I want a box.

Being the child of a recovering Alcoholic Bipolar dad and then also being married to a recovering addict bipolar man makes for interesting blogging and I really should talk about the crazy men in my life more often.

Just to recap for newbies and for the oldies with bad memories:

Dad = recovering alcoholic, sober for 21 years this coming June, diagnosed bipolar for 17 years and VERY active in 12 step programs.

Husband = recovering addict, clean for 3 years on 12/11/08 and diagnosed bipolar for 2 years as of November.

I can recite the 12 steps better than you can! LOL!

Anyway, I was talking to my dad today who lives in TN and he was telling me that he was in Walmart buying gift bags for his friends to give them the "worry boxes" that he had made them.

Apparently, he has a tradition of creating handmade boxes for his fellow AA buddies every Christmas. The worry boxes are for you to write down your worries/fears/problems/dreams/needs, place them in the box and leave them for your Higher Power (in our case, this is God) to deal with and sort through.

Nice. Where's my worry box, dad? Always like my dad to treat AA more like his family than his own family, but I will not turn this into a temper tantrum over my dad's attention or lack there of. I've already given that story to a handful of therapists along the way - no need to rehash.

I told him how nice I thought that was and then mentioned that I had a particular problem that I've been worrying about for 15 months now. His reply was, "well boo, maybe you need to put that worry away and finally just walk away from it and stop trying to control how God handles it."

Having a 12 step parent must be equally as rewarding and maddening as having a psychotherapist parent...since every 12 stepper that I've ever met seems to moonlight as self taught therapists.

My dad is always game for deep thoughts and meaningful conversations in the middle of Walmart.

So my thoughts are this - I want my own dang worry box and we all know the worry that I want to put in there. I'm going to mull this over and maybe do my own worry box type deal (since I'm sure I ain't getting one for Christmas, right dad?) Oh, sorry, there's that neglected child temper tantrum again.