Last semester I started getting in the bad habit of skipping class again. If I didn't want to go, it wasn't really hard to talk myself out of going. January has been such a crazy month with getting prepared for my trip to Honduras, another new semester starting, with a full time internship and a bunch of other activities. While the trip to Honduras was not a slow-paced adventure, I believe it sparked something in me again. 

I was so fortunate that I didn't have much for traveller's issues while I was in Honduras. I guess my system just felt the need to wait until I got home to officially meltdown. Yikes, a very upset tummy amongst other things. I realize that not all my readers are nurses so I will spare you the gory details. I ended up missing classes on Monday. One, I felt like it was too cold to be travelling for class (-16). Second, I couldn't be without the bathroom for more than 8-10 minutes at a time. I truly missed classes for being ill. That's kind of a first for me in a long time. Usually the issue has been a lack of interest in going to feeling too tired to make the drive. 

Tuesday was my first day back at my internship. I certainly received a warm return which was nice. I had only been there for a few days before I was gone for my trip. There were lots of new faces which I think I am happy for since I am working on whether to self-disclose my recovery status or not. I have a fresh group to start with and at this point, I am not going to say much about it. I think I am going to try to play the other side of not disclosing to see how that feels. Last semester, I was very open about my recovery status and it felt pretty natural with the group members to do as much. I have a different set of clients now with different needs, so it is a work in progress.

For the past few days, it has not been a chore to get out of bed. Thank God! I think being on a  pretty regimented schedule in Honduras help me to get things back in line. My sleep patterns get to be so crazy sometimes. I will take a nap during the day and then I will be up half the night. Then I don't want to get up in the morning because I finally fell back asleep just a few hours before. That was the rut I had gotten myself into last semester and it was starting to go that way again until this trip. Besides getting my sleep regulated, I think being around people was very beneficial to me. I am around people quite a bit, but the context with these people and what we were doing together was so incredibly different than any other group travel I have experienced. I was truly blessed with so many good travel companions and an excellent roommate. Something about that just gave me a breath of new life this week. 

When I got down to Honduras, I was paying particular attention to my reaction to the situation of poverty around there. The city that we were staying in was quite nice, but obviously dangerous since our hotel has iron rod fencing on every window and an armed guard at the gate. This was a pretty standard affair down there. When we got to the village where the church was located, that is when the poverty and living conditions were more apparent. The first thing I noticed where all the dogs roaming the streets. They were malnourished, skinny and sickly. Not to make light of it, but it was like living in the ASPCA/Sarah McGaughlin commercials.  That suffering was nearly unbearable to me. I know that I was not the only one that felt that way in the group. I have to admit I really struggled with that. Then, when we started going around and talking with the town people about the Healthfair that same day, the living situations became more apparent. There is very limited clean water available to the people. There are several generations living together in a 2 or 3 room home. There was a serious lack of access to medical care and supplies. There was a man that we met whose blood pressure was sky high and he knew it. He was prescribed medication. Because there is so much corruption in the flow of medications there, he was unable to afford to get the medication. $4 a month is a lot when monthly income is $30. I watched him walk out of the center and knew that it was only a matter of time before he will die of a stroke. My wish for him is that the stroke takes him and he doesn't have to linger in a debilitated state for years and years. It's hard to watch another human, a fellow man, walk away and have an idea of his fate. it reminded me of a telephone call I made to a liver transplant inquiry a few months ago, "I am sorry, we are not going to be able to help your husband. Protocol dictates that he must have at least 6 months of sobriety before he is eligible to be CONSIDERED to be on the list." When I hung up with her, I knew, based on the medical records in my hand, that patient was only going to be alive for 2-3 more days. He was terminal and I delivered the final stamp of rejection for other options except death. 

These situations, ladies and gentleman, are some of the powerless moments in my life. I yearn and desire to do something about this situation. I want to smuggle blood pressure pills into Honduras, I want to protest the rules and regulation of transplant, I want to feed the animals. Yet, I cannot. No matter how much I want to help, I cannot. When I see my fellow alcoholic relapse and is working his or her way towards death, I can only say what I have to say. I cannot make someone get better. I cannot force a government to act for the people. I cannot lock a person in the basement and keep them sober. So, why did I not fall apart the way I had expected to? I mean, I was really expecting a serious mental breakdown at one point. I had spent the previous few months asking about this and what I should do WHEN it happened, not if. I contemplated if we were too busy to have the time to process that emotion. So I gave it a day or two to sink in after I got home. Nope, still no breakdown. Certainly, I feel sad and bad about these situations. However, I did what I could to help and the rest just has to be turned over to my Higher Power. "I turn my will and life over to God as I understood Him" This certainly means these situations as well. Instead of internalizing what I could not do about these situations, it has morphed itself into a revitalization in me of what I can so. I feel recommitted to drug and alcohol counseling. I was losing some of passion for the area, wondering if I was making myself a one dimensional human being who can only talk about recovery and nothing else. I talked about because of a passion and deep in my heart, I believe God has something really big for me in this field. I don't know what that is, but I just want to be able to sit patiently and wait for the call without freaking out every day.  I am not the most patient human being and being a former addict, one of our more fine personality traits is instant gratification. I think this has been part of my restlessness in the past 3 or so months. I want school to be done. I want the next big adventure to start.....I want I want I want....."I turn my will and life over to God....". Needs to be done.

