Entitlement is sneaky

Recently I have made a decision to take a break from Facebook on my phone. The last time I did this was because I couldn’t stand all the political adds coming through. Today I just took a look at my kids and decided they are more important then all the endless amounts of news feed stories.

Being a stay at home mom and having an addictive personality sometimes doesn’t serve me very well. When ever I sit down out comes my phone and swipe away. My strong willed 17month old has taken to walking up and grabbing my hand, smacking my phone out of the way and pulling me to what ever he would like me to go or see.

Which got me thinking about what kinds of things have changed sense I put down the news feed?
First off my house is not any more clean, damn it! We do not have fancy meals. My dogs are not walked any more then they were before. What has changed? Its subtle.
My youngest son David is very strong willed. He will no doubt be a strong powerful force in the world. Today he is a force to be reckoned with. Sense putting down my phone his tantrums are less? I’m less reactive to them. Strange, maybe? Maybe not.
My oldest son is more engaged with me and his brother. Sure he stills gets angry when his 4 foot high tower is knocked over in 2.9 seconds. But we talk it out. And now I hear him repeating to him self, “its ok it can always be rebuilt”
There are many many other things I’m sure that have changed. This post is not meant to add guilt, shame or ever try an get you to put your phone down. We as human beings do not need anymore of that shit in our lives. This post is to call out my own entitlement. Its the same pattern I used when I was drinking. I am so ………. fill in the blank, I DESERVE this. That kind of language gets me in trouble every time. But that was my thinking, kids go away I need a break. I need rest. I need this that or the other thing. That principle is so so so true. I DO need those things.
When I was in therapy a few years ago my therapist would talk to me all the time about being. She said you can be busy and be at the same time, I’m thinking that’s the dumbest thing I have ever heard. She continued, She said its whats driving the boat. I agree with that today. I read this morning
Meditations for women who do to much By Anne Wilson Schaef
Aug, 19 Its not what I do, its the way I do it, that will get me in the end.
There is was again, whats driving the boat? I have been so entitled about my “I deserve this” crap that I really wasn’t resting to begin with I was nursing resentments, perfecting my judgments and manifesting more areas of guilt. So, if you want something different you have to DO something different. ACTION changes me not thinking or saying again and again.
Facebook crack is a front to whats underneath. What was/is driving the boat? lack of being, one of my core things I run up against all the time. I’m more prone to injury this way, more prone to not being able to remember things and much more prone to heaping shame and guilt on to my self about everything. I don’t let things go easily because I’m not fully connected to the process anyway. How do I change that? Its easy. STOP, CONNECT, BREATH. I used to do this meditation that only took a couple minuets where I would put my feet flat to the floor, my eyes closed and my hand on my abdomen. And with every breath I would envision roots growing from my feet into the floor. And the more I breathed the deeper and deeper they went. I would do that until I couldn’t stand it any more or I felt better.

Being a stay at home mom I can not unplug completely. I was not meant to live my life independently from my people. I was meant to live it interdependently, meaning keeping a healthy balance of YOU and ME in my life. Saving Facebook time for the morning and evening when my babies are sleeping. I’m still texting and calling people because I need that connection. Being alone with me all day and two kids, not a good situation. It was never meant to be that way any way.

Emotional sobriety: flaunt it if you got it

On Friday nights my husband and I go to our home group meeting. Usually my brain is so over loaded that it’s just nice to not have someone pulling on my pants or crying at my feet. I’m listening to the sharing and my husband takes a turn and out of his mouth falls “I’m not going to apologize for having a good life.” It was one of those moments that I didn’t realize I needed to hear those words until that very moment. The gap in the human go where the divine slips in I think I have heard before.

 

I think about it in concept of I’m not going to apologize for living an out loud life either. I live out loud. I talk about sex, fights I have with my husband, insanity with my kids and simply my crazy ass self. It has taken a ton of work to get me to this place but as my sponsor told me this morning I choose wisdom. I choose to seek the deeper reason why I want to slam my head in a car door rather than to answer another why question. Or why I laugh as my kid is throwing him self to the ground yet another time. Or why I say out loud for people to hear do not punch your 16 month old in the face for punching me in the nose. Any one that knows me knows I would never hit my kid. Good on ya if you have never thought that. I have. And I’m not going to apologize for being real. Thoughts don’t hurt people, actions do. If I don’t talk about my thoughts they turn into actions.

 

I believe that I get the chance to re-parent my inner kid as my children age. When my kids don’t listen, punch me, break stuff, take stuff and for the 112^th time they dump tippsy-cup of chocolate milk in to the dog water I get the chance to re-do some of the damaged parts of me. Be the parent I wanted when I was little. I don’t do it well all the time and that doesn’t make me a bad mom.

