Are You There God? It’s Me, Michele.

Approaching our 20th wedding anniversary this July, I am dealing with some challenges in my marriage. I am still grieving the loss of my mother, a long and largely heartbreaking process, that ended with her death a little over a year ago. I’m trying to make myself do what I know how to do (and I’ve done a thousand times before but it’s never easy): to lose the excess weight I gained back since last June’s figure competition. 

And with my sights on a not-too-distant milestone of 30 years in this corporate IT career I’ve had a love/hate relationship with since 1998, I’m trying to figure out how I could switch careers before/by then, or maybe just get out, take some small job to bridge the time till Medicare kicks in at 65. (Because isn’t 30 years of doing anything quite enough?!?)

I need God (the God of my understanding) for all of this. 

Specifically, I need to avail myself of that resource, by talking to Him/Her/Them/It and asking for Help. According to one of my favorite authors, Anne Lamott, “Help” is one of the 3 main ways we pray to God, the others being “Thanks” and  “Wow” as I wrote a bit about when I first discovered her book by that name, years ago.

And I sort of feel all 3 at once, about my sobriety. Last month I celebrated 8 years and I feel pretty solid with that as the foundation of my life. I just need to figure out what I want the next chapter to look like. OR I can talk to God and let that power greater than myself show me the way.

But I can also talk to and lean on my friends, which I just did a whole lot of during my most recent Seattle visit. We also took a Saturday afternoon and went to see the movie “based on the Judy Blume book loved by millions” - here’s the Trailer if you haven’t seen it yet. 

This is not the book cover I recall from my childhood of course, but an updated version - just picked up from the library today, a day after I got back into town and I can’t wait to reread it!

So sort of ironic and beautiful to watch this movie with these women I’ve known since we were children, here on the other end of our fertility spectrum.

Before traveling for this trip I quickly caught up on all things Judy Blume, watching the fabulous documentary on Amazon Prime and reading her most recent book - 

NOT the greatest timing to read this book right before flying, because it centers on 3 horrific plane crashes that happened in her hometown of Elizabeth, NJ back in the 1950s. Fortunately though, I’m a pretty seasoned traveler and it didn’t cause me any extra air-travel anxiety. 

Besides, I know (now) that God’s got me, and ultimately all things will be well. That sense of calm and acceptance that I sometimes achieve, has got to be one of the very greatest gifts of recovery. And I will never be done being amazed and grateful, for all of it.