Month: June 2014

A Prayer To Not Give Up

I’ve never been much of a quitter overall in life, but there are plenty of times lately when I feel like just giving up. Enduring the challenges I’ve faced over the past four years with my health and healing has definitely grinded away a tremendous amount of my fortitude. Sometimes the only thing that keeps me going on days like today when I feel that way is a prayer. Prayer seems to combat any desire that arises to give up, as giving up would only mean going back to an addiction-filled life to numb my pain or ending my life altogether. Neither is an option I really wish to pursue, but on days like today when I don’t understand why my spiritual growth and healing has to be so difficult, they appear very viable. The following is a prayer I actually wrote this morning to help me get through today, and it’s just one of many I’ve used to navigate successfully through any of those difficult days when they’ve happened. So if you should ever feel the desire to give up because of your own pain, it’s my hope you may use this prayer and that it will help you as much as I know it will help me. God bless.

“Dear God, lately it’s been very difficult to keep going. I often think about giving up because of the pain I continue to feel inside. I do my best everyday to put on a smile and make the best of it, but that’s becoming harder and harder to achieve. I don’t know what else I’m supposed to do other than be patient and have faith. But the longer I continue to deal with this pain, the more impatient I become and the more my faith seems to wane. Please strengthen me enough God so that I resist any desire to return to old behaviors that used to numb me every single day. Please also help me resist any urge to take my life because I know that’s not what You would want of me either. I just pray God that You help me make it through whatever it is I’m still going through and that I don’t ever give up. I look forward to when I’m free of this bondage and I thank You for the day when that is meant to happen. Amen.”

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

Cell Phone Ringers And Their Disruptions

It’s definitely no secret that I struggle with how everyone seems to becoming incredibly preoccupied with his or her cell phones. Besides the fact that they are being utilized so frequently that it’s causing people to detach from human interaction, I see a larger issue beginning to emerge. As the technology of mobile phones has evolved over time, so has the volume of their ringers. While that may not create any disruptions when they go off in someone’s private spaces such as a car or at home, I’m noticing how many they are creating in plenty of other situations.

Have you ever been at the theater when someone else’s phone suddenly starts to loudly ring? Or has that ever happened to you at some type of important meeting you were attending? Or maybe it’s happened to you at an intimate restaurant you were dining at? In each of those cases, can you honestly say it didn’t disrupt your experience on some level? I have witnessed all three of these situations and many others as well. The latest of which totally baffled me when it happened during a funeral service a few days ago. I really thought that people would never bring their cell phones into a funeral service, let alone leave them on. But sure enough, over the course of its one-hour duration, I counted at least five separate ones that rang quite loudly. Funerals are generally meant to be a time to grieve. But listening to one of the latest Top 40 songs emit from a phone as it rang made that pretty hard to do. Instead of being able to stay in my heart and let my sadness out, I found myself looking around the room trying to find the source of each phone when it rang.

All of this has got me wondering why people are so afraid they’re going to miss out on something if they don’t carry it everywhere and leave it on the entire time. Ironically, what they don’t realize is that they truly are missing out on something, but it has nothing to do with their mobile phone. It has to do with whatever is right in front of them that their phone is taking them away from.

Whether I’m in a movie theater, a meeting, a restaurant, a funeral, or any other venue where other people are around me in intimate spaces, I always make sure my phone is set to silent, turned off, or left in my car. First of all, I don’t want to ruin anyone else’s experience because of my loud Knight Rider ringtone. Second, there was once a time when I’d go an entire day without a phone call because the only one I had was at home. So why are a few hours of silencing it or shutting it off that big of a deal? Lastly, I’m also trying to not take away from my own experiences as I engage in whatever they are. For any of the times where I’ve left my ringer on in any public situation, it’s always been due to my own selfishness and self-centeredness, and the fact that I thought I was going to miss out on something. Thankfully, I’m doing a lot better with this today.

So hopefully the next time you’re at the theater, a meeting, a restaurant, a funeral or some other type of public venue, you’ll make sure that you too will silence your cell phone like I know I will be doing. That way we won’t be creating any disruptions for ourselves, nor will we be creating them for anyone else as well.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

Outed And Unaffected

There was a time when I extremely afraid of the world knowing I was gay. In fact, before I ever came out of the closet I was completely homophobic and even used racial slurs against those whose sexuality was no different than mine. But even after I did come out of the closet, I still struggled to be honest with the world around me about my true sexual preference. Thankfully, that’s not the case anymore and that became quite evident lately when I was outed by a friend of mine at one of my AA home groups.

I belong to two recovery home groups in the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous in Toledo, OH. One strictly caters to the LGBTQ community, while the other is not specifically geared towards any specific subset of recovery. To put it rather simply, one is really gay, while one is really not. Obviously the meeting that I was outed at was not the one predominantly attended by gay people. Ironically though, that meeting is nonetheless attended by a small number of gay people who are also members of my LGBTQ home group. One of them is relatively new to recovery and is the same one who outed me during his share the other day.

Up until the day it happened, I had never actually talked openly in that group about my sexuality. There were several members who did know though only because they had either (a) read my blog where it’s discussed pretty openly, or (b) learned it through general conversations with me. Anyway, as my new recovery friend shared during one of those meetings only a few days ago, he spoke of our LGBTQ-based AA meeting and how happy he was getting to know others in it. Suddenly, he spoke of those he was referring to, one of which was I. In the past, this action would have utterly horrified me. Most likely, I would have felt like a tortoise that wanted to quickly crawl back into its shell. I might have even gone so far as telling white lies to disassociate me from what he had said. But I did none of the above when it happened. In fact, I did nothing at all other than take part in the meeting as I normally do. By the end of the meeting, I had completely forgotten about it until my friend approached and profusely apologized for outing me. I reassured him that everything was fine and that I wasn’t upset on any level.

I’m amazed sometimes when I take a look at how far I’ve come in just a short period of time, especially when it comes to being as open about my sexuality as I am now. The truth is that I don’t really care anymore what people think when it comes to my sexual preference. Ironically, I actually have compassion today for those who struggle accepting homosexuals, because there once was a day when that was I. I also inherently have found that the more I’m comfortable with that part of me, the more all others seem to be too, but the less I was comfortable with it, the less that others seemed to be as well.

I’m so grateful that I’m much more comfortable with my sexuality today than how it used to be for me. I no longer feel the need to cover up that part of me, neither do I feel the desire to use any bi-sexual or my jokingly tri-sexual (I try anything) labels I once used regularly with others due to my fears.

Life sure has changed when it comes to how I handle my sexuality nowadays. I’m quite thankful to my Higher Power for helping me get to this point in my life where a random outing in a predominantly heterosexual meeting did nothing more than show that fear no longer controls that part of my life.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson