Getting grounded after a trip is crucial to making the trip worthwhile. . .

I just spent six days on the west coast, working and seeing college friends.  I arrived home at midnight on Monday night.  It’s Thursday now and I’m finally feeling “normal.”  As I have aged I realize that any travel is a bit more tiring, particularly when one’s body has to adjust for the change in time.  One wouldn’t think a two hour difference would matter much, but it does to this body of mine.

My time in San Diego moderating and presenting at the Hazelden Womens’ Healing Conference, an event I have been participating in with great enthusiasm for a dozen years; and doing a book signing at The Latest Things Bookstore in Costa Mesa, where I got to chat with recovering customers, all made for a wonderful six days.   Kimberly Funk and her mother own the store.  I recommend a visit.  It’s not only darling but has everything!

Now it’s back to the book I’m currently writing, further preparation for the workshops that are on the horizon, and attention to my blog and all of you.  What a lucky woman I am.  I surely didn’t expect this to become my life that fateful day in 1977 when I sat, overcome with fear and anxiety, in my one bedroom apartment in Minneapolis.  Sober a year but not comfortably connected to a God of my understanding, even though I had been a regular at meetings, made the idea of suicide very attractive once again.  It gave me peace, in fact.  And then came a knock at the door that changed my life completely.

That’s a story for another time but suffice it to say that God gets our attention if we open the door even a crack.  I opened that door to “shoo” away the person who knocked but she came in any way and “my” world shifted.  It has never shifted back to the perspective I had nurtured before, thank goodness.  This experience has helped me help others on occasion too.  Many of us contemplate suicide, it seems.  But few attempt it.  Had she not knocked, I would have done so that time but God had another plan.  My gratitude is overflowing.

I have you in my life as a result of her knock and God’s presence.  Are you paying attention to the people God might be sending your way today?  They are every where.  Honor them with a nod and a smile.  Their purpose is part of your purpose too.