12 Promises

I love the Twelve Promises. :) I have seen some of them fulfilled in small ways and look forward to the continued blessings of recovery. 

Forgiveness

For the majority of my life I held resentment towards my Aunt and Uncle for the emotional abuse I felt I received from them in my childhood. My mother died in a car accident when I was 11, at which point my aunt and uncle had become my and my sister's full-time guardians, although they had already had part-time guardianship of us for a few years before that due to my mother's severe bipolar disorder.

I'll keep the story short and simple, I feel loved by my aunt and uncle now, and a lot of healing has occurred. Much of my healing had to do with forgiveness.

I'm finding forgiveness to be a major spiritual gift of late as well in dealing with a hurtful situation with my former roommate who offered to foster my cat for me until I could find an apartment that would allow pets. Edgar the cat has been in my life for ten years now. Understandably my ex-roommate also has a bond with him, but I was shocked and made fearful by her statement that she felt entitled to keep him, and if not, that she thought she should keep him until I pay back a debt to her that I truthfully do owe (though her account of the total debt is quite inflated). The debt is something I had planned to start paying as soon as I got a full-time job that would allow me to do so, which I do have now (and that is also the reason I am finally in an apartment that allows pets). My ex-roommate seemed to feel I had shown no intentions so far of paying back the loan, and truthfully she is right--I should have made more effort to at least start paying her back a small amount here and there--and I admitted this to her. I offered multiple times to make written payment arrangements, but she insists as of the writing of this blog entry that she needs to keep Edgar until the loan is completely paid off.

In reading fourth step material online (the current step I'm on) I found some advice that when we are feeling resentful for someone it is very healing that we prayer *for* the other person. We pray that this person have all the joy and happiness that we want for ourselves. I've been doing a lot of prayer lately, not really sure how to react to my friend's evasive (she will only talk to me about this through email she says, and even then her response is 2-7 days in coming) and hurtful behavior.

I had made prayer for her once when I first read this advice online, and it helped somewhat, but I think I was still too stunned by the whole thing to really mean those kindnesses that I was prayerfully directing at her.

In the past two weeks I have felt almost non-stop the stress, worry, anger and resentment about this issue eating me from the inside out. I had just regained abstinence and my inability to handle my emotions and deal effectively with my resentments lead me to overeat.

Yesterday I decided to pray for my friend again. This time I felt almost a rosy, holy feeling, I felt aligned with the words I was speaking. I truly found compassion for her, was able to find forgiveness and let go of this pain and stress. I do not know what the future holds regarding my cat. She has been unresponsive for the past 4 days. I have not stopped wanting to have my Edgar back, but I have decided that I deserve more than to be living in fear, anger, paranoia, and resentment regarding the situation. I will continue to give this situation to God to the best of my ability, and seek God's will for a resolution.