Month: December 2019

Have I Really Made God Into The Image Of My Mother?!

My therapist told me that many often end up developing an image of their Higher Power as holding the characteristics of one of their parents, usually the one they were closest to or who held the most dominance over their life. I didn’t believe this at first until I came to that very realization one day when I saw that the God I keep trying to pray to holds all the negative traits of my mother.

I love my mother, God rest her soul. She did her best to provide me food, water, and shelter, but she also was a serious alcoholic who carried a tremendous amount of mental and emotional pain her entire life. Because of this, she really struggled to show me unconditional love, which in turn led to most of my earlier life becoming a daily series of me trying to prove myself to her to gain her love and favor. More often than not I failed, always feeling as if I was coming up short, getting punished in the process, never feeling like she loved me, leaving me feeling so empty and alone.

And sadly, that is the very image I currently still have of my Higher Power.

My first sponsor in recovery said early on in my work with her that God is nothing but unconditional love and that anything else was not of God and just our ego’s beliefs of what it thinks God is. Man, those words ring so true to me today as I reflect upon this image I’ve created of God that is so negative.

I see now this is why I’ve spent the better part of the last seven years trying to prove to God that I’m not a toxic addict anymore, that I’m not a user of people, that I’m a good person, who’s worthy and deserving of His love and frankly, it’s exhausted me doing this. I regularly get angry with God in the process, seeing Him as exactly I did with my mother. And the longer my pain and health issues go on, the more I think it’s a punishment for not being good enough or for being some sort of a “sinner”. This is turn leads me to beg God in my morning prayers to talk to me, to help me feel His love, and when I don’t feel it, I’m reminded of how cold my mother was to me through her many times of silence and neglect. So, in response, I try even harder to gain God’s favor, thinking that’s what I need to do, attempting to push myself beyond my limits, because that’s all I did for the majority of my life with my mother, which only exhausts myself even more to the very point where I begin to despise God, just like I eventually did with my mother.

ENOUGH! STOP THE INSANITY!!!

I can’t imagine that God, or whatever is Greater out there in the Universe is even remotely like this. That we have to prove ourselves to gain His blessings and to determine whether we get to go to Heaven or Hell. All of this reminds me of what’s happening in my best friend’s life now. He’s gay and is presently convinced his engaging in a same sex relationship is a sin. Because of this, he strives to live a celibate life now because he doesn’t want to go against his belief of what the will of God is. In the process, he denies the very nature of whom I truly believe God created him to be. Yet, in the same breath I can relate to this, because my mom didn’t like my sexuality and told me it was a sin, which has led me at times feeling like all the struggles I’ve had in recent years are my punishment for being gay.

I don’t want this image of God in my life anymore. NOT ONE BIT!

I want to return to what my first sponsor told me, that God is nothing but love, that no matter what we do, how we are, who we sleep with, how many wrongs we make, that we aren’t punished or disciplined for not living up to our highest potential. Because living this way, always trying to prove myself to God, just like I did with my mother, only leads to a futile existence. And trying to interpret the Bible or any other sort of religious text to figure out if it has the exact set of instructions to gain God’s favor has been just as futile.

12 Step recovery says to make your Higher Power into any image you desire, so I’m choosing to simply look at God as the unconditional love of Christ, who loves me for being me, for being a gay, OCD-laden, oddly unique, spiritually intense, humorously sarcastic and flawed individual in so many ways.

The bottom line…I don’t want God to be in the image of my mother anymore, or anyone else from my life or present reality for that matter, as none of them carry the traits of unconditional love that I know Christ carried. And in the end, maybe everything we try to make God out to be that’s beyond unconditional love is what our ego’s feel the need to do, to gain more understanding of something we’ll probably not ever meant to gain that kind of understanding of…at least not in this present state of existence…

Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson

Question Of The Day

Today’s question is…

What is one task that you never thought you’d ever complete, but eventually did and had much gratitude for?

Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson

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Grateful Heart Monday

Well, it’s Monday, and time for another entry in the gratitude department. Today’s Grateful Heart Monday is dedicated to accomplishing the putting together of an outdoor Christmas display that’s bigger than any other year I’ve done ever, a feat I honestly didn’t initially think I could do or would even find any desire to do in the first place.

In past years I have done my best to put together some pretty decent Christmas displays outside for others to enjoy. I’ve often seen many cars slowly drive by to appreciate my finished product. But, this year the motivation to do it just wasn’t there. With the very recent loss of my young cat Smokey, the other tragic losses of my friends Brian, Keith, and Aaron, and my increased levels of physical pain, this had suddenly become the first year I wasn’t excited for the Christmas season whatsoever.

Yet, I’ve learned on my journey to recovery from addiction that sometimes you just have to put one foot in front of the other, act as if, and set your mind towards doing something, even when you don’t feel like doing it. In this case, this was the precise course of action I took to accomplish the very thing I didn’t really find myself driven to do this year.

So, on a Wednesday morning, about 10 days ago now, I set my alarm for 8am, woke up in pain as usual, put on my headphones, and walked outside into my garage where I slowly began opening up all the Christmas storage bins to start putting together the outdoor Christmas display.

I began on the roof of the house and continued with the garage next, lining both from front to back with multi-colored lights. I also hung our big lighted wreath in the front pinnacle of the house and positioned a motion projector on the pinnacle of the back garage as well. Next, I moved on to the first part of the fence that surrounds our entire front yard, adorning it with multi-colored lights as well. When I ran out of both energy and time, I had achieved the very thing I hadn’t thought possible that morning, that being the ability to even start doing a holiday display this year. And now that I had started, I felt a drive to keep going.

The next day began in the very same way, yet with a little more skip to my step so to speak. I continued working on the fence until I had it entirely strung with ornamental “X’s” of multi-colored lights. I then proceeded to wire it all together until I ran out of steam and time again, yet by then I felt that Christmas spirit slowly arising within me. The day after, I began to work on the approach to our front door and the garden edging around it, lining the approach and door with white lights and the garden edging with multi-colored lights. After completing this and wiring it all together, the thing I hadn’t thought possible just two days prior actually became possible, as I was now feeling the Christmas spirit.

On Saturday morning, I awoke with more excitement than the previous three mornings, and progressed into the next stage, which was putting out the 30+ lighted yard figurines, lighting the two ornamental trees in our front yard, and lining up the front projector and spotlight. Doing this phase of the outdoor holiday project always takes the most time, because honestly, I’m OCD and I rearrange everything countless times until it looks please to my OCD-based eyes! LOL! Anyway, 14 hours later, yes 14 hours, I had it all where I felt it needed to be and all lit up. The fact that I had lasted that long doing that amount of work was a feat and a record in itself for me.

And finally, for a few final hours on Sunday afternoon, five days after I had begun the project, I added some finishing touches with a few more lights strands down the front sides of both the house and the garage and added one more lighted figurine that had been purchased that morning to the display.

In the end, it took me approximately 40 hours of hard work to complete my outdoor Christmas display and I must say I’m far more excited for this holiday season now that it’s done and truly grateful that I didn’t let my self-pity, grief, and negativity prevent me from doing something that I had typically enjoyed doing in previous years.

So, yes, I have plenty of gratitude for overcoming my ego that most definitely didn’t want me to do the holiday decorating this year. But thanks be to God for helping me to push on through to complete a task that just over two weeks ago, I never thought would even happen, which is exactly why I felt it called for being today’s Grateful Heart Monday entry.

Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson