'tis the season

"I'm ready for my close-up!"

I'm grateful, very grateful.

I was walking my dog the other night, and something dawned on me. His ability to forgive and love is amazing.

While we were walking, I realized that he didn't care about the things I did a few hours earlier that hurt his feelings: I took his half-destroyed toy (choking hazard) away. I "shushed" him for barking. I scolded him for stealing a sock from the laundry.

He's very expressive, so it was plain to see that the chastisements hurt his feelings. He sulked for a few minutes, but he didn't hold it against me. He forgave me almost immediately. He was happy -- as if nothing had gone wrong.

I realized that when people upset me, I hold it against them. I'll harbor the resentment until I fall apart. I stay miserable the entire time.

But watching my dog reminded me that forgiveness brings happiness. He has no pride or ego -- he just has love in its most pure form. I think we are all born with that kind of love, and it's a good goal to love unconditionally like that again.

What a beautiful example.

It reminds me of the prayer, "God, help me to be the person my dog thinks I am."


Today, I'm especially thankful for ...

• being sober
• my family
• my sweet dog
  
• my job
• being able to buy gifts for loved ones
• being healthy
• learning new things
• God, because He sends messages in such obvious ways that they're easy to miss ...

ALL of them?

I went to a meeting about the 6th step today:

"Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character."

These defects are supposed to be highlighted when we do steps 4 and 5 (In the 4th step, we conduct an honest moral inventory of ourselves. In the 5th step, we confess the exact nature of our wrongs to God and to another person).

So it makes sense that after seeing our behavior patterns for step 4 and sharing them with someone for step 5, we would have the desire to become better people for step 6.

For the glaring and obviously harmful defects, we immediately feel the desire to change. But the other less harmful defects don't bring about the same sense of urgency.

Today, we read in the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions:

"Self-righteous anger also can be very enjoyable. In a perverse way we can actually take satisfaction from the fact that many people annoy us, for it brings a comfortable feeling of superiority," (p. 67).

If someone had asked me last week if I engage in self-righteous anger, I would have denied it. But after reading this passage today, I see that I've been using this defect for quite some time now, especially at work.

In fact, it's the only reason I haven't walked out the door yet. The job has become such an annoyance that it has almost become a source of entertainment. "I will be nicer if you will be smarter" is a subconscious mantra. I have felt this way at other jobs before ... I'm starting to see a pattern.

I'm grateful to be sober today ... and I'm grateful to be tired enough to go to bed too ...