Introspection

I've spent the day with the kids, went to church, my mom came over and visited, IM'd my sister and called my brother. I sat in on the online Al-anon meeting and have been very introspective today.

In the Al-Anon session we spoke of powerlessness. To a control freak, anal retentive like myself this is hard. But it seemed that for everyone to "let go and let God" even the non-alcoholic had to hit a certain rockbottom. That rock bottom for me was when I realized that no matter what I did, he wasn't going to stop because of me. I have called alcohol his mistress. I can't control him, he can't control the alcohol and if he can't control it -- then definitely I can't control it for him. I have to focus on my sanity and raising my babies. This is STEP I.

In church today, the children were "wiggle bugs", D***** was very rambunctious and realized that he was getting grins and giggles from others in the congregation, so he put on a show. The one thing that I did hear (guess it was because I'm in tune to the talk) was one comment the preacher made and that was "...doctors and psychologists today try to explain away alcoholism as a social disease. We should tell it like it is, it is a sin." There are three categories of sin in the Bible -- "Lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, and pride of life." If you are calling alcoholism a sin, then yes it is -- because the alcoholic lusts after it. A drunkard is a sinful man in this aspect, but so is the wall-street broker going after that almighty dollar, the wife that puts her husband before God because she is addicted to him, can't we say that anything that you put before God is a sin? I'm not trying to diminish drunkenness -- BUT there are other things just as bad. Any time we have no self control we are in someway hurting ourself and others, nicotine, overeating, workaholic, overprotective parenting, and the list goes on... many of these apply to me.

I communicated with both the Sister and the Brother today and seems like we all three have a problem. Well one is we are all having a hard time making financial ends meet, in so doing we have all borrowed money from mama/daddy. In this, I started to think about the borrowing and laughed at us, because Brother and I probably asked mama, who in turn told daddy, and then she wrote the check. Sister probably told Daddy. But one thing all three of us can admit to is the pressure it put on us to ask our folks for help. One of my greatest hangups in life is, I don't want to disappoint them. Now as a mother of three, and living with an alcoholic, I realistically know that it would take a whole lot for me to be truly disappointed in my children. So why the hangup? I'm doing the best that I can and that is all anyone can ask. Again, this is where BHP says -- you put too much pressure on yourself.

Now I'm going to sound like an "old fogey." "Kids today don't know how good they have it, well in my day..." Sister said her day was long because she went to visit her young'ns and she said they were all just "whiney." Her children are my husband's age. J**** is 10 years younger than I am -- good for sex, but bad because of the generational gap. The difference that 10 years can make in the values of an individual - See this post from my sister's blog. She and I have suffered and endured and worked hard for what we have. I think today we try too hard to GIVE, GIVE our kids everything that we never had, but then we don't instill in them the appreciation of getting it. Remember the old TV commercial, "we don't make money, we EARN it." I think we need to go back to that motto with our kids and maybe there won't be that selfish generation of folks like J****.

All in all it has been an enlightening day.