What I took away from this trip, very deeply in my heart, was a desire to help closer to home. I can't say that I haven't seen some of these same conditions in the US. I see people everyday who can't afford medications or get access to medical care. I have made visits to shut ins in America. I have seen mother struggle to feed and clothe their children. I have seen children drop out of school to support their families. All of this is well and alive (unfortunately) in America as well. I feel empowered to make changes close to home. I have been looking at some different resources in the metro area that are doing outreach and focusing on helping the mentally ill or homeless. I feel like I can be of service. Mind you, I probably won't start volunteering just yet, but I have a stronger vision of what I want to see happen in the community around me. 

Hugs,
J

Be prepared folks, there is going to be a lot of talk in the upcoming blog entries about my experiences on my Mission trip to Honduras....

In late 2011, my aunt and uncle approached me to help them with a small website for a local non-profit their dear friends were setting up to help a mission church in Honduras. I would do anything for this aunt and uncle as they have shown time and time again that they will always be there for me, so in December I started working on their website. 

This past summer, after volunteering for a couple of years, they asked me if there was anything they could so to pay me since I had taken no money for the website. If there is anything from DBT I learned, it never hurts to ask - the worst answer is only a "no". So, I asked if I could get a discount on one of their upcoming mission trips since the cost was quite a bit for me. They upped it to one better and gave me a full scholarship to join them on this trip. 

Prior to this trip, I would have never imagined myself going to a third world country. My concern before  leaving was seeing such devastating poverty and not being able to do anything about it. I was worried about seeing the suffering and not being able to deal with it. I voiced these concerns during our orientation and was told just to process it as it came. Did that and I have to admit, the people there made me appreciate the human race. I saw little children caring for their younger siblings. They would come to the activity tables and always let the little ones go first. Or they would make something for the little ones and give it to them without the expectation of getting to have on of their own. They truly made the very best of a rather tragic situation. I was happy to be able to participate in the ways that I could. I know that their suffering is now going to end because of our trip. I do know, however, that the church in the neighboring city is intervening all the time. That makes my heart ache a little less.

This trip was an 11th step trip for me: "Sought through prayer and mediation to improve our conscious contact with God (as we understood Him) , praying only for the knowledge of His Will for us and the power to carry that out." I prayed more that week and did more Bible study than I have done since leaving High school. We prayed several times a day, before each meal, had daily devotions in the morning. While I attempt to do this at home with my 24 hour a day book and praying each night as I go to bed, there is something about praying in the midst of fellowship. I full heartedly believe that I saw God intervening several times a day in many different ways. There was a point in my recovery in which I felt the presence of my God in my life. It calmed and soothed me. I was going to be able to stay sober. That feeling was back throughout this trip as I watched others experience this feeling as prayers and concerns were turned over to a higher power. I had hoped that I would improve my conscious contact with God. I have to admit that it didn't feel as powerful as I thought it was going to be, but maybe it doesn't need to be. I like Big and Bold....my God seems to err on the side of subtle. 

Throughout our orientation process for this trip, we were advised that we, as a group, needed to maintain a level of flexibility. No matter how much we plan for anything, it all might change at the drop of a hat. I had hoped to be able to reach out to the community about addiction and maybe provide some education or even an AA meeting if that were possible (highly unlikely, but it never hurts to hope...). At the last minute the nurses who were going to do the blood pressures at the Heath Fair did not show and I was moved over to that station to help. After seeing the situation down there, I realized my time was much better spent doing that than trying to drum up some interest in AA or addiction education. So, I listened to God and he put me where he sees fit. It made me realize that maybe down the line, I would love to go on a medical mission trip and be able to reach out to communities in that fashion. Addiction is just a hard topic to talk about and there is such shame and hopelessness about it. If I were to consider something like this again, I would really have to think about how to reach out to my fellow addicts to get them to talk about the solutions available to them. 

Anyway, I will be posting much more over the next several weeks. I did not take any technology with me (I will be blogging about that for sure). I spend most of the time writing my thoughts by hand. I am looking forward to transferring this data over to my blog. Stay tuned....

