Cunning, Baffling, Powerful

A few things strike me here.  Happiness shouldn't be an accident.   It isn't even a set of circumstances or a result good fortune. Happiness is a result of working a process; choosing to view the world without expectations, and respond to it with a simple decision to do the right thing; to do God's will. When I get bogged down in my thoughts, in my desires, in my expectations of situations or of others, I loose my happiness. Last time around, I lost focus on everything it took to remain emotionally sober.  I fell back into the mental habits of a broken person, though I didn't fall back into drinking.  When my anger finally consumed me, I chose to drink to "show them". So here I am, working on my sobriety, knowing that it must always come first in order to be happy in any situation. Monday and Tuesday were difficult days.  I found myself staring my recent past square in the face trying to change it.  but what's done and gone is done and gone.  I...

This is harder than it sounds.  Admitting you are powerless over any area of your life is like admitting defeat. UNTIL you alter your perspective and realize that God really does intervene when you want him to.  My God is all powerful, all loving, and all forgiving.  He wants to remove from my life all the things that harm me, even those things that originate within me. The more I get out and help others, the more I get out of my own head and just enjoy the moment for what it is.  Its a simple, but often difficult task of letting go.  I am learning to let go of expectations; of control; of even simple desires.  My goal is to simple respond to every situation with love, kindness, compassion, wisdom, and a bit of fun. Lord, guide me today.  Let my words come from Your Word.  Let my actions be in accordance with Your will.  Fill me with the Holy Spirit that I might be a blessing to others, speaking life to everyone I interact with today.

Well clearly I'm not mature in AA yet because I never imagined myself conforming to an AA way of life.  I never even considered the possibility of being a "member".  This isn't a club or a team.  It is an organization founded on helping people.  I understand what today's reflection is saying, but I just can't envision a day where I'm attending AA conventions or things like that. I want to put in my full effort to all 12 steps, but I hadn't really examined step 12 enough to to internalize what it means.  I suppose when I'm happy, joyous, and free, I'll have more to give to others who are struggling, but for right now, my laser-like focus is on getting past the steps that I quit on last time. If everyone stayed where I'm at, there would be no sponsors, no growth, no help for others.  These are all things to consider. But for now, I am just trying to discern God's will for me TODAY.

This one isn't quite so troublesome to me.  It has been well over 10 years since I assumed I had all the answers.  Now, I haven't always relied on God's will, and I'm still struggling daily to rely on His will over mine, but I am quite comfortable knowing that developing my relationship with God and Christ is the way to a more joyful and manageable life. I gave my life to Christ fully in August of 2013.  That was a pivotal point in my life.  I had just separated from my second wife and was watching as we hurtled toward divorce.  Drinking was the only escape I could find.  Slowly, Christ began restoring me to sanity and lessening my compulsion to drink. I found AA in Jun of 2014 and decided to quit for good, or so I thought. Here I am almost 4 months since my last drink and I honestly don't feel like I'm starting over.  I feel like I'm starting for the first time.  I'm doing everything my sponsor says to do, and I'm being honest with everyon...

Ouch.  The daily reflection for June 23rd hits so close to home it genuinely hurts.  Trust was always a problem for me. When you grow up and learn that being honest about your mistakes gets you beaten as bad as lying, you learn that being sneaky is the smart way to go. If you're going to get a beatdown either way, and least being sneaky gives you a shot of avoiding some pain. That is all well and good when you are a child and have no choices over your environment, but I've been a grown ass man for some time, so I have to think, act, and TRUST as a man.  There is no room for  being sneaky in my life now.  And just because I was, doesn't mean that everyone else is. Sometimes people omit things because they simply forgot.  Sometimes because it is completely inconsequential to them.  Just because I omitted things to avoid pain, physical or emotional, doesn't mean that that's everyone's motive for doing so. This illustrates another point.   Don'...

Chapter 1 is titled Bill's Story.  He is an important character in the history of AA,but this blog isn't a book report, so I'll move along to what I took away from this chapter. I've read Chapter 1 many times as I've started and stopped, then restarted the 12 steps.  A boy comes into manhood ready to take on the world.  He is cocky, arrogant, full of unfounded pride, and doesn't even yet know he is wearing blinders.  He can't fathom a world greater than his limited vision.  He can't fathom a world of problems greater than his limited strength. Then life hits and he is crushed. Life punches him in the face till the blinders fall off.   He has to admit what a narrow-sighted fool he has been and find a better path; OR hold onto his ego, and keep trying to do it on his own and rationalize away all the repeated mistakes and repeated failures. There is pain in the process of dissolving your ego; pain in accepting you alone are not enough; pain in ac...

This blog is so I can keep track of my walk through the 12 steps of recovery, as outlined in the Alcoholics Anonymous Big Book.  I "swore off" drinking about 3 years ago and in that time I've had about 3 drinking events, with many months of sobriety in between. Each event was a little more unmanageable than the previous. Not only have I been "quitting" drinking for the last 3 years, I've quit on the 12 steps once before.  I got to step 4 and stopped.  I was able to stay  sober for 19 months, but then I just imploded.  In 4 hours of drinking, I managed to push away someone I cared about more deeply than I knew I was capable of, and crushed our plans of a future with the family I always wanted. I never drank every day, never drank at work, never got a DUI or arrested, never "lost it all" in the financial sense, so for many years I assumed I just liked to let loose on weekends; assumed I didn't have a problem. But when you look at step one, ad...