Heaven and Hell

Heaven and Hell

 

I recently heard that most people who believe in God or consider themselves spiritual believe there is a heaven, but much fewer of those same people believe in hell.  I’m still not sure what I believe in terms of spirituality/religion but as I mentioned a little while ago I am attending a course that introduces me to Christianity.  I figure I can’t turn my back on something I know little about nor understand and the course has been fascinating so far. 

I don’t think I believed in heaven until Liam died.  So convenient right?  I just could not bear to think that he no longer existed at all and I wanted someone so innocent to be in a better place.  I believed it because I needed to.  Now I believe in an afterlife more firmly and for more solid spiritual reasons rather than sheer desperation.

But what would Heaven be like I wonder?  I don’t think it is robed angels with halos sitting on puffy clouds playing harps.  I similarly don’t think God is a white-haired man with a staff.  I also don’t picture hell as depicted in Dante’s Inferno.  I think that if there is an after-life it is likely beyond our imagining, or it could be like the good on earth without the bad or alternately the bad on earth without the good.   I think we catch glimpses of heaven and hell here on earth when we experience joy and despair.  Perhaps Heaven would be like eternal joy and hell would be eternal despair.

Perhaps it is different for each person according to their joy or pain.  When I was in elementary school one of my friends was blind.  She was and is a person full of life and simply differently abled than I am.  I always had fun playing with her and she had such an amazing imagination.  We were in art class once perhaps in second grade or there about and we were supposed to draw a bus.  Now my friend was in the art class as well and asked for the yellow crayon and some others and set about drawing a bus.  I remember thinking, “How does she know what a bus looks like?”  Well she proceeded to draw, feeling along the lines of her crayon marks as she went.  Her drawing looked nothing like my bus but she drew what she knew of buses from how she perceived them through touch and what I guess she must have been told.  She saw it just as clearly as I did in her own way and it strikes me that her drawing was no less accurate.

The class I am taking impresses me with its approachability.  I don’t know that I will end up being a church goer after the course is over, but I will be much more familiar with the Christian concept of God.  Perhaps I will then go on and study Islam, Judaism and Buddhism, who knows.  Just like my friend’s drawing, other people’s perceptions of God or a higher power are no less accurate just because they are not like my own.

What I have found is that I am thinking much more about spirituality, about being good even when no one is watching, about the complexity of our thoughts and spirits and about why we are all here.  Being in spiritual situations and among other spiritual seekers lifts me up and I rise in my mind like a fledgling.  My wings are still weak and I return to earth quickly but I look up, hopeful.  It will take some time but I hope I learn to stay spiritually aloft and remain to slip between the clouds.

 

Toys

Toys

 I think back to high school and wonder why I never got in trouble?  I think I had a healthy sense of fear and respect for authority and I seldom questioned things.  But I also was passionate about theatre and I spent so much time rehearsing and studying that there wasn't much time to get in trouble.  Now this is not to say that I was an angel but given my predilection for alcohol, it could have been much worse.
The thing about being passionate about something is that you want to spend your time doing it and it takes you outside yourself.   When you are an addict, being outside yourself is a better place to be.  As they say in the rooms "my best thinking got me here" so wallowing in my own thoughts too much causes me trouble.
This is essentially what the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous talks about in steps ten and twelve.  "Continue to watch for selfishness, dishonesty resentment and fear.  When these crop up, we ask God (or higher power) at once to remove them. We discuss with someone immediately and make amends quickly if we have harmed anyone.  Then we resolutely turn our thoughts to someone help."
A friend of mine recently posted a link to a story from the CBS evening news about a boy named Jaden in Savannah Georgia.  Jaden is six.  His father died when he was four and this year his mother passed away in her sleep unexpectedly.  He now lives with his Aunt and though he was grieving he told his Aunt that he was tired of seeing everyone so sad all the time.  He asked his aunt to buy some toys, little trinkets that you might find in a bubble gum machine.  He then asked to be taken downtown where he proceeded to approach strangers who were not smiling and give them a toy and make them smile.  He has done this numerous times and wants to keep going. His goal is to make 33,000 people smile.
Now this is a six-year-old orphan...  I saw this clip and was bawling, but aside from the fact that he is an example of love and acceptance and giving, he unknowingly found a way to assuage his own grief.  He says in the clip that he is still sad that his mom died, but by turning his thoughts to others he is getting outside himself where he found it too painful to be.
What if we all did that?  What if we all set aside our self-seeking motives as much as we could and looked outward to see where we could make a difference?  Like the beat of a butterfly wing... Such  a small gesture he is making but what a beautiful impact.  What if we could all be a little bit more like Jaden, the little boy giving away toys expecting nothing more than a smile in return.