J

Last week when I was at my internship, I got into a conversation with a few folks about my class in graduate school. No surprise to me, about 80% of my classmates are in recovery. Usually folks don't flock to addiction counseling unless they have had some pretty personal experiences with it, whether that be oneself or a close family member or friend. Way back when I went to an information session about the program, the Dean of the School made a couple of comments about how they were hoping to increase the number of students who were not in recovery. His basic message was those in recovery are too fragile and risk relapsing in such a high intensity career. I never cared much for this particular individual but I certainly was going to argue with that logic. In my own recovery, it was not advised for me to return to nursing for the exact same reason. 

***This blog is about my beliefs and spirituality and does engage in conversation about religion. Not everyone will agree with what I have to say.***

In a few days, I will be taking off to Honduras for a mission trip. I have been helping a non-profit with their website for the past few years. Since I have never been paid for helping, they offered me a scholarship to go on one of the mission trips they offer through their non-profit. I was ecstatic at the opportunity and have been preparing for this trip since September. This trip is sponsored through a local church and the work we will be doing will be done through a local Honduras sister church. 

I have been meeting with the travel group since October in order to bond with the group and also prepare for the trip ahead. We are a large group - 25 people total. I wouldn't want to be the leader of this group, only because it is going to be hard to watch over 25 people in a remote village in Honduras! 

I know that this experience will be a once in a lifetime opportunity. I have never been to a third world country before and I must admit that I am quite nervous about my reaction to being in such an impoverished area. I am an extremely sensitive person when it comes to certain things. The commercials with abused animals makes me not only tear up, they also give me nightmares about all the other bad things people could do to animals. I think of how the animals live in terror, etc. My heart is already racing when I am typing this description. Not to say that animals are less, but what happens when I see the horrible conditions people are living in and powerless to do anything about it. I have brought up several times in our orientation about my concerns of being able to deal with these feelings. Fortunately, it sounds like there is a lot of support around this and there are daily debriefing sessions in which to process these types of concerns.

Throughout these orientation sessions, it is very easy for me to see that ideologically I am not on the same page with the church about religious and political views. I tend to be on a much more liberal side of things. I have not said anything to this effect and I try to be very respectful since the church and I are clearly on the same page when it comes to helping others in need. Between this and my internship placement which is in a faith-based facility, I am really in a position of looking at my faith, religion and spirituality. When people ask me what religion I am, I usually state that " I grew up Catholic. I consider myself more spiritual than religious." As I am working in my internship and going through the orientation with this church, however, I am finding that many of my values and beliefs are still heavily based in the Catholic traditions. I believe in God, in mainly the traditional sense of most western religions. I speak with my God and ask for guidance for myself and grace for those in need. I do not believe that my God is vengeful or angry. I view my God as a leader and healer. I believe my God wants me to be humble and giving. My God wants me to help the poor and needy and be eternally grateful for the blessings in my life.  I do not celebrate in a standard church setting but I pray most days. I read the Bible and believe it to provide guidance and suggestions for healthy and happy living. I do not take each word of the Bible literally. I will not use passages from the Bible to discount or discredit anyone else or their religious beliefs.  I believe that penance is needed for absolution of sins. My 4th and 5th steps of recovery were just about as close as I have come to a confessional since the 6th
grade. But I believe the process to be the same. I sit before another person and God and talk about what has happened in my life - both good and bad. I continue to evaluate my life and undo the wrong where I can.  

Since this is a mission trip, I will be adhering to the religious beliefs of the church that is sponsoring the trip. At times I feel like I am lying since I do not believe in everything that is being said around me. I know there are some fundamental issues (more politically based than anything) that I do not agree with them on. I just hope when if those issues arise during this trip, I can keep my mouth shut and remember that others are allow to have their opinion no matter how much I disagree with them about it. I hope, in turn, they can respect the fact that I do not pray in the same manner. I celebrate my faith in a different way. I do not interpret the Bible in the same fashion but I seek the wisdom from the words with equal fervor. I don't know, for some reason, I feel some grumbling in my stomach about this. Maybe because it reminds me of when I was younger. My best friend growing up was part of the Baptist church. I used to go with her to all the kids activities and to the summer camps. I would hear them putting down other religions and in particular my Catholic upbringing. When I told others that I was Catholic, they would immediately try to "save me". I "needed to accept Jesus into my heart or I wouldn't be saved." I, personally, don't believe this to be true. I didn't then and I don't now. To me, it lacks humility to get in my face and tell me "to accept Jesus". If accepting Jesus helps a person on their spiritual journey, that is wonderful. I encourage that. I have found my faith and spirituality through other venues and I get a little testy when I am told I will be going to hell if I do not accept Jesus. My relationship with God is my personal relationship with God. I would ask to be respected for it. Whew, I can feel all these old childhood defensive feelings coming back. My Dad always told me "you are NOT to be converted. Period." I swear I still hear his voice after all these years still saying the same thing. Basically- be confident in your faith. I guess I am confident enough to want to defend myself against those telling me my path is wrong. 

Anyway. I think this year is going to be a deep spiritual journey for me as well. I know that I will be coming back from this trip with a whole new perspective on life and faith. I feel a deep need to help my fellow brothers and sister who are suffering. In the past few semesters, I have been meeting people who have literally lost everything, including a place to live. I have watched faith pull them back and the spirituality of the 12 steps keep them sober. I have felt God work in my own life. The farther I walked away from God, the more miserable my life became. I came back to God and every day from that day on has been better. I think this trip is going to be a time in which my beliefs will become easier to define. I will have a better sense of what my faith and religion mean to me. 

I know that religion and faith are hot-button topics. My intent is never to offend anyone. I do realize the power and passion faith can bring out of folks. I ask for your forgiveness if I have offended you. I also ask that you please respect my beliefs and faith as well.

Julie

A fellow sobriety blogger I read frequently wrote a bit about New Year's resolutions. "Resolution is just a word, it's about taking action." She is not a big fan of the word or the idea of it, really. Why on God's green earth would we want to set ourselves up for failure each and every year? If you must, pick a goal, a goal you are really ready to work on, and GO. 

I look at the calendar today - how can it be 01/11/2014 already? My last entry was on Christmas....but that was just a week or two ago, right? New Years slipped in and chaos ensued, now it is just 6 days before I am leaving for a mission trip to Honduras. I have known about this trip for 6 months now and it seemed so far away, until today....wow. Time is moving so quickly.

I started my final internship placement for my master's degree. I interviewed for this placement this summer. At the time, I was looking for a placement for the fall. I had set up a series of interviews. I loved the first place I interviewed at and took it the offer to intern on the spot. The second interview was the place I am currently at. I felt I should go to the interview and, again, an opportunity to intern was granted to me on the spot. So, here it is, already. Time is moving so quickly.

2014 is going to be an interesting year, I can tell. My classes will be done in April, January is going to slip by and February is short month. Welcome March, then April. Boom. Done. Then the unknown with the job and where I will be. My lease to my apartment will be up. While I would like to stay here, if I end up getting a job on the other side of town, I am moving. I just can't take a long commute. I have been terribly spoiled in the past 7-8 years. If I end up somewhere close, I will just hang here. This year was ushered in with a great deal of change and I don't think that is going to stop any time soon. I had an entry in my old blog called "I hate change". I proceeded to give the top ten reasons why I hate change and I don't want to go through it. I am happy to report that my feelings have changed at least a little in this arena. I don't care for change, don't get me wrong, I am just choosing to be a little less stubborn about it. I want to be more accepting of the change and not fight it so much. I am hopeful that change will not derail me as much this time around as it has in the past. 

On January 2nd, I felt the need to make some resolutions for myself. I didn't pick easy ones, I can tell you that. I want to lose some weight. I don't want to do any particular program or anything this time around. I have to make some life changes. I know that. Secondly, I want to finally quit smoking. I got to day 30 this summer and just started back up. I have significantly cut back to 2 cigarettes a day. It's time to move forward and just bury the hatchet with this one. I cannot smoke on the trip to Honduras so I hope to just not start back up when I come back. That will be the goal. I am re-enrolling in Quit Plan. As far as the weight loss, I haven't fully worked on this yet. However, I do have health insurance and I want to start exploring my options to get help. If Weight Watchers is the way to go, cool, if meeting with a nutritionist is the best way, super duper, if getting off my ass to work out is the answer....well...ummmm.....yeah, okay, let's work on it then. Like I said, not easy ones, but necessary ones. 

Outside of these, I have committed to something else very important. I need to slow down. I ended last semester with 3 As and 1 B, pretty lucky considering I didn't bother studying for one final and only put a marginal effort into the other one. I decided to do some praying and meditation about what was going on. About 98% of was because of me. Why would I try to start dating at that particular juncture? Full time grad student, working part time, trying to have a social life, etc. etc. I know I was feeling some loneliness. I also started freaking out that finding someone is never going to happen for me or it will happen too late to start a family. Alcoholics tend to be pretty impulsive people and this whole dating thing is a great example of my impulsive-type nature coming out. "I want it, and I WANT IT NOW..." Even when I was doing it, I knew it was a bad idea. I just wanted something and was starting to get jealous of everyone around me who has it. I learned some things, I really did, so it wasn't all for not. The timing could not have been worse, though. I used the dating to not deal with the fact that I was feeling depressed again. I just chalked those feelings up to wanting someone in my life. I also used it as a way to take of the focus from school. Last semester was tough. I had a hard time with 2 of my 4 classes. I was not thrilled with the content and one instructor frustrated me to no end. So, I wore myself out during the week trying to meet someone, only to not have enough energy to go to class. So, I didn't. By the end of the semester, there was no more dating, no boyfriend, a weak A going into a final, an attitude of "I don't care..." and work drama.