Striving in Sobriety

Last night as I watched my infant daughter sleeping a glad, holy feeling filled me all the way. She is such a pretty child, a littlle latina. I am so much more able to appreciate the wonder of her when she is quiet and asleep, I can just stand and watch her for a long while and let my joy swell as I carefully study every lovely detail of this precious gift, this sweet child that is mine to keep and raise.Watching her, marveling over her is not so easy to do when things are tense and hectic in the broad day when I have s much to do, so much work, things to fix and make happen just to live, using my busy hands to move things in this world and the child is awake and wanting something, crying for my capable hands to lift and nurture But now she sleeps peaceably and I have the luxury of beholding the glory of a baby i brought into the world through love and pain. I pay attention to the cathedral music of her even rhythymic breathing. The easy, faint smile that adornsher cherubic face makes me smile. It was a spiritual, sacred experience watching my child sleep. I feel like I am floating above the hard world, removed form all that wearies and weighs down.e. As I watch her I wonder if babies dream, and if they do what do they dream of, what do thier immaculate imaginations create in the clear, clean space of thier infant minds. Their new minds doused in white light that is creative energy, uncluttered by the refuse and broken things accumulated during life in this world. I remember a radical truth that God revealed to me years ago whenb I watched my first child as an innocent infant asleep and dreaming, smiling and cooing at her bright infant dreams. What God illustrated to me then and what I came to understand was that the mind of a newborn infant, not yet exposed to the corrupted illusions of this world is a pristine, nirvanic place shrouded in the brightest light. The infant mind is the mind of christ, an unlimited field of potential, the garden of eden with no wiley serpent in sight. How after living in this world do I get back to that clean space, how to re enter eden, ascend to heaven, attain a christike mind, recaim innocence. It is now time for me to go to sleep. I lay down and wait for the naroleptic feeling, th calming drowse. My mind is busy. The room is dimly lit. I leave the light on because I am too afraid to sleep in the dark, unnerved by ill nightmares that have disturbed my rest for the past few nights. I try to think about God before falling asleep hoping that instead of having a nightmare I will have a fantastic dream of christ carrying me off as his bride. Or just to hear god speaking to me in dream mode. But my mind drifts off the topic of God becauseat first I am thanking him from delivering me from dark times, but then I begin to recall just how dark those times were. I am back there in that dark night, walking along that long narrow highway bordered by louisiana swamps, the humid night black and dull around me.


bad and horrific things were for me in my addiction, and not just the addiction that I was in but the toxic pathetic relationships, the self-defeating, self-sabotaging patterns, the pathology of a mind infected with life-long lies, virus of disbeliefv