PERSONAL/SHARING AT THE ONLINE MEETING
October 1, 2005 (Note the date. This is the text of a share I posted at the Heart t’ Heart online phone meeting on this day.)
Hi. Colleen, here. Grateful to be here. Grateful for your friendship and fellowship in recovery. Grateful for the Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Grateful for the words of the prophets, ancient and modern. Excited for conference, today. Rejoicing in the ongoing and ever deepening degree of recovery (sanity and serenity) I’m blessed to find by studying the eternal truths represented in the 12 Steps. 24 years in 12 Step practice. 14 years in HtH. 8 years in Cache Valley, UT.
I’d like to share about the tool of writing.
I think I was in about 6th grade when I first felt an attraction to writing. I composed some little short story as an assignment. Then, during my teen years, I wrote a couple of books in the genres (styles and kinds of writing) I was reading at the time–animal stories (horses, mainly), poetry, and some science fiction. I did some journal writing, but nothing consistent or organized.
Still, by the time I was about 17, I was doing enough “personal life writing,” — writing about my personal life experiences—that I was already beginning to feel the blessing/therapeutic power of it. I know it helped keep me sane through the VERY rough years after my father’s death and during my mother’s alcoholism–the environment in which I was left to finish growing up.
In the earliest years of my first marriage, (1968-1970’s) I journaled very sporadically. I guess I was so “into” being a young, compulsive-obsessive mother and wife—just sure that if I did everything by the book (The Art of Homemaking and Fascinating Womanhood) everything would be perfect in my home.
I didn’t have time for writing. And funny thing—I didn’t have time for much personal praying or studying or personal anything, for that matter.
And so my teaching my children was built on a whole lot of borrowed light, twice removed from the Source–from the LIVING relationship with God where all revelation needs to begin and to be grounded. And so my children got a pretty weak dose of truth.
But, then, I stumbled, wandered, was led (as I staggered) into my original 12 Step meetings (in OA) and (in the meetings I attended) they required writing. So, I started to write every day, answering the “prompts” (thought provoking questions) about my eating behavior.
As I saw how much this helped me see the truth about my not healthy behavior with food, I began to feel the Spirit of Truth prompt me to turn to the Book of Mormon and start using personal writing to help me slow down and hear the wisdom in the scriptures.
HDDMFB was a direct result of those months and years of personal pondering through writing.
I can’t say enough about using the tool of writing for recovery and revelation–for connecting with the still, small, (meek and mild) counsel of the Savior.
Not all people feel the need (the call from God) to write or to keep a written record of their prayers and the Lord’s answers. I know, though, that my need to do so is a call from Him.
Thanks for letting me share . . .
P.S. (2020) — And now, another 15 years later, writing prayerfully has become a record of my own personal “counsel with the Lord” — two-way, consultation and counsel with my both my Father in Heaven and with His Son, Jesus Christ, received, believed, and recorded through the Gift of the Holy Spirit.
P. P. S. — A HtH online meeting is still available at this link:
http://heart-t-heart.olicentral.com/
Leave a Reply