LIFE CHANGING!!!!!

[Jules1973]

It is day 45 for me today.

I just got back from a two week Mission Trip to Atlanta, Ga for our Church Youth Group. The kids varied in age from 14-18 (my son is 9, so other than being an advisor for this group, I have very little experience with teenagers)..........HOW FUN THEY ARE!!!!! Can you spell DRAMA.....there were 48 kids and 6 adults. The dram with the teens was only half of the battle.

We slept in a church on the gym floor, eating barely anything and living with, eating with, working with and praying with the homeless and poverty stricken in Atlanta. We ate what they ate (which was hardly anything) and we slept on the floor and hardly showered for two weeks........why would anyone sign up for this you might ask..........

One day I had to take my small group of kids to a recovery home to help in thier soup kitchen but before we started working in the kitchen they required us to sit through a two hour addiction/aloholism meeting/class. My kids were in SHOCK and I just cried the entire time.........I was just one drink away from what these people's lives had turned into, I was closer to these homeless people than I was to my teens that were sitting through this class and my teens were so unaware of how close I was to being one of these people that they had sat there and judged. These people had Illness, poverty, homelessness, loss of loved ones, loss of jobs.....all due to this disease, every single person in that recovery home was there BECAUSE OF THIS DISEASE THAT WE ARE FIGHTING EVERY SINGLE DAY!!! Some of them will not stay sober, some of them will go back out even with nothing to go "back" to...that is the tragedy of this.

I sat with motherless babies on the street, feeding them at 10:30 at night just to hand them back to a homeless caretaker, these were babies......anywhere from two months of age to two years of age.......sleeping on pavement because thier mom's had either died of this disease or were on some street corner selling themselves for dope. For two weeks all I could keep thinking was that I do not want to be homeless, I do not want my son to be motherless, I do not want my husband to lose everything he has worked for because of this disease and yet, I am ONE DRINK AND ONE DRUG AWAY FROM ALL OF THAT.

I know that today I HAVE A CHOICE. IT IS MY CHOICE..........to stay in recovery or go back into active alcoholism and addiction. We did not have that choice BEFORE we got sober but now......we have that choice......I thank God for that choice today.......even though it can be a burden at times, I believe it is a gift to have that choice because there are so many out there that wake up in the morning and pick the bottle up of booze or pills or needle or pipe or whatever it is that gets them "through the day". They do not have the choices that we have yet because they have not been given the gift of sobriety that we have been given.

FIGHT MOMMIES..........FIGHT with every fiber of your being.....do it for you, do it for your babies, do it for your families......pick up your weapons and fight! You are worth it!

Sorry - I had to do that brain dump......it has been an intense month.......extremely rewarding, but very intense....I NEED A VACATION Instead, I am going to a meeting tonight with a girlfriend (an hour long vacation