Hi everyone, 

I'm not sure why I'm posting this, or if it will get me what I need in the end, but I have to share it and get it out of me.

In 1999, ten years sober, I walked into my first Al-Anon meeting... I was sober, but a mess.  Al-Anon helped restore me to sanity during this time.

I also started Miracless In Progress in 1999.  And between 1999-2004 we used dreamtools.com message board.  In 2004 dreamtools closed its doors on the internet, and with it went 5 years of our history as a group.  However, I was able to download and save a complete log of all my shares during that time frame before they took it off the net.

Well, here we are 13 years later, and coming up on 22 years of sobriety I decided to ventured back into dreamtools log and also looked at the shares I have done since here on activeboard.com.  I never really thought about it, but on these board is a pretty good record of my life experience.  The more I read the more I was convinced that with a life like mine, it is only by God's grace that I am sober and alive today.  To break it down to its simplest time frame...

1999 - Two herniated disk in my back keeps me from going to meetings because a 15 minute car ride cost me two days of extreme pain.  So, I came to the internet looking for support, and before my back surgery, I had created MIP as a forum for 12 step groups.  The first of course was AA and MIP just bloomed from there. Al-Anon group was started shortly thereafter.

2000 - Prior to the back surgery, while going through the post surgical examine, they discovered I had a two inch diameter mass in my left lung.  After 3 biopsies they still could not determine what it was, so decided to be safe and remove the upper lob of my left lung.  Breaking 5 ribs and cracking 3 to get to it.  They sent it to a 2 labs, and then a 3rd one.  I got a phone call 3 months later from the Health Dept.  It turned out that having smoked crack for 8 1/2 years using ashes as a filteration, the ash residue had accumulated on the flum in my lung and re cyrstalized!  So, I had been walking around with a second generation crack rock in my lung for the first 11 years of my recovery!  This surgery equalled more time I couldn't make any meetings in my community so I was leaning very heavy on MIP.

2001 - I blow out 4 inches of blood vessel in my brain.  90%  of those this happens to are dead before their body hits the floor.  Those that survive have alot of the symtoms of a sever stroke victim.  Lost motor skills, slurred speech, lost vision, diminished hearing, lost mental capacity, loss of use of limbs, ect...  Many of that 10%, so called survivors are left in a veggiative state, on life support systems.  For whatever reason, unless I tell someone of this experience, they would never know it by looking at me or talking to me.  I was not only allowed to survive it, I was allowed to undergo (by any medical standard) a complete and full recovery.   How did this happen, how did it blow out like that?  Well, the only reason that seems to make sense is after 20 years of inhaling and exhaling marajuana, and 8 1/2 years inhaling and exhaling crack... I had streched, expanded and contracted that blood vessel in my brain so much that the walls of it were literally thinned out, and ended up looking like a pizza cutter had perphrated it with tiny holes, until it blew all at one time.  During the next 18 months or so, I was pretty much dumber than a rock. DMV took possession of my drivers license, said I had too much brain damage and would never be able to drive again, Social Services put me on permanent disability saying I would never be able to work again.  Doctors were saying they didn't know if I would ever get use of my legs again... they were paralized, but not because anything was wrong with them but because my brain couldn't get the message to them to move.  So, here I was, sitting in front of my computer, trying to find something in life worth living for, and watching MIP grow, seeing people recover here, inspired me to keep trying to type a sentence that didn't look and sound like a second graders words.  I remember getting so upset at myself, shedding so many tears because I couldn't even express a sentence clearly without forgetting what I was saying!  Within 3- 4 months I was walking without any assistance, within a year I got my "permanently revoked" drivers license restored, and within 3 years I was taken off disability, able to work as well as any one else with no special needs and making more money than my disability case manager!  LOL

In 2003 my first little Maltese dog, James Dean, died of parvo.  I swore I'd never get another dog, it hurt too much when they go... today I have 3 Maltess, a Poodle and a Pomaranian.  So much for making solemn oaths! 

In 2004 I opened the first Miracles In Progress Aftercare Recovery Home, and also started my pressure washing and painting business.

In 2005 the second Recovery house was opened.  