 

I ask my self and have friends (who’s children survived there parenting) ask me “what’s hooking you?” I get the chance to go deeper and choose wisdom. Why do I do the things I do? Well I have gotten clear about several things about me but they usually come down to a few core reasons.

 

One: I think I know what is best. The old adage mom knows best. I disagree with that. Who am I to attempt to deny my son the opportunity to learn about gravity if I’m always catching him? My husband and I play through some times when we are at the park, how many feet do you think that drop is? We usually conclude it’s going to hurt when they fall but not death. 70% of the time they never fall. I embrace the belief that my kids have a life to live and experience that they need to grow through that are vital to them becoming men. I do my very best to stay out of the way because they have a God and I’m not it is what it really comes down to.

Two: I’m not enough, there is not enough time and I don’t have a right to be. The biggest thing for me that I struggle with and thanks to conscious parenting I have rewired a lot of screwed up shit in my brain is I don’t have a right to be, where I am and doing what I’m doing because you disagree with me. There was a time in my life I would have sold my soul if it meant you would agree with me. In the re-parenting my inner kid world there are plenty of chances to re-wire my thoughts.

Three: I always want to do it right. Errks me to even say based on the last paragraph but it is true. I want to get it right every time. I want the home run every time I’m up to bat and that’s just not possible. I was meeting with an old sponsor a while back and I said to her “why do I always have to screw things up?” her response was priceless “because Ashley if we got it right all the time and didn’t go from extreme to extreme and swing that pendulum we never get to experience the lessons that lay in the middle”

I don’t apologize for having a good life. I don’t apologize for living it out loud either. I crave connection, I crave relationships, I crave other seekers. Being a seeker has served me well and its also kept me up at night. There are assets in my defects and defects in my assets. Living a life of clean and sober living I work very hard on the emotional sobriety. I seek, I ask and I dig. No freak out moment with my kids is by accident. I don’t spend all my waking hours oozing over all my mistakes but it is something I think on and a topic I cover when talking with other seekers because after all raising kids isn’t all fun and games and happenstance it’s a way to grow deeper, softer and have a chance to learn my life is good no matter how bad the day went if I lay my head down sober my kids have the chance to have a sober mom the next morning and I have a chance to apply what I learned yesterday to today. Thank God for sober living and living out loud.

Loss of a child, a faith renewed

In 2011 my husband and I lost a baby at 32 weeks and 3 days gestation. Her name was Danica. She had a chromosome disorder called Triploidy. My heart breaks when I think of her but not like it used to. Time heals many wounds. She was born at the end of August and I wrote this a couple weeks later.

Some days when things are hard I forget that this kind of strength still runs with in me, I believe that God reminds me along the way that peace can exist amongst chaos. I’m grateful that with a lot of grief work this pain is not as big. My heart still skips a beat when I am asked how many kids I have or someone mentions about if we are going to try for a girl. I love my two boys to pieces and I miss my daughter, through the gift of a ton of personal work both a true and I do not feel guilty about it.

Familiar seas on uncharted waters

September 13, 2011 at 3:41pm

I sat down at my journal the other day and usually God speaks to me through impressions I get or thoughts that come and what occurred to me is that I have never been here before. I am in uncharted waters. I have no insights, no impressions no word pictures. There is just this deep ache in side my heart and soul that I cannot describe in words.

Today I hurt, the last line I wrote in my journal. I hurt. I hurt for my daughter that won’t get to play with her brother in the back yard. I hurt for Abe who wont get to teach Danica how a lady is to be treated. I hurt for me who wont get to have special tea times with my little girl. I hurt. I believe Danica is in heaven somewhere basking in the sun light of God. That she is safe from harm and is standing guard for us in a way that only an angel can.

I have had countless conversations with people who have given me as a parent the thing that I wish most for my kids. I wish for my kids to make a mark on this world, to pack as much in to the stream of life as they can. Teach others, learn them selves and find joy in there days on this earth. Danica was here in the womb for 32 weeks and 3 days. What she has caused to flow from humanity is beyond my ability to comprehend. I don’t know the far reaching’s of what she has done and what she has done through us but Gods on the job because amazing things have come to pass for Abe and I and countless others.

