On Being Saved

I woke today remembering that as a teenager who was at least a little bit miserable, I would imagine being rescued. Yes, I'd dream that Pete Lafon and his friends would make me a happy girl, a star. They would court me and teach me how to be popular, with all the social skills. It was my imagined version of the knight on a white horse. My prince would come.

I remembered this, this morning, because I find myself, right now, in need of a rescue to structure my day, to move me out of my depression, my nonperformance, my nonfunctioning. I thought of something like going to the hospital, as I did once when I wasn't functioning, where my day was planned, leaving me with no responsibility. I just ate and slept and went to group or doctor or crafts. That is what I needed just then.

But it seems, I've always thought that way. You just come save me for awhile and then I'll be right and strong again and can take over to live my life with "vim and vigor." Ha! That's been my "hard times" mantra. Wait awhile. No responsibility for awhile. Take care of me. Some day my prince will come.

Once, awhile ago in Taos, Linley told me that I seemed to be operating on a false premise. She didn't know what but it should be reexamined because it was doing me no good.

After some days of thinking about it, I figured that my false premise was that I did not need be successful or responsible, because someone would always save me, my grandfather or John Spencer or (seldom) my father, someone. And that, because I had always had someone who would. And so my prince in some guise or other would come.

Good to remember these things.

And then, again, in Alanon, I learned that some things I could not do by myself, that I had to surrender to a higher power, a god who would take care of me, help me with character defects, take care of my children's pain, get me through the day. I could "let go and let God."

I would think, that's what the Christians think when they depend on Jesus to save them, but don't they mean saving them from sin and eternal damnation or do they mean saving them from everything.

I have a belief in god now (and I can capitalize it, God) even though, I have absolutely no idea who or what God is. I can pray that I "will know God's will for me and have the power to carry that out."

Is that the same old thing? Refusing to be responsible for myself and asking God to be responsible for me? Someone will always take care of me?

In my life, so far, it seems that someone always has. So that even my successes, are they god's successes? I have a "blessings book" that I write in most nights at bedtime listing five blessings at a time. I thank god in my prayers for the millions and millions of blessings I receive. I remember that in the LDS church, I was taught that if I paid my tithing, my one-tenth, I would have unnumbered blessings. And, then, I remember thinking one day, as I was walking to Central Junior High School, that I have unnumbered blessings whether I pay my tithing or not.

So when I'm depressed or I seem to be wasting my days, I don't have to wish to go to a place where someone will take care of me, because I'm already in a place where someone will take care of me. And it is all right that I am being cared for. Maybe it's god or God. Maybe it's my inner, better self, but somehow, some way I'm already being saved.