My husband let our dog in before he left for a hockey game tonight, but didn’t notice she was leaving a trail of bloody paw prints behind her. By the time I noticed, she had tracked two-way paths through most of the house. I was quite annoyed, because tonight was supposed to be my time to “do what I wanted to do.” Instead of sewing, watching TV, or reading, I had to clean this mess out of our carpets and off the hardwood floors and tiles.
I was less than halfway done with this task when I realized that my thoughts had shifted. What started out as self-pity and resentment had moved to gratitude. I thought: Thank you God I can bend over and kneel down to clean this up…I’m so grateful I have enough cleaning products and paper towels in my house…At least our dog wasn’t hurt badly.
I was told very early on in my recovery that I could never have too much gratitude (or too much quiet time). I learned that if I’m feeling sorry for myself or am having negative thoughts, I should make a gratitude list and focus on all the things I already have in my life, rather than on the things I want or think I need. This has been helpful many, many times.
But this time was different. I’m not sure when or how it happened, but it seems that I had just moved effortlessly to gratitude. I wasn’t purposefully looking for things to be grateful for, or for things to remedy my negativity. I just felt truly grateful for having paper towels and the physical ability required to do the job at hand.
Once the gratitude ball started rolling, it just kept going. After I was done cleaning up, I thought how amazing it was that I had taken such good care of my dog. I had washed her foot (with soap!), bandaged it with a washcloth, and helped her find a place to lie down, all before I worried about the carpets.
I think the situation would have been very different if this incident had happened during the first several years that we had our dog, when she was “my husband’s dog” and I didn’t want her. I would have been completely resentful about her causing me extra work and even more resentful toward my husband for not being there to clean up after “his” dog. But I didn’t feel that way tonight, and I haven’t felt that way toward our dog in a very long time. Daily, mundane life situations like this show me where I’m growing in my recovery and how the promises are coming true in my life. I didn’t have to think about how or if I would take care of the dog and the floors.
When I first came into Program, the idea of anything coming intuitively, besides eating whatever was within reach, seemed impossible. Tonight I got to be a grownup and pull my weight by cleaning up a mess generated by our dog, just because I was there and available to do it. I also didn’t call my husband to complain about the mess or hit him with it the minute he walked in the door. For me, recovery means not expecting credit for being a responsible partner in my marriage. This also means that I try to focus more on all the ways that my husband is a great marriage partner.
I ended up spending only 45 minutes cleaning up the mess and decided to write about it for the connection. It’s actually taken me longer to write about the cleanup than to do it, so I still didn’t get to do the things I had planned for the evening. But I know from many, many years of experience, that sewing, TV, and reading never put my food addiction in remission, whereas gratitude and service definitely will, every time.