Asking For Guidance.

Recently,  I was seated at a meeting, with my legs crossed at the knee, and leaned over to grab my purse from under my chair. For one heart-stopping second, I felt myself going over - and because of my position, I'd have landed on my head. I'm not sure if I flung one arm backwards, and that changed my centre of gravity, but whatever the reason, I managed to regain my balance, and sat up, feeling slightly shaken, as one does after a close call of this type.

I learned a good lesson from that near-miss; when seated on a chair without arms, don't try to lean sideways with my legs crossed at the knee.

Today I learned another good lesson. Must be my week for them.

 I took the dogs out today, to my favourite park, which runs along the coastline. The path runs along the cliff beside the sea, for part of the time, and through tall trees and heavy bush the rest of the trail. It's peaceful, and secluded. We've seen eagles, herons, otters, and sea lions. on various visits.

I was walking along, enjoying the sunshine, and the brisk tangy sea air, while part of my mind was involved in thinking thinking thinking, getting ever more dispirited and irritated (and yes, "unreasonable without knowing it," some of that, too.) I decided to wrest my mind back to the moment, and recalled what my new sponsor had said to me earlier in the week: "Don't forget to pray for guidance."

I had forgotten. Completely. I was, in that moment, aware that I haven't been practising Step Eleven enough lately - "Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us, and the power to carry that out." Hence my disordered brain, and being right back at Step One.
Again.
And again and again and again.
Sheesh. I am a slow learner.

I began to pray for guidance, and received it in the first moment of asking. Clearly. No fuzziness, no vagueness, no way I could make that into something else, it was whacked down upon the table in my mind, with a certain ... emphasis.

When I got home, I called a friend I've made since moving here - I love talking program to her, because she makes me laugh so hard while she is roasting my toes at the fire.

True to form, a few minutes into our conversation, and she zeroed in on my discontent, asking sardonic questions which had me doubled over laughing. We are a lot alike, this friend and I - that similarity lets us read each other easily - and she won't hesitate to speak her mind.  She mentioned something that I really liked, which she had heard at a meeting:

"When I'm angry, I'm being self-absorbed."

I like that. I can't say I've ever looked at it like that, but I can already tell I'm going to find it helpful, just by the way it resonated with me, when she said it.