It is humbling for me to hear people say things to me like “you are so strong, I’m not sure I could have done what you have done it must have taken such courage to do what you did.” The part that is hard for me to take in is that this is just the way we do things in our house. Together. I wouldn’t have done in any other way. In AA the first tradition is about unity. With out that there is nothing. Unity in the good times and in the hard times. It is a blessing from God that that has been in our home. That’s what we strive for, not perfect at but that is what we strive for and in this journey so far we have nailed it. 🙂 Thanks to the prayers of the people that have walked with us on this journey and our desire to be together.

Today it is God who gives me strength. I’m not strong enough to make it through this. I reached a breaking point in the hospital and realized that true strength is moving when you can and saying enough when you cant. Strength isn’t “manning up” its not holding it together or doing it all, strength is what’s driving the boat to make those things happen. Strength in the doing and the giving up. As the paradox states, you have to surrender to win. So today I say I’m good because I hurt. I’m happy because I’m crying when I need to. I’m peaceful because I’m a mess and can’t think straight some times.

This is taken the day my husband and I went to spread her ashes. Its taken from Spray park, Mt Rainer National park. An eagle was flying over and a bear was just up the meadow.

Thank God that I may not know where I’m going but at least I know for sure where I have been and in that I can trust that path that I can not see for someday I will look back and see not just my foot prints but another as well.

Sunset at the pass where her ashes were to be laid. My husband was backpacking with his brother one ridge over. This photo was taken on the day the Doctors estimate her heart stopped in the womb.

 

Out of the ashes a Phoenix is born

A few months ago I was in the middle of a storm that wasn’t mine. I did not know at the time that it wasn’t mine because my husband and I were the subjects of the storm. What I know today, after relentless prayer for the people involved and countless hours of processing with safe people is that other peoples reactions are about them, no matter what the content of the situation is. The situation that was intended to draw strong lines in the sand and paint me in a bad light has made me stronger and more committed to my cause of right and powerful living. As the saying goes, “when your going through hell keep on going.” (Winston Churchill) As much as I wanted to make the situation I was in about me the truth is it wasn’t. Some significant relationships were lost and I grieve the loss of them today but out of the ashes of a burned down relationship a Phoenix is born.

A much respected definition of courage I cling to is being afraid and doing it any way. Living a life out loud is bound to catch a few people the wrong way and threaten them in ways that was not intended. However, what the fear misses when containing someone that lives out loud, is the freedom it gives those who are held in bondage by the shame of something others do and don’t talk about.

Why we don’t talk about anger is beyond me. Maybe it brings up old feelings from the past. Which makes sense to me being that I didn’t see much healthy anger when i was growing up. It was either sad or rage. I preferred to take the rage because sad looked weak to me. What I know is a happy balance between all four primary emotions, sad, mad, glad, scared is the place that I find the most stability in my heart. Going through the fire storm I did a few months ago has forced me to live and love harder. I press in to life and live scandalously. At least I’m trying to. I’m terrified to push in to this dream of mine to publish my thoughts publicly. But as a fire needs wind to grow I can not expect anything to happen with out taking risks.

I love symbolism. The Phoenix is something that I can identify with, especially coming out of the situation I am walking through. Trial by fire. There are things that happen in my life that hurt like hell and they bring out a rage in me that is primal in nature. I have not let it owned me though. Its strong and powerful and its energy needed to be channeled in a healthy way and I’m doing that, some days better then others, none the less I am pushing through the fear and pain of failure and waiting on my God in the ashes sober and willing.

 

The best gift given to the Fathers I know

 

When I think about Fathers Day it makes me think of the God of my understanding and his unending love for me. Year’s ago I was at a conference and the topic was healing the relationship between God and me. It went through a series of concepts where I would put the image of my earthly father on my heavenly father and God would fall short every time of who he truly was and I would be left craving things from people that they were not capable of giving.

 

Not knowing what I was doing, I would end up resentful at my husband or my own dad because I was looking to them to be someone they were not intended to be. The god centered hole inside would grow ever bigger until the concept became relevant to me that I was looking in the wrong place for my needs to be met.

 

I believe that the best gift I can offer my Dad and husband is the freedom to be who they are supposed to be as individuals, Children of God them selves. The more free they are to be them selves in my mind the clearer I can connect with them with out all the unspoken expectations of things they can never truly meet.

 

I see my Dad as someone that truly did the best he could to provide for me the tools for living. He gave me many things that I still cling to today and serve me in my life very well. I see him as a man who has flaws and is not perfect. I see him clearly.

 

I see my husband as a man who loves and cares for me the best way he can. He has challenged me to be better, love deeper and bend when I was incapable of knowing I could. Hes not perfect either. He has his flaws. I see him clearly too.

