M. Nole's Dream List

At the end of my therapy group this week, one member advised a member struggling with codependency to write a Dream List if she's tempted to e-mail or text the toxic man with whom she's involved.

I decided to write out my own list, and I thought it would be hard to come up with a neat and tidy list of even 10 dreams. I started writing, and within 3 minutes, I had gone past the number 30. I will be adding to this, but here is the beginning of M. Nole's offical Dream list.

1. Score well on the LSAT and be accepted into law school
2. Become a very good, ethical lawyer who helps people
3. Write a nonfiction Christian book
4. Get off of all pain medicine and be completely into AA again
5. Be active in Al-Anon again
6. Write a Christian novel
7. Have a popular spiritual blog
8. Devote myself to special Catholic prayers and especially to the Virgin Mary
9. Evolve into a saint
10. Make a pilgrimage to Lourdes or Rome
11. Be someone who does kind, spontaneous things for others
12. Make a charitable gift to honor someone special every month
13. Write a fiction novel
14. Create Catholic folk art
15. Learn to make rosaries
16. Join a good Protestant Bible study class
17. Go to Daily Mass
18. Have true contrition for all of my sins
19. Have my daughters when they become adults) feel like I was the best mother in the world
20. Be involved in a ministry (presently working for a ministry does not count)
21. Belong to a book club
22. Subscribe to an audio book service and listen to new books every month
23. Become a Facebook addict and play with my BFFs
24. Open a Christian art store in Midtown
25. Become a positive thinker
26. Become a humanitarian
27. Give generously to my church
28. Use my gift for spiritual writing to change lives, or even better, to save a life or a soul
29. Expand my for-profit resume business
30. Expand my resume ministry (free resumes to single parents and low-income clients)
31. Be on the board of a charity
32. Make enough money for my children to go to college wherever they can be accepted
33. Look like a million bucks well into my 40s and 50s
34. Lead others to the Catholic Church or to a belief in Jesus Christ
35. Infuse hope into other people with my ability to write fearlessly about my emotional and spiritual struggles
36. Resume my service work of intercessory prayer and pray for someone else's needs every single day
37. Realize when I'm 65 years old that I have lived a full, full life
38. Have every one of my friends to feel that I am the most faithful, supportive friend they have - because it's true
39. Make enough money to get manicures
40. Live in a small but adorable house
41. Take more creative writing classes
42. Write a screenplay for a movie about John Calipari

Silenced

I am not still not able to write on paper without triggering or aggravating pain in my neck, and although I can easily type, I try to save my computer-posture strength for my job. I have only been to one 12 step meeting in the past several weeks because of how hard it is to sit in chairs in a group for an hour.

So the ways in which I expressed my spiritual thoughts - journaling, blogging, talking at meetings - are missing from my life most of the time now.

I talk to God, to the saints. I feel like my echo bounces back to me. It always did, but hearing my own voice at meetings and writing about God helped to make our relationship real to me.

This part of the journey seems to be a place where I depend on God more heavily than I ever have but without the spiritual helps I've relied on for years. I hate it even though I believe that I'll learn something that will be valuable to someone else eventually. Even writing that hurt. I vacillate between feeling shock, anger and self-pity over my condition and feeling embarrassment that I think about myself like I have a "serious" ailment.

My neck stiffened up like an iron plate as I typed, as if to back up everything I've been trying to express. I have no voice right now, not without pain.

Not without pain.

The Money Prayers

I prayed a few weeks ago to give God control of my family’s finances and to let him help me make wiser decisions about spending money. I remembered a time when I tracked every dollar that we spent and had the good feeling of knowing I was being financially responsible, and a few weeks ago I believed that God could help me to be that way again.

The bad financial news I received last week hit me hard and triggered a lot of fear about the future. As I mentioned in my post this weekend, I prayed, but I did not try to figure out how to feel better. I surrendered to my fear and took it to God over and over again. By the time the weekend was over, I was not feeling as frightened as I had been on Friday night.

This morning I woke up feeling very scared about money, though, and when I opened up to my Al-Anon sponsor about it on the phone, it nearly turned into a full-blown panic attack. She was asking me questions about how I was going to deal with the problem long term, and I knew I couldn’t handle the discussion…at least not while I was at my job. I told her that all I feel like I can really do right now is try to have the courage to look at my expenses every day, cut unnecessary spending in a way that doesn’t feel severe (like stop eating out at restaurants but hold off on getting rid of cable) and pray for God to help me make good decisions. My sponsor said that it sounds like I’m going to strive for better financial health one day at a time (I could hug her for putting it that way).

So here are my ideas for ways to walk with God for financial success in the short term.

1. Pray each day to be a good steward of the gifts God has given me and for God’s will to be done for our family financially.

2. Pray to St. Germaine Cousin (beautiful saint who lived a life of impoverishment and abuse) and ask for her intercession so that God may guide my spending and work his will for my family’s financial future.

3. Pray each day for the courage to look at our expenses (and then go look at them).

4. Congratulate myself and thank God for each small success or behavior change.

And now, instead of just writing all of this in my blog, I’m off to practice it. If you walk with God in your financial life, please leave a comment and share what works for you.