BLOG: Monday Musings by Teresa McBean

One famous phrase that sprung out of A.A. is “one day at at time”. This is incredibly difficult advice to accept. When my friend got outed for her adulterous ways, she wanted to hurry up and get on with it. She grew impatient with her husband’s “unwillingness to forgive and forget since he’s a Christian” - her words exactly. I was more amazed that he stayed quiet and didn’t retort, “Well, I’m … [Read more...]

In any work recovery journey there will be moments when we feel like we must overcome our emotions and push forward. These are moments which require courage and they are a necessary part of the transformation process. But we can mess this up terribly if we push aside our feelings simply because we are afraid they will lead us astray. Our feelings count. They aren’t the ONLY thing that counts, … [Read more...]

I’m not a big fan of the word “sin” - maybe it is my weak spiritual stomach or perhaps it is because I have seen so many instances when someone is willing to use the word as a weapon but utterly incapable of applying it personally. Somewhere along the line I was encouraged to think of sin as “living independently of God” and this simple way of seeing has helped me stomach the “s” word. One of the … [Read more...]

When I was a young girl visiting my grandmother my friends took me to the local pool. While there I managed to step on a big shard of glass. Once I got back to my grandmother’s she was unwilling to look at it seeing as how she had a weak stomach. I knew that glass needed to come out, but being her granddaughter, I too suffer from that same weak stomach. No way was I able to pull it out. So I … [Read more...]

A couple posts ago I mentioned a friend who had trouble staying faithful to her husband. She just COULDN’T stop the cheating in spite of a variety of factors that should have, at a minimum, scared her straight. On a more profound level, it seemed to both of us that this high-risk behavior wasn’t “her”. I’m not sure who the “her” is that serial infidelity would be a fit for but this seemed like a … [Read more...]

In Brené Brown’s introduction to her book Rising Strong she says: “I define wholehearted living as engaging in our lives from a place of worthiness. It means cultivating the courage, compassion, and connection to wake up in the morning and think, No matter what gets done and how much is left undone, I am enough. It’s going to bed at night thinking, Yes, I am imperfect and vulnerable and … [Read more...]

“How could God do this to ME?” asks my friend who just couldn’t stop cheating on her husband. This was a question unworthy of a response because neither she nor I actually thought God was making her have affairs. However, when she continued on to say that she did not believe that people could fundamentally change - well, now, that’s a subject I can get on a soapbox about! One benefit of being … [Read more...]

Most of us want to craft a life with less conflict and more congeniality. And yet we often find ourselves stuck in old patterns of dischord in spite of our desires to live a more fulfilling and loving life. Day three of a new year and some of us have already given up on even daring to expect change after years of collapsed good intentions and sincere resolutions. This is our norm. If you … [Read more...]

Brene Brown writes the most amazing books. In her book Rising Strong, she provides the guiding principles that she has in her own organization. I’ll get to those in a second but here’s the main point for us to consider today: she and her organization are operating by guiding principles. This is uncommon but necessary for belonging. There is this tendency to get sentimental about belonging. … [Read more...]

“I knew there was something about you that I liked.” This sentence saved Sister Molly Monahan from an overwhelming shame attack early in her recovery from alcohol addiction. Sister Monahan, fresh out of rehab, was serving as a consultant and visiting a college campus in Virginia. One evening she slipped away from her duties to attend an AA meeting and discovered to her utter dismay that a law … [Read more...]