CoDA Weekly Reading

Winds of Resentment

Wind whipping violently matches my mood tonight. Even a cloud floating by looks like an angry silhouette of a woman. My dog Redbow happily running around trees without a care in the world. Why can't I be more like Redbow? In time, I too can be happy, joyous and free. As I pray to my higher power the force of screaming winds whip and thrash leaves about in an ominous symphony of power. All this is what I am feeling inside me right now. It's my resentments. I pray for these emotions to be carried away with the raging winds and never again return but I know this is delusional thinking. As I stand beneath the stars so bright on a crescent moonlit evening I begin to self-check myself as I hear the wind knock my store-bought plastic birdhouse to a 45 degree-angle, barely hanging onto the pole by guide wires that I attached because it wasn't stable enough to stand up on its own. Now I view this birdhouse as a metaphor for how, instead of doing the work which is uncomfortable for me, I use guide wires (so to speak) in an attempt to keep me from falling and that's like me expecting other people to be a support for me without my having to do anything. Why should my problems become the problems of others? Sooner or later the emotional winds are going to knock me to the ground and then I have nobody to blame but myself. Yet I feel let down or disappointed that this or that person isn't fulfilling my needs when it is impossible for any other person to do. If I fail to own my own stuff and expect others to give me a leg up all the time then being tossed about by the winds is inevitable. The resentments build and left unchecked they can block the flow of energy to my higher power and I will soon go crashing to the ground. My Dad made a birdhouse for me years ago and he built it to look like the house he lived in before his death. Over the years It has housed bird families, many tree frogs and just this year honey bees built their hive in there. The only way to get to the honey was to destroy the birdhouse and dismantle it. The only way to save and relocate the bees and harvest the honey was to bring in a professional beekeeper. Now I am relating to this dismantled birdhouse and having to rely on someone else to help me put it back together. My friend knowing the importance of doing the work myself would only give me instructions, so the act of putting the birdhouse together again was up to me and my Higher Power. Only this way would it be stable enough to endure the blustery winds without a dependence on the wires. And the same applies to me. For in order for me to do the same, I must overcome my resentments and keep the channel to my Higher Power clear and open to guidance from the ultimate source of universal energy.

Well, I'm going to blow. Thank you for reading my story.

Pamela W. January 5th, 2020