I have finished revising and tweaking the children's book I wrote for my kids in an effort to explain the diseases of addiction and mental illness from which I suffer.  I have the endorsement of one of the top 7 rehab facilities in the U.S. who are on board to use the book and a companion coloring and activity book in their children's program and also sell them in their bookstore.  There are costs involved that I simply do not have on my own so I created a Kickstarter campaign to raise the funds.  Please check out my project and back me if you like, if not please share with others.  The more we talk about these problems the less stigma will remain and the better armed our children will be as they grow.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/queenwhosavedherself/the-queen-who-saved-herself

And Now About Religion...

 

And Now About Religion…

 

 

I haven’t written in a while.  I think there are a number of reasons.  One being that life happens and being that I am weak, I got wrapped up in its minutia.  I started to stray from the things that keep me more connected.  I wasn’t going to as many meetings, I haven’t been getting up as early to spend the time I need to in order to remain more in touch with my spiritual side.  It is a dangerous veering to be sure, especially for an alcoholic as it so often leads to relapse. 

But I also have been in a bit more of a listening phase.  I have had my ears open more and my mouth shut more which is necessary from time to time.  I can’t write if I don’t experience, see, feel and hear.

A few things have inspired me to write, one being the presence of the Pope in our fair city and the other is that I am taking a class.  It is a class I never in a million years would have considered taking and even when I signed myself up I had my doubts.  For those who know me well, I doubt you would have thought I would either.  I am taking a course that is designed to introduce me to Christianity.  Essentially I am going to a Bible study class and I love it. 

I did not grow up knowing much about religion.  I am Church of England by birth and I can’t say that my parents ever really emphasized religion at all.  I was born in Saudi Arabia so there were no churches, only Mosques.  My parents did send my brother and I to Sunday School (actually it was called Friday School because the weekends are not Saturday and Sunday in Arabia, they are Thursday and Friday, but that is a different story), but when we reached a certain age we were given the option to sleep in and took it with abandon.  So I knew who Jesus was and I knew a few of the parables but they certainly were never discussed outside of Friday School. 

I was also exposed to the religion of Islam.  I went to school with Muslims and lived among them from birth.  I will tell you there are some things I disagree with in the Islamic faith, but I can say the same for Christianity and Judaism and I do believe that most Muslims, as most Christians and Jews, are good people.  I remember reading on the Facebook page of one of my old friends from Arabia: that most Muslims look at ISIS in the same way that Christians look at the Westboro Baptist Church – they are extremists and do not speak for the entire religion.

This class is fascinating to me.  The stories and the thrust of the lessons have moved me.  If the word religion was something that turned me off before I could simply say that I am having a spiritual or philosophical discussion.  I can’t say that I will end up being a church goer at the end of this, but I can tell you that my mind is opening in ways it never previously would have and for that I am ever grateful.

I can also tell you that I still don’t know where I stand in terms of religion, but I can tell you that I do believe that there is something after death.  I can tell you that in my darkest moments now I no longer feel alone.  I can tell you that I feel as though life here on earth is a pre-cursor to something else.  I don’t know which religion speaks to me more, but I plan to explore more than just Christianity.  It seems to me they all have something important to impart and all speak to living well for the sake of living well even when no one is watching.

So Pope Francis is here in Philly tonight and he makes the Catholic faith so much more approachable than anyone else before him in my eyes.  I am not a Catholic obviously but the man speaks to me as he does to the rest of the world.  My maternal grandmother had a thing against Catholics and Irishmen, so it was six months after marrying Frank that I realized she would have turned in her grave to know that I had married an Irish Catholic – granted not a practicing one, but still!

I have spoken before about praying and how it truly does work.  I can’t say that it works in the way that we as children wish it would.  It doesn’t work in terms of “God please send me a puppy. God please make Jane like me. God please give me a promotion.”  But what it does, when done for the benefit of others is to bring the person praying outside themselves and make them think of others and isn’t that a miracle in and of itself?  To turn our thoughts to someone else, to put aside our own fears and desires and think of another can only mean good things.  To think of others instead of ourselves, to bring peace and mercy and faith into the forefront and the more that happens and is spread, then we lessen the strength of evil and pain and suffering.  It is harder to spend time on things that lead us astray when we are concentrating on the well-being of others.

