July 10

PATIENCE MONTH: DAY 10: “Life begins when you start something, and blooms when you keep doing it.”― Michael Bassey Johnson

Isn’t this one the truth?! I do believe my life began in this recovery life. There was so much that came before, but I had no skills in dealing with any of it, so just shoved it all down deep and kept moving. And moving, and moving…my body, my feet, myself.

And I learned here how to sit with it all. How to meditate and heal and grow and become a spiritual being rather than an automaton who just functioned and kept moving.

And the process of the steps does not bloom the first time or the first 10 times, but after literally dozens of times being completed and processed and shared and actually DONE. Not discussed or read or any of the things I see others doing. It is what must happen to achieve that bloom.

The first times is the soil preparation. I begin to understand how to use and see this process. Then comes the seed planting. That takes a long time too. Then comes the tending and the watering, which was another couple of years and many more times through the steps and learning to incorporate them more deeply into my life.

Then, many years and steps later the blooms appear and keep appearing. Tending them is still necessary, for there will always be gardening work to do; deadheading the blooms when they are done and feeding and continuing to water the plants. There is no end-date, and no graduation from this process, it just keeps unfolding and teaching and needing work to learn more about how to do life TODAY. Not what got me through 10 years ago or even yesterday. The world will change every day and I will need to meet it face to face, not hiding behind old ideas again. Daily work, year in and year out, what a great gift to know what the work is; a familiar old friend now that doesn’t scare me anymore.