Promises, True Love

Hi everybody. Before this gets to sound like a Christmas card letter I want to post a belated Mother’s Day acknowledgment of the mothers in our family.

I want to honor the women in my family. They have been the heart and the backbone of three generations of mending the wounds of alcoholism in themselves, their spouses and their children.

From great grandmother to grandmother to mothers they have mothered their families with a love that is tough though true, compassionate and nurturing. They have been the wind under our wings.
They have been instrumental in intervening on an old family tradition. We are blessed.

I am especially blessed with such a wife, who lived through nine years of my drinking and was instrumental in my making the first call. When asked how she put up with my behavior she would reply. “With Jim I have five children; I’m counting on the other four growing up.”

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What a week! Actually it started in Nashville the prior weekend with all the rain and flooding and ended in Nashville with grand-parents day at great grandson/ daughter’s school and mother’s day celebrations on this past weekend.

The bad news.
Nashville really got it. Disaster? Sounds a little heavy until you visit the city. Water rationing, church parking lots full of Red Cross Emergency Disaster Equipment and the homes and buildings destroyed. Perhaps the saddest was the home owners carting their water soaked ruined furnishings and personal things out to the curb for disposal.

The good news.
Each of the children’s households although touched in some way by all the water, nothing was serious.
The great grands had parts in the “Fifties Revue” musical put on by all the students K thru Fourth Grade for grand-parents day. It was hilarious.
With everyone intact we spent the rest of the weekend grateful for sobriety.
Thank you God, AA, Alanon and all the rest of you for it all.
What’s that answer when asked, how am I doing?
“Better than I deserve.”

Jim

Promises

They say the the next best thing to having either a boat or a pickup truck is to have a friend that has one. Our friends have both. Not just any boat, its a thirty-five (guess )footer decked out better than my house.

On the lake yesterday three of us couples laughed, hugged and grinned our way through just about a perfect afternoon. If we would have had enough room on deck we would have been doing a jig.

For the first time, since-can't-remember-when the sun was brilliant, the sky bright blue and cloudless. The temp was a Spring time perfect of sixty-one, the wind just strong enough to wash the last of winter off our faces. Yes!!!!!

God was His magnificent Self

We topped this off with a hearty meal of fried oysters and BBQ ribs afterward at the marina. . Talk about silly BBQ sauce dripping grins.

The real kicker was the friends, not any kind of friends but those special friends who have cried and laughed each other out of the pits of A&D hell.

All these ingredients together put a new meaning on "it doesn't get any better than this!"

Since it's Oscar time Ta-Da:
The afternoon was made possible through the grace of a Higher Power and a supporting cast of thousands in the Fellowship who have always been there for us.

Thank You

JF