So where does that leave me?  It leaves me listening to Arethra Franklin sing “Amazing Grace” and waiting to hear what the Pope has to say next.  I love to hear his message because he passes no judgement and loves so completely that is makes my eyes water with joy.  Dermot recently was so happy about something pretty monumental in his little life that he was brought to tears.  He was crying for joy.  The next day he said to me, “Mom, you always say that you are crying because you are happy and I never understood that until now, but I get it.  It is like you have so much happy that it leaks out of your eyes.”  Waiting to hear more of the message that makes my eyes leak with joy.

Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice?

Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice?


The statistics about the plummeting self-esteem among girls as they reach puberty is staggering.  I worry about it being the mother of a singular little girl.  She is staggeringly beautiful, petite, tan, blonde and blue eyed.  She is loving and ever so clever.  She is self-assured in a way that I never was or likely will be and she is so very, very intelligent.  The quote from Shakespeare, "Though she be but little, she is fierce" describes her to a tee.  To be honest I am a little afraid of her, she outsmarts me frequently and her wrath is the stuff of legends.  I don't want her to lose any of that as she sails the stormy seas of adolescence.
Frank worries in the same fashion and he asked her the other day if anyone had ever told her that she could not do something because she was a girl.  She was shocked and annoyed by the question and spit out a staccato "No."  I was proud of her response and the fact that her older brother was also equally stunned by the idea that girls might be told they could not do something.
Frank then turned to me in front of them and said, "Mommy, did anyone tell you that you couldn't do something because you were a girl?"  He knew I had a trove of examples and I shared one for the sake of underlining the point.  I grew up in a very traditional household and under the guidance of some pretty old-fashioned parents.  My parent are both from England and my father was an avid English football fan (soccer).  He passed that passion on to my brother and he coached my brother's intra-mural soccer team.
I adored my dad as a little girl and I wanted to do anything that he loved.  I wanted to play soccer as well but my truly lovely dad told me that "girls don't play soccer honey, they do ballet."  This despite that fact that there were two girls on my brother's team...  So I never played soccer.
I wish I had been more of a Scout Finch and rebelled against the constraints of other people's expectations, but I was little and I didn't.  I also had it in the back of my mind that girls are not supposed to make a fuss, they are supposed to be obedient and quiet and no trouble. Sugar and spice and everything nice.
I was surrounded by messages that told me I was less than.  I was born and raised in Saudi Arabia, a country which I still hold in my heart, but whose record with regard to women is far from stellar.  When we went to restaurants we had to sit behind screens in the "family section."  When we went to Baskin Robbins, we had to order from the window on the street as we were not allowed to enter the shop.  Women are not allowed to drive there and though I knew these things were not the norm in the rest of the world, it affected me.  I remember being told that girls are really not generally good at math, they don't grow up to be engineers, and I believed it.  It is so ironic now given that Wren scores off the charts in math and logic.
My mother told me that decent women never leave the house without a bra or make up on.  Her views ran along the same lines as The Pioneer Woman I think and those things sunk into my unformed brain from the get-go.  I know I spent a good deal of time growing up, not looking men in the eyes because it was not respectful and on some level I deemed it dangerous.
Right now our daughter is fierce and independent and sassy.  Her teachers talk about "leadership skills" which I know is a nice way of saying that she can be pretty bossy.  I have stopped telling her to "be nice" when she gets bossy and instead tell her to remember to be respectful.  I would rather she be bossy than meek, rather she rage than cower, rather she make a big splash than merely wade.
God, I don't want her to carry ANY of what I chose to take in from childhood around in her head.  I want her brain filled with hope, dreams and the knowledge that she is unlimited.  I want her to fly unencumbered by the judgements of others.  I want her to rise as high as she chooses and to live without regret.  I hope we manage to keep her head filled with hope rather than lack of self esteem and honestly I wish the same for our son and my husband and myself.