 

Seeing that someone is flawed in this view isn’t coming from a place of picking him apart. It’s seeing the imperfection in their humanness and the perfection in God. I spent way to much time trying to get people to tell me what to do and believe. As it would turnd out I didn’t have a lot of faith in humanity because they would fail me, they are human after all and don’t always get it right.

 

When my relationship with my Dad and my husband are free to come and free to go the relationship it truly free and there for will fulfill what it was truly meant to do.

 

When I journal or when I pray alone I pray to Aba Father, Papa God. I see him as the father I desperately craved my whole life. The poem that follows is something I wote during that time and seems appropriate to attach here now.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To be Romanced By the God of all Creation:

 

When I need the connection of a Father

I need not look anywhere else but the world around me

 

When I see a meadow filled with blooms

I know that bouquet was meant for me

 

When I want to dance all I have to do

Is move with the wind and I know

That dance was meant for me

 

When I want a hug,

To be caught up in a warm embrace

I stand in the warm rays of the

Sunlight of the spirit

And I know that hug was meant for me

 

When I want to know I am loved

I look to the cross,

Its then I know that your arms

Stretched wide were meant for me.

 

When I want to be touched

I feel the shivers on my shoulders

I know that touch was meant for me.

 

When I want to be connected

To the Father of all children

I need not look further then

All Creation.

Written By Ashley Bell

Grace for the developmental years of childhood insanity and blessing.

 I was sharing with some friends the other day about how much I ask my kids to change in the first 5 years of there lives and it occurred to me to offer a little more grace to them and the ones like them when i realized how much I really do ask of them.

Newborn: they start out these helpless little blobs of joy and smelly things and have parents that are, according to the movies and TV shows, supposed to be happy about this ALL the time. I don’t know about you but when both my sons were all happy and giggles at 2 am I was not laughing, in fact I was crying most of the time because unlike them who get to sleep most of the day, I was awake freaking out because they would stop breathing every now and then and my solution was to check every few minuets because apparently my looking would some how enable them to continue sucking in the very air that keeps them breathing. 

Oh the pressure begins. The conversation would go something like this:

“Oh I know you were just born and all and I know some where in your divinely wired brain you are supposed to know how to eat and swallow so lets get to it because this Dr or mid wife is kind of starting to piss me off! Oh there you go eat eat eat away. Ya my little one did it.”

Then you come home to relentless questions from the well meaning people: Is the baby sleeping well? What kind of question is that! They just got the eating thing down I’ve been home for 10 minuets, the kid might as well feel like they got sent to a whole other world. They were in water that was warm and cozy. Now they are in air that’s freezing most of the time. Or another question I love, are you sleeping well? To which after I get done lying right through my teeth because the mail lady does not need to see my cry for 30 minuets at a time because I just cant seem to remember where my EVERYTHING went. “Yes im sleeping well thank you. Love my little one.”

First Year: the Dr’s appointments! For the first year, are they holding there head? Tummy time! Tummy time! Tummy time! Do they recognize you when you come in to the room? Are they eating by them selves yet? Making sounds? Picking things up? Are they crawling? Walking? Cruising the furniture? Its at this point my eyes glaze over because I starting thinking about my dog cruising the couch for snacks in the cushions and I remember her eating my bagel breakfast sandwich on the first day that everyone slept all at the same time. That my friends, is grounds for re-homing! but then I would cry again so never mind. The Dr. notices my glazed over look and asks the last question again, hows baby sleeping? To which I reply, “I think he decided sleep is for when hes old”

Year 2: They are walking, talking in a code only parents can decipher, opinionated and in to everything. They cant decide if they want to eat or just throw there food on the floor and then scream because there noodles were eaten by the dog and some how its our fault. Oh and they are besides them selves that I wont let them whack me with the tonka truck one more time.

Year 3: They are getting this whole eating with out throwing it at the parents thing down really well, sleeping has settled down a little bit, and now the real pressure comes. Do you feel pee pee? Poo poo? Do you need to go? Did you go? Where is it if you did? (guilty look on the dogs face, and I think, less to clean up) Then the moment in the far back corner of Costco, the first time I brave the no diaper, he just peed in the parking lot so we should be good. Second baby just ate so we are good. And its as if while im inspecting the giant batch of grapes that im about to buy and the boys come together, “are you ready to see how fast she can push this over loaded cart the quarter mile to the bathroom? Ready go! Mommy I have to pee!!!!!!!” Loudly so everyone around can hear. I check my list, I cant just abandon this cart I have the best batch of grapes. And we are off, we make it, and out comes a few drops. In my mind I’m like “REALLY? I almost ran some people over to get here”. But out of my mouth comes “YAAAA go pee pee on the potty!”

