Soulshine

“We accept good things from God; and should we not accept evil?” Book of Job As a codependent with a victim mentality, I have always focused on the bad, or evil, in my life. Everything happened to me. If something could go wrong it did. Or did it? A lesson recovery has taught me is that when we’re always expecting troubles, we will find them, or they will find their way to us. Part of my problem with bad things happening to me is that I never wanted to accept them, so I moaned and groaned or I fought them. It never occurred to me that maybe I should just accept the bad things, acknowledge that I was powerless over many of them, surrender them to my Higher Power and look for ways to move forward. It was just easier to sulk and feel sorry for myself. Of course, I also thought that playing poor pitiful me would elicit attention from others who would then comfort poor me and take care of me. Was that hope every truly realized? No. Seeking sympathy never really worked to any gre...

“Martha, Martha, you are anxious and worried about many things. Mary has chosen the better way and it will not be denied her.” Jesus Christ, Gospel of Luke Addictive personalities are gods unto themselves. Even those of us who may be regular church-goers still suffer from self-godliness. We’re control freaks. We rule the world and everyone in it who affects us in any way. We’re all Martha’s, the Christian Patron Saint of Control Freaks. Like Martha we profess faith in a Higher Power, but we rarely relinquish control to that Higher Power. Every time we meet Martha in the Christian Gospels, she’s working hard at telling God what God needs to do, or she’s telling God how to correct the mistakes God has made. The quote above is taken from a story about Jesus visiting the home of the two sisters, Martha and Mary. Martha is anxious about preparing dinner while Mary is entertaining Jesus. Martha gets mad that Mary isn’t helping her and she commands Jesus to tell Mary to get ...

“I’m never afraid. I Never look down. I always look up. That’s why I’m a very remarkable fellow! It’s wonderful the things I feel… Sometimes I could reach out and touch a star!” Chico, 7 th Heaven (1927) Positive thinking makes a tremendous difference in our lives. It’s all about perspective. And growing up in an alcoholic household didn’t allow me the chance to develop much in the way of a positive perspective. I spent most of my childhood feeling pretty hopeless. And the older I got, the less hope I had that things were going to get better. My teen-age years were far worse than my preteen years. Certainly, I learned to look down a lot, and if I felt remarkable in any way, it was remarkably worthless. I had learned to give all of my power away to my parents and that started a trend. Likewise, I gave my power away to mean-spirited teachers, peers and even complete strangers. I had learned to be the perpetual victim, who freely gave his power away because he felt ...

“You saved Richard Callahan’s life. You can’t live it for him.” Helen Pryor, American Dreams There’s an episode of the TV series American Dreams where Jack Pryor is attending a reunion with his Navy buddies. It’s late 1963. It’s been 20 years since these men served together during World War II. One of the guys who shows-up for the reunion is Richard Callahan. Jack saved Richard’s life during the war. But, since that time, Richard hadn’t done much with his life. We learn that Richard is an alcoholic, divorced twice and he’s been unable to keep a job for very long. During the episode, he actually looks like a dead man walking, like a zombie. Richard feels guilty to be alive. Jack had two buddies injured in the same attack and he had to make a choice about who to save. The other man had insisted that he was OK and had told Jack to go help Richard. He died while Jack was saving Richard. Richard is portrayed as a man who has never felt like his life was worth living fr...

“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” Anaïs Nin Your life is what you make it. No one has to be a victim who holds everything in tight like a flower trapped in the perpetual darkness of fear. Being a victim, being shut-up tight inside, is a choice. And it’s a bad choice. In recent years, through recovery, I’ve chosen to give up my victim mentality. I have learned that it is far less painful to take risks, even if I fail at times; and that it’s much more rewarding and life-affirming to blossom into the light of the real world where I gain wisdom through failure—and I grow into fully being me. Life provides many doors for us to walk through and all we have to do is make the choice to walk through those doors. We can all walk through the doors to an Alano Club and into any 12 Step meeting that fits our particular recovery needs. We can also choose to walk through any educational or career door...

Codependents are very good at causing their own chaos in relationships. We love to take things the wrong way. And so we are on constant guard, waiting for everyone around us to make a misstep. We vigilantly search and wait for anyone to say something, to do something or to even look at us in a way that we can misinterpret as a personal attack on us. We’re waiting so we can scream inside—one more time—“A-ha! Another slam against me!” And we can go about our day playing martyr-- again. Why is it that we are often waiting for someone to hurt us? We say we love people and yet we are always anxiously on alert with these people we “love” just waiting to take anything they say or do in a negative way. Is this love? When we are constantly looking to judge people we say we “love” in a negative light, is this love? No it’s not. We may think we love people but we really don’t. Why? Because we really don’t love ourselves. Lack of self-love forces us to doubt that anyone else in this ...