Fear and Faith

Fear and Faith


I recently went back to Caron Treatment Center, where I went for treatment in February of 2014.  I have been back a number of times now, once to get my year coin and then for volunteer training and this past time to meet with one of the directors about the idea of publishing a children's book about addiction.  After the meeting I had lunch with some of the therapists who so lovingly helped almost 18 months ago.  After lunch I was honored to be able to sit and speak with the current patients on the relapse unit.
Honored because I was asked and honored because I could provide some hope to people severely beaten down by their disease and mired in regret and shame.  I told them a bit about my journey and answered questions along the way as best I could.  I spoke about recovery and about the state of my marriage and about how to talk to kids about addiction.  When I mentioned that Frank and I had met when I was 15 and I had really never dated anyone else and had thought we would make it through just about anything, one man raised his hand.  He told me that he was in a similar situation as he had met his wife as a teen and they had been married for a long time now.  He said that he just assumed she would always be there and now he is afraid she may actually divorce him.  I completely understood.  I had taken Frank for granted for sure and it just never crossed my mind that he would ever leave me.
He hasn't really left me as we see each other nearly everyday, talk everyday and co-parent quite happily, but we are not together presently and we live apart both hoping we can piece the union back together.  But I well understood how this man felt.  I well understood the fear that grips him as I felt the same after I moved into my apartment and it still creeps in to knock my equilibrium askew from time to time.  I felt unmoored, set adrift to find my own way back to shore and I was terrified.
What I was able to tell him was that once I started exploring spirituality and started working through the steps as they are laid out in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, I started to find faith.  Faith in a higher power, a universal connectedness I had shut myself off to.  Faith in myself as I saw my whole self for the first time and didn't shy away from the full image.  Faith in the good and the bad in myself and the knowledge that the good far outweighs the bad.  Faith that even if Frank and I don't manage to patch up our marriage, that I will still be me and I won't be swallowed up in some black hole of non-existence.  To be sure I will be devastated should that come to pass, but I have faith now that it will not break me.
You see fear and faith cannot coexist.  Once I started to have faith, my fear decreased.  It didn't completely leave, as there are times when fear rears its head, but it does not overwhelm me as it used to, it does not rule my thoughts and actions as it used to, it does not run riot through my life because I have faith.
If you are afraid, find a way to have some faith and your life will be so much more fruitful.

Dueling Co-Dependency

Dueling Co-dependents

I am constantly amazed by how different my children's personalities are.  I Wren's personality is much more like Frank's and Dermot favors me... Poor kid.  The other weekend was a prime example of how similar we are and how we are both so co-dependent.
I came over to the house in the morning so that Frank could go to a seminar.  I knew that he was low on groceries and was waiting for a grocery delivery so I brought over a treat for breakfast for the kids.  I went to Dunkin Donuts and ordered egg wraps and picked the donuts Frank thought they would like and some milk.
Well when I got home we discovered that they had gotten Dermot's egg wrap wrong and that he did not indeed like the donut I had picked.  Wren was perfectly happy with hers and, as she sometimes does, seemed to delight in her breakfast just a little too in his face.
Now Dermot is a passionate fellow.  He can be joy personified about 80% of the time but that other 20% can be pretty hairy.  He is also one of those rare kids who does not like ketchup or cheese and isn't really a big fan of chocolate so his fast food orders often come to us wrong.  Normally I remember to check them, but I had forgotten and his sandwich had cheese.  He really got upset and was angry about how unfair it was that Wren got her breakfast but one didn't get the right one.
I was on the porch and could hear his tantrum.  Frank was talking to him and offered to make him something else but Dermot wasn't able to calm down and accept that yet.  As I listened I got more and more uncomfortable.  I felt sorry for him, I felt guilty and I wanted to fix it.  I went inside and said to Frank that I would go back and get the sand which he wanted and Frank urged me not to.  As we discussed it, Dermot came in the room and got even more upset because he didn't want me to go back and spend more money because that would make HIM feel guilty.  It was a comedy of errors.
I felt guilty, he felt guilty.  It was like dueling banjos of co-dependency!  I laughed and said something like, "Dermot, we are as bad as each other!"  So I took him in the kitchen and offered again to make him breakfast.  He had calmed down by then and we made him something else together.
I worry sometimes that I did this to him either through genetics or by the chaos my addiction has wrought on the family.  I realize however that I can't get stuck in that kind of thinking and instead do just what I did, laugh about it so as to lessen the strength of it, and show Dermot that there are healthy ways to solve problems.