Year 4: More questions, is he writing, reading? Can he count? Alphabet? Potty trained? Jump up and down? I think from the counter or off the floor? Does bouncing count? Is he eating well? How is he with other kids? Can he write a code that programs a rocket to launch? They throw that one in just so they know I’m paying attention now, remember the dog?

After thinking about all this stuff I ask my kids to do I realize I really need to give them extra grace. When hes hanging upside down off the grocery cart or yelling so loud that I need ear plugs to hear because when parenting is a 24/7 deal I will have a chance to “try again” in 5 minuets. I expect my kids to behave in ways that really in the reality of things doesn’t make sense. In honesty when I take an honest look at my thinking, I want him to be a robot and then I realize: Hes 4 or hes 14 months depending on which one I’m watching lick the window. Being a kid is such a short lived thing, offer the guy some grace, truly how much have I been asked to grow in 4 years of life? Surely not as much as I’m asking of them. Please have grace for us if you see my son walk right in front of your grocery cart in the store or runs in circles for no apparent reason at all. Chances are its the lesser of two situations like walk freely in the store or go bowling in the juice aisle and see how many bottles he can drop to the floor before hes caught.

Some days I just look at the and say out loud, not what I’m thinking of course, but remind my self “your acting your age, your supposed to …” They arn’t robots. Thank God for the gift of growth not only in them but my self as well. Extra grace required for all parties involved. I try to tickle him instead of grab his hand for the 100th time because laughter releases so much more tension in him and me. Often that is all that is needed, a little bit of purposeful connection.

 

Who am I?

Having never blogged before I figure the first one should be all about me. I’m a 30 year old mom of two boys. I’m married to a wonderful man of 10 years. We share many things in common but sobriety is the base line for it all. I have two brothers, one older and one younger. Both of my parents are still alive and live in the same house I grew up in.

I was born and raised in a small farming community and still live here today. I grew up running barefoot on the asphalt pavement, ride my bike without a helmet, listening to Bob Segar, the Drifters, The doors, Nervana, Garth Brooks and George Straight. We were frequently have rock concerts on the porch of my friends house and play on a giant blown up water bed mattress, which has claimed many broken bones and given many scuffs. Every Saturday my friends and I would head down to the local restaurant and order a plate of fries and spend countless hours talking to our waitress until she moved to a new job and after that what was the point of going? 

After all the fun and games would settle down inside I spent the better part of my childhood feeling like I was never going to mount up. I always wanted people to approve of what I was doing and I never could sum up the confidence to assert myself enough to fully seperate my self from the things I didn’t want to do. I didn’t know it at the time that that would be one of the things that a drink eased away.

At age 12 I discovered alcohol. I drank, got drunk, passed out and threw up all over my self while my older brother and his friend cared for me until they new i was safe. To which I woke up out side in a tent with vomit all over me and a veg recollection of what happened the night before. I had the worst hangover and all I could think about was how can I get that again. 

Fast forward 5 years and I’m in the rain laying on a side walk, I’ve been drinking all day and its the middle of February in Washington St. Which is a nice way to say is 40 degrees and raining. I was a crossed the street from the police station and no one saw me. I believe that was my Gods doing because I needed to stumble home and stand in my parents kitchen at 3 am on a work night and tell them that “i didnt know what was wrong with me I cant stop drinking”

A week later I was in treatment and 13 years later here I am. How do you sum up in a short story what the heck has happened to me in 13 years? Honestly, I have no idea. It hasn’t come easy. I have had many hours in therapy, step work with my sponsor, and just plain had to wait out the storms. It been a series of turns. Some welcomed, some cursed as they went by. I’m sure that I will get to all of that later on.

I’m the kind of person that will lay it all out there. Living life out loud for all to see. So whats my list of me?

I love gardening, hiking, goofing around, cooking, playing with my kids, singing in the car, walking with my dogs and spending with my husband. Vacation is mine and my families thing. Some people own boats or paint pictures. We go places, a lot! I am a deep thinker/analyzer. My husband has a rule that I cant share my thoughts with him until hes had at least one cup of coffee, which some days if i have been awake long enough is torture. Football is considered to be my 5th season.

This blog is a challenge for me. Sense my son has been born, 4 years ago, there has been many labels placed on me which i fully love and enjoy. However for me I need one corner that is just me. Not a wife, mother, friend, sister, sponsor, gardener and daughter. Just a corner that from the start is me with out anything else. I love to write, I always have. Ive been told its helpful to others so, here I go giving it away for fun and for free. Thanks for listening.