Once again the coincidences have started. I was in a rut the past three days and suddenly I am being hugged by my HP. 

I keep seeing license plate #'s that mean something to me.  Deep in prayer, I look over to my right and the license plate read "HP"

At a thrift store, I turn over this kitchen plaque and I was thinking in my head "this is going to mean something to me"  (I guess Im rather spiritual at times and I am constantly praying.)  I turn it over and it is a little girl surrounded by flowers and a little, black cat sitting next to her.  It read "bloom where you're planted."  This is a quote that I just heard two months ago, maybe, and it really means alot to me.  Before al-anon I was always thinking of a geographic cure.  If I just moved away, somewhere beautiful; the caribbean, perhaps, then the whole world would be bright for me, I thought. Not the case, I have learned, and this quote was one of the major sayings that helped me with this growth. I am happy on my little street, in the little town I went to college in.  I don't worry what people think, that I did not travel the world like I said I would any longer.  Frankly, its none of my business what they think.. and its none of theirs what I do with my life.  Coincidental; that this plaque read right to me when I had a feeling it would.  It is hanging right by my table of books, by my bed and  I love it.

I believe in a loving HP, a forgiving HP.  A HP who loved me when I was drunk at the bar, and when I was lost and scared, when I was hurtful to others, when I was happy and joyous. Just as a mother who holds her newborn child, and still loves him, thirty years passed, behind bars for murder.  My HP is that loving.  I believe in a nearness and farness from my HP rather than a heaven and hell. This works for me.  These ways of belief keep me smiling. I feel at ease to be me, I feel free to feel, and grow, and make mistakes, and give up hope, and then gain it again. I feel I am allowed to say "I just can't believe that" and its okay. I feel this absolute freedom from the shame, the guilt, and the fear that I had growing up and all my life that I had to believe a certain way or be a certain person. I am free.  I truly believe when one is free, one is most capable to fill one's heart with God, what they believe to be that God.  Humbly, I can accept my mistakes, I can be human. I can be free of the expectations of perfection morally or religiously. In fact, I have not been to church in six months.  I used to go to church because I felt I had to. It was not a place to feel God, it did not bring me that closeness to my HP that it may bring to others... it was an obligation to me, it was that hour I would bear it and get through it to please God and others; gritting my teeth silently when I heard things that just would urk me.  Now, I can take a walk, I can read, I can drive, I can dance, I can pet my kitties, I can sit on my porch, I can pray anywhere and feel this closeness and this safety.  I am a living miracle when it comes to this faith stuff. I had none and now I am bursting.. with faith.