Month: September 2013

There’s a lot of people out there who I know of both in the recovery circles and outside of them who really struggle with the concept of prayer. For some it has become relatively synonymous with religion, which is considered poison in their minds, so they they want nothing to do with it. For others, it’s the process of how to pray that overwhelms them, so they don’t ever even try. I understand and relate to both of these points of view, but have come to see that a prayer can really be as simple as just saying four words: “God please help me!”

Prayer is defined as “a solemn request for help or expression of thanks addressed to God or an object of worship.” While that may indeed sound religious and lofty, the truth is in saying those words, “God please help me!”, that a powerful prayer has already been spoken and nothing more has to even be said. What’s funny though is that I once thought prayer had to be some great Shakespearian prose.

That probably stemmed from having grown up in a religious family who attended church week in and week out for many years. There, I heard many prayers that never made much sense to me and most were just words being read aloud. It’s one of the reasons why I don’t attend any church currently as I never feel my heart is being stirred when listening to someone else’s prayers or reading them in unison with others from a piece of paper. To me that just feels like there are specific rules or formats to praying and I don’t believe that there actually are. I feel that prayer is an intimate experience that’s different for each and every individual who utilizes it.

Most people usually picture a person kneeling with their hands clasped tightly together when it comes to prayer, except that’s only one of an infinite number of ways that people can pray. There’s also standing, walking, driving, eating, playing, lying down, jogging, running, hiking, working, and so on, are you getting my point? There really is no specific position, place, or format on how to pray. All it really takes is to just start. And for much of the past few years of my life when the excruciating pains that I’ve been going through are overwhelming me, I have struggled myself in doing that. But one day I heard a friend in AA speak at a podium who changed my own viewpoint on prayer. He said that in his weakest moments, when he feels most overwhelmed in life, and has no clue on how to start praying, he just raises his hands up in the air and says the words, “God please help me!” and then finds the rest of the words come forth.

Since hearing that man speak in AA, I have applied this countless of times in my own life on all those days when I don’t feel like I have the energy to go on anymore. I have lost track of how many places I have found myself crying out those words of “God please help me!” And I’ve come to see that in many of those times, I not only feel closer to God in saying them, but I find a whole conversation with God is then able to pour out of me.

Prayer doesn’t have to be a religious thing nor does it have to be filled with exalted words. It doesn’t have to be done in any specific format nor does it have to be carried out in any certain place either. Prayer truly has no boundaries, and there is no right or wrong way of doing it. Sometimes, all one needs to do when struggling with prayer, is to just take a moment to think about the difficulty their facing, then breathe deeply, and say those four little words of “God please help me!” It really IS that simple.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

I’m really not one who is that hip on using any type of slogans throughout my life, but in the case of an episode that happened recently with my landlord, the phrase “Good Things Come To Those Who Wait” applied magnificently.

I did some research to try to find the origin of this phrase and discovered it actually is considered an English proverb that was most likely derived from a Biblical verse (Lamentations 3:25) that read as follows, “God is good to those who wait for him, to the one who seeks him.” Ironically, it was used and adapted several thousand years later by Heinz for the adverting of their ketchup back in the 1980s. Since then, it has become a widely used English phrase that people seem to use quite often to extol the virtue of patience. And with regards to my landlord, that is a virtue I have been seriously challenged with.

My landlord, who is also my roommate, most likely falls on the exact opposite side of the spectrum as me in regards to maintaining household chores in a timely fashion. Vacuuming, dusting, cleaning the bathroom, and doing laundry are all things I normally keep up with before any of their maintenance gets out of control. And thankfully, I have the complete ability to stay on top of all of those things within my landlord’s home without any of them ever getting out of control. But unfortunately, there is one task that is not within my own ability to maintain and control and that’s the mowing of the yard outside.

I like to spend quite a bit of time outside in the backyard of any house I’ve resided in. Last year, my landlord paid me to cut the grass and keep up the yard maintenance so this was never an issue. Much of the summer of 2012, one would find me out back enjoying the sunlight, or having a fire in the pit, or just keeping the grounds looking nice. But this year, that changed as he took it upon himself to add the yard maintenance to his long list of things that he already had trouble staying on top of. I still haven’t figured out to this day why he struggles with keeping up with his own laundry, cleaning, and various other chores, given that I see him with plenty of time where he’s just watching television or surfing the internet. But I have come to a place where I have had to accept the fact that we are just two very different people and that’s just who he is for right now in his life. Sadly though, this has seriously affected my usage of the yard this year as the grass has gone for many weeks at a time without being cut.

There are days that my patience has worn thin when I’ve seen my landlord sitting around the house on a beautifully sunny day where the grass was six inches high or greater. And sitting outside in that high of grass is never much fun as it draws a lot of bugs. The control issues I continue to work on within myself have at these times taken over and led me to verbally judge my roommate and start an argument about the yard. Most of my attempts to ask if I could just cut it myself have been denied and instead, day in and day out, it remains uncut. I’ve often wondered if its a pride thing for my landlord but I have no data to back that up. These past few weeks, since returning from my last trip to my partner’s house, I have forced myself to try a different path that didn’t involve my attempts at control and confrontation. And instead, it involved patience. Day in and day out, I’d return home and see the grass was still uncut. As the anger stirred within me, I’d immediately start sending love, forgiveness, and peace to my roommate through my prayers. Ironically, after three weeks of this, with the grass still not being cut, he finally reached out and asked me if I could cut it for him and he’d even pay me $20 to do so. I was shocked at first but then became extremely grateful to realize that good things really do come to those who wait. Through those many prayers and patience, I was able to expel all the anger from within me and reach a moment where God intervened and somehow motivated my landlord to ask me for help. So I did just that and got a nice cut yard to enjoy some moments being in again.

The moral here is simple. If you are finding yourself struggling with any aspect in your life, I encourage you to take a moment, breathe, and try to practice a little bit of patience with whatever it is. The more you do this, the more you might just find as I did, that good things really do come to those who wait.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson