Journey In Principles - Page 4 of 17 - Dedicated to confronting life's distress. Pursuing and promoting internal liberation.

How I found purpose through Regret – part 1

The kids’ regretted that we had to return home.

And so did I. My family and I just came back from a beautiful trip for our 11th anniversary. My wife always wanted a beach wedding. The best I could do when we first got married was a park overlooking a small local lake.

So, for our momentous 10th Anniversary, I surprised her with a full-on beach wedding/vow renewal. I found a magnificent beach house, directly overlooking the Gulf from the master bedroom.

I had never really spent any real-time on the beach.

I’m more of a cold mountain type. And I never really saw myself as a fan of the beach. I always thought that it would be too hot and crowded for my liking. But our Anniversary is right at the beginning of March. And I found my joy of the place through the cool ocean breeze and the live sound of the crashing waves upon the sand.

Though my first time in Port Aransas was a bit hectic, with family and friends filling up the house and the time, and, of course, the activities of organizing and participating in a formal vowel renewal, falling to sleep at night, to the fresh ocean air and soothing waves, with my wife snuggled up to me, quickly became my “Happy Place.”

The awesome truth about Change, pain is optional.

"There is no pain in Change, there is only pain in the resistance to change." Click To Tweet

Whenever I think of change, I think of my dad. The first time I ever heard this saying was in 1988. I had been out of my house for a little while. I had about three years, clean and sober. At the time, I was only 18. I was homeless, and I ended up having to move in with my dad for the first time.

Struggle comes from trying to change others instead of self.

When the decision came for me to move in with him. One of the things that he said was, “there is no pain in change. There’s only pain in the resistance to change.” And it has stuck with me ever since.

I can recall a time when I had hurt a young lady that I had been dating. I had never been much on talking about my past. My focus has always been on moving forward. I’m not afraid of my past, that’s just me. But there was something from my past, that she found out about, that hurt her. And I remember saying to someone, with tears in my eyes, “I know that there is no pain in change, but damn it, I want to resist this change.” And I meant it.

PaulDavid

Spiritual Freedom comes from Unconditional Surrender.

None of these Principles become Spiritual until they become Unconditional.

On a spiritual level, I could not surrender completely until that Surrender or “waving of the white flag” became unconditional. I had to get to where I was not looking for anything else in return. And I can say, “I give, I surrender. Period.” The way I learned to surrender this way was through the 12 Steps and 12 Traditions of recovery—specifically, the 2nd Step and Tradition.

I was not about to surrender anything until “I came to believe” what I was surrendering too.

When you read the 12 Steps of recovery, you can see that Step Two states that we “came to believe in a power greater than ourselves that ‘could’ restore us to sanity.” Doesn’t say “would” it doesn’t say “will.” It clearly says, “could.” The reason for this is because we have to do something. We have to do our part. What we have to do is learn to surrender.

PaulDavid