God knows what I want - someday... a person I’ll spend my life with, whom I can be intimate with without reservation. I’ve never been a cheater - I’m a serial monogamist, rather. At least, until now; now, I’m single, I’m celibate, and I’m starting to finally have some respect for myself now that I have an actual “ideal” man to watch out for, with deal-breakers, standards, expectations, preferences, and questions to ask. My sister said - after I shared my list with her - that that man doesn’t exist. That I’m asking too much. “Okay, then I’ll die single,” I said.
But I, on the other hand, truly have faith that God has someone out there for me. I truly believe it’s most likely, quite possibly, no one I actually know now. I could be wrong, but that’s the perspective I’m choosing to have.
This has provided me with an immense letting go. I finally have the ability, as step 12 puts it, to “practice these principles in all our affairs.” Rather than being resentful, selfish, dishonest and afraid, I feel patience, kindness, tolerance, and love. Not the kind of “love” that isn’t love - the kind of “love” that wants and grabs and is actually fearful, resentful, dishonest, and selfish, no - the kind of love of 1 Corinthians 13 - not towards anyone in particular, although I practice it with everyone in my life - but mostly towards myself, from God... which is ultimately what opens the channel for me to love others, the way St Francis attributedly described.
It is by dying to the self that one awakens. I finally understand what it means. I finally feel so connected to God that I don’t need anything from anyone. I see all of us as God’s children.
I’m still working on showing the most perfect, selfless Godly love to my daughter, and I will be working on that with my son when he comes home on August 1. I’m putting my children first in a way that I never have, ever.
I guess I shouldn’t say that I don’t need anything from anyone. I do need to be able to help people. Or at least I need to try. Whether they are helped by my attempts isn’t the point, and it doesn’t affect me negatively if not, because I’ll have done what I have to do to be right with God. I’ll take the action = die to self.
It’s liberating to no longer want or need anything from you. I’ve been rocketed into the fourth dimension of existence, as the big book says. I’m not afraid of you, and nothing you say or do can really affect me. It can for a brief moment - it always can for a moment. I’m still a reactionary, emotional human. But I’m conscious. Steps 10 & 11 conscious. So nothing can bother me for long.
It’s just amazing.
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