In Sept, 2006 two of my aunts were brutally murdered, on same day, same location.  Beaten to death.  By a drug addict.  This happened in Florida, and he was eventually caught in Kanas.  During this time I sat waiting for information, I put up a reward that crime stoppers matched, and I sat here in front of my computer, holding on to MIP with all my might.

July 2007, I got married.  I was so excited I shared it all here, the proposal, the wedding video, ect.

August 2007, my oldest sister, and my favorite sibling was murdered by her husband of 27 years.  Because he found out she had went to see an attorney about a separation.  I had to take someone with me to texas not because I thought I would drink, but because I wanted to get myself put in jail to kill him!  I ended up doing alot of the clean up after the murder, so my niece and newphew wouldn't have to go into their childhood home and see it. Then I had to go with them and help them remove everything from the home they were raised in, grew up in, with their mother dead and their father going to prison for the rest of his life.  Again, I spent many nights here, on MIP, just holding on, wondering if my life was really suppose to be so painful, and if I was suppose to lose so many people by no fault of their own... suddenly, snuffed, just removed from my life in the blink of an eye.  

In 2008, the man who murdered my two aunts finally stood trial in Fort Myers Florida, which I went to for 6 weeks, he finally agreed to plead guilty, during the the beginning of the trial, and was sentenced to death.  My sisters husband, who had murdered her was also sentenced in 2008 after pleading guilty, he got 53 years, but at 59 years old, that is a life time sentence for him.  I also went to Virginia for that trial, which again, turned into a plea of guilty.

2009, I had to make the decision to shut down one of the recovery homes.  Just too much too fast, and it was having such a high rate of turn over, it was not able to support itself financially most the time.

2010, a really bad year.  I caught my relatively new wife (3 years) having an affair, and we separated as a result with a divorce on the horizon.  I was completely broken by this turn of events.  

2011, I discovered and fell in love with my girlfriend, life was looking better.  Not wanting to shop in the ding and dent dept of AA or Al-Anon for someone, I went to online dating sites...just trying to believe I could live again, that there was someone out there that could love and be loved, ect... and in a world of 100's of thousand of eligible woman... who do I end up meeting and felling in love with?  An alcoholic.  Of course I didn't know this going in the door, but it didn't take long to find out.  (Ya know how we are...) well, she entered recovery, stayed sober for a year, meetings, sponsor, step work, the works... and then recently relapsed.. for 6 days, and it damn near killed her... (you may have seen my recent video related to this).

Tomorrow she is coming out of a hospital she was sent to immediately after she was released from the first one.  I know what many think I should do, ... for both of us.. but that doesn't mean its at all what I want to do.  Tonight, I sit here and wonder, how can doing the supposedly right thing, feel so damn wrong?  And how can the wrong thing to do, feel so right?  Do I hold on, or let go? Neither of which seems to have a balanced equation.  In 21 years she has put together collectively approximately 17 years of sobriety.  But she is at ground zero again.  So, not a newcomer by the true standard, but not a continuous old timer by any standard.  What is the true meaning of "Progress, not perfection"?  Are initmate relationships in recovery, from a disease which we are powerless over, one of which we suffer the mental twist and mental blank spots really the thin line that we should draw on our love relationships on?  Would I want the one who loves me, who I love to bail out on me if I were to relapse?  yes, I have many 24 hours of sobriey but I also have the same stamp of alcoholism as any one else.... 

This past 13 years has been a journey to say the least.  All these seemingly big bad things keep happening, year after year, yet I hold on by celebrating the little good things.  There is undoubtably many more little good things, then big bad things.  If only I will take note of them when life seems to be crushing me.  Underneath it all, no matter how choppy the surface seems to get, I'm somehow able to retreat to a quiet place within where crisis and chaos, confusion and conflict can't reside any longer... and my mantra or saying that seems to help me get through all of this is a simple sentence from the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous;

"Nothing, absolutely nothing happens in God's world by mistake."

When I accept this piece of truth within, I don't have to figure it all out, or understand it all.  I merely have to accept it, and keep trying to move forward the best I can each day.  

I would love to be able to experience 2012 without any action packed adventure... I need a freakin' break!   Any one want to take my place for a while?  LMAO!

John