I love sunflowers. And I'm not even from Kansas! lol (Of course, everyone knows that the sunflower is the state flower of Kansas, right?) I plant them around my gardens every year, here and there, usually a good stand of them, like here by the potatoes and green beans. Then I have volunteers that come up all over the yard and garden by themselves because they are in the birdseed I buy that I fill my feeders with. I adore their cheerfulness, their steadfastness, their ability to bend in the wind and not break. I love that they look so beautiful, draw bees and butterflies into my garden, and then at the end of the season, they feed the birds. How great a life is that?
You can see from my picture what a jumbled mess my garden has become. I'm not complaining...everything is growing like crazy and when you garden like this (biointensive), instead of in precise little rows, this is just what you get. The thing I love the most is that you get flowers sprinkled all throughout the garden beds..like little treasures waiting to be discovered.
It was a good day today. Yes ((Paxaa)) it was indeed little Miss Tina that got the promotion and she is so proud of herself...it makes me tear up to watch her. She has also gotten a rental that is ridiculously affordable, and gets to move in in 3 weeks. When they had her in the office, giving her the promotion, they ..."said all kinds of nice things about me...good, real stuff...about how I was a good employee and that I brought a lot of love and compassion to my job..." This is one of the miracles of sobriety...I told her this is what happens when you call your sponsor every day. One of the presents of the program. lol We went to an 8 o'clock meeting tonight (the one we always crash when the Gathering comes here) and it was just a happy, joyous and free meeting...all the way around. There was lots of laughter, lots of love and lots of AA spoken here....it doesn't get any better than that.
I feel so so blessed to be able to attend meetings whenever I want to, to know that, for me, those feelings of uselessness and self-pity have disappeared. I feel so grateful that I have been delivered from a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body. I got a hotline call today from a woman who cannot stop drinking and cannot imagine that she could live if she did. I got to share with her that I felt that way myself once. I got to tell her what it was like, what happened, and what it's like now. I got to see a little snapshot (once again) of myself--and how I could be again, if I don't do these few simple things that keep me grounded in sobriety and in conscious contact with a power greater than myself. In the end, she said she would do anything...except go to those damned meetings. And as I rang off, I wondered what possessed me to surrender my will and my drinking life over to a Group of Drunks all those years ago. I wondered what magick changed me enough, in one nanosecond of breath, to allow ME to ask for help, and to put my hand out, and to have never let that hand go...all these years later.
What a gift sobriety is....
Namaste.
5 comments:
Annie, I have wondered also about that nanosecond when I was 'struck sober' (figure of speech) the night before my first AA meeting.
Praise God is still the only answer I can find--and I HAVE looked! S I just thank Him for AA, and keep pushing on, sometimes over a rock or two....
Peace.
Beautiful yard. Beautiful post.
This is such an uplifting post - from the beautiful sunflowers right all the way through to the miracle of the gift of sobriety.
Life is good. Having been to your Friday meeting, I can picture everything about your being there. How wonderful.
God bless,
PG
Good for Tina and good on you!
The Doukhobor neighbors always grew sunflowers in their gardens and ate them continuously.
Yes, sobriety is a gift that I treasure. Today, at an 11th Step Mtg. one man with 59 days of sobriety said it was the first time in 50 years that he's been sober that long and a young girl with a year under her belt told of getting a job and an affordable apartment on the same day. Then when I got home I had a message from one of my sponsees. She was on her way to give support to a new member whose sister was just found dead...very obviously from drugs and alcohol.
So many lives affected by the same thing...it amazes me and I feel so privileged to be in AA and to be available when needed.
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