Today was an ordinary day.

When I first woke up my mind immediately drifted into a feeling of dread as I thought of the due date I had missed last night for a culture project for my communication class.  Fortunately I caught myself immediately and acted to change my attitude.  It was not easy for a moment but the result was immediate.  I received relief as soon as I resisted and prayed.  Thanks be to God.

I spent most of the morning finishing the assignment which was a project about the nature of my beliefs.

Recently I have missed doing written reviews fairly frequently.  This concerns me.  The reason has been because our family life has been extraordinarily busy and my wife has been working some.  This evening I noticed that I didn't feel a strong sense of priority to go to a 12 step meeting.  Perhaps this was due to the nature of the project that I had to write, that it filled my desire to think about spiritual matters. Strangely this evening I had a chance to go to a meeting but I got confused about the day. I thought there was no meeting tonight.  I went to the thrift store instead. I bought a cheap jam box for the club.  When I went to drop it off there was a meeting in progress.  Even then I didn't stay out of deference to my wife since I had not told her that I was going to a meeting. 

I was happy to practice with my sons tonight.

I am looking forward to the speech project with my wife in which we will be speaking about our service in the 12 recovery community.  

This Palm Sunday we made it to mass on time and in order.  During the  re-enactment of the passion I noticed some things that I had never noticed before. Now I can't remember what they were.

This Saturday morning I had a nightmare that my youngest daughter was washed away in a mudslide on a street in Italy (or maybe a little town in South Texas).  I ran allongside her as she was carried waist deep in the stream of mud.  I saw that she was approaching a gutter and there was no escaping.  Then I realized that she would emerge in a lake a few hundred feet away.  I let her go instead of diving in and I ran to the lake.  I couldn't find the emergent culvert.  My mother on another bank yelled out that it emerged below the surface.  I looked down into the water to see clouds of mud spread throughout the previously clear depths.  then someone shouted there's a head and I simultaneously saw her curly hair undulating beautifully as her body floating amongst the weeds just at the bottom.  She had on a baby nightgown and was clutching a little doll.  The mud clouds were engulfing her.  The situation seemed impossible as she had been under a minute or two and was far down at the bottom disappearing.  I dove in and just aimed just ahead of the spot I last saw her.  I swam deeper and deeper praying to maintain a straight course and to fend off feelings of grief and terror. I reached the bottom and miraculously felt her body in my hands. Swimming back to the top I worried whether it would be possible to resuscitate her as she probably had water in her lungs.

When we reached the surface I lifted her out and carried her to the bank.  She immediately started babbling about her brothers and sisters and some incident about an animal at the zoo on their recent trip.  I realize that she resumed the conversation that were having before she was swept away.  Thanks be to God, she had held her breath and stayed calm the entire time.

I immediately thought about my sister and my dad for some reason and I empathized more effectively for his grave fear right now that he is losing her to cancer.  Then I thought about my daughter and how I should hug her tightly and appreciate her.  I remembered that I yelled at her the day before and that I should not do that.

Today I was grateful to get some errands done and strike them out on my task list.  Chief among them was a chapter summary on culture and communication.

I was grateful to spend time with the kids.

Thanks be to God.

I was grateful this morning to wake up an hour early and feel very close to normal and energetic.

I wrote about an idea for how to segregate my blogs and to write and populate a blog of my views outside of the scope of 12 step recovery.

I remembered this morning that I recently had a pretty vivid using dream in which I was preparing a shot of dope and the dream ended.  It was another little reality check that brought me back to clarity when I didn't know I needed it.

At the end of the day I was disappointed to feel very tired and I was worried that I was sick again.   I didn't realize until the next morning that I was tired because I woke up early.

Thanks be to God.

This morning I got to go to a meeting.  It was at the big AA club where there are a number of off-center contributors so I resolved to stay focused on the topic, on principle, and on my experience.   A guy greeted me by name and I called him by the wrong name, by the name of another guy of his minority race.  I was disappointed in myself but then I heard him call another guy the wrong name and make the awkward amends like I did.  Some people cross-talked and criticized each other and I allowed this to disturb me.  There was a new person and a visitor in the room also.  I was disappointed in myself for allowing myself to become anxious over these things.  When I spoke I hit a blank spot which caused me to speak awkwardly instead of powerfully.  I eventually did cover my points, but did so in a manner that I thought was not convincing.  An old timer shared in a sober, reasonable, and convincing manner after me.  He said some very uplifting things and really served (along with others) to get the meeting on track.  While he said some great things, I realized that he unintentionally conveyed less of an orientation toward God as a power than I did.   While my delivery could stand improvement I found acceptance by being satisfied with the content.  The visitor was the last to share At the end of the meeting, it turns out that she was originally from here, and probably had the greatest amount of clean time, and the best delivery of the message in the room.  I realized that God has control of the experience that visitors have to the group and that I had been anxious because of my expectations.

Afterward the reasonable old timer thanked me for my contribution and gave me encouragement.  When I told him of my anxiety over my mistakes, he shared his experience with self-defeating feelings as coming from the adversary.  I received the spiritual edification that I needed!

I wrote some thoughts about hyper-tasking in the sepulvision blog.

Last night my son came to our bed frightened.  This isn't all that unusual but he seemed more scared than ordinary.  Later he woke up several times shivering and terrified and I had a very hard time comforting him.  He said that he could see shadow figures in the room and in particular a guy standing in the corner.   In the morning when we talked about it he said that it would disappear when I lifted my head awake.

Last night and this morning I encouraged him to use prayer as his spiritual defense weapons.  I suppose that he will always be under spiritual attack so I must teach him spiritual martial arts.Perhaps the scriptures would be the next weapons that I must teach him.

I got to talk to a sponsee today.  He made a check in call.

In the evening my youngest son had a T-ball game.  My mom and dad were there.  We all had a great time.  Afterward my son's and I took a long drive and spent some time together.

Thanks be to God.