There is more that has just come to mind that i would like to share with you. I took what my sponsor suggested to heart and practiced remembering to pray twice a day regardless of how I felt about it. My first experience with feeling and seeing that there was in fact a HP began to happen in nature. I was fairly new back in recovery, I rode the street car to and from the meeting hall every morning for the first year and a half. When coming home i would get off at sunset Blvd. and walk along the tree line the last few blocks to my home. One day, not unlike any other but something amazing happened! For the first time I could hear the birds singing in the trees and see the crystal blue sky with clouds that looked like soft cotton balls floating across the sky. I began looking, I mean really looking at each tree. Most were straight and tall with there perfect straight trunks ans full branches reaching up to the sky, then i stopped! there was a tree that was all twisted and discolored with very sparse branches straining up to reach the sky. It took my breath away! It was the most amazingly beautiful thing I had ever seen! I began to cry then I felt my arms reaching up to the sky and I heard myself screaming THANK YOU! you see,,,,,that tree was me! at that point i realized that I had had a veil over my eyes and my ears and it was gone, and you see, it was my first encounter with what was to become my loving HP telling and showing me how beautiful I was in all my imperfections. Faith and hope was born in me that day and has grown very rich and full over the years so love! please do not stress over what you believe right now! I will ask you to do what my sponsor asked me to do and that is to just keep an open mind, say please in the morning and thank you at night and your own personal concept of a power greater that yourself will come!! ?
