmology or biology. It is not that the universe seems fine tuned for life or that the body seems fine tuned by a creator. It was the God idea itself that convinced me. It was the idea that a person convinced of directives from God had the power to achieve a level of self control that would exceed what he could achieve himself.

This did not require evidence in the material world but rather it came from within.

I felt a lot better about myself and my wife after our talk.

Thanks be to God.