Four Things

Four things a man must learn to do

If he would make his record true:

To think without confusion clearly;

To love his fellow men sincerely;

To act from honest motives purely;

To trust in God and heaven securely.

by Henry van Dyke

This poem is so simple. Yet simple is what keeps me going right now. The program teaches me to keep things simple too. For now I can only get through each day one at a time and do the next right thing. Trust God, clean house and stay close to my program, my goal for each day. I have no idea what the future holds and i have fears and doubts but I know that strength and trust in my Higher Power will get me through all this and in the end, whatever happens will be just the way it is suppose to be.

Peace

You are reading from the book The Language of Letting Go

Peace

Anxiety is often our first reaction to conflict, problems, or even our own fears. In those moments, detaching and getting peaceful may seem disloyal or apathetic. We think: If I really care, I'll worry; if this is really important to me, I must stay upset. We convince ourselves that outcomes will be positively affected by the amount of time we spend worrying.

Our best problem-solving resource is peace. Solutions arise easily and naturally out of a peaceful state. Often, fear and anxiety block solutions. Anxiety gives power to the problem, not the solution. It does not help to harbor turmoil. It does not help.Peace is available if we choose it. In spite of chaos and unsolved problems around us, all is well. Things will work out. We can surround ourselves with the resources of the Universe: water, earth, a sunset, a walk, a prayer, a friend. We can relax and let ourselves feel peace.

Today, I will let go of my need to stay in turmoil. I will cultivate peace and trust that timely solutions and goodness will arise naturally and harmoniously out of the wellspring of peace. I will consciously let go and let God.

This reading really struck me today. I am having a bit of anxiety about the future and trying hard to not let this anxiety, "fear," be the driving force for me right now. A friend told me today.....just relax and let it be and in time the answer will be crystal clear. Then I came home and read this reading and it all made sense. It is in the quiet and peace that God's will and direction will come. When I get caught up in my fear and worry and anxiety I am making it impossible for me to hear God's voice.

4 Questions

Now that the drama is over and I'm feeling so much better I had a talk with my bestest friend today. She first asked me about the past two weeks and the things that led me to the slippery slope I found myself on. I listed off a few.....Next she asked me four questions about each situation that I thought I would share. These can become a very valuable tool in the future if I use these four questions. Here's how it goes.....

We took each situation and pulled out the idea or thought behind it that was driving me. Then applied the four questions:

1) Is the thought true?

2) Can I absolutely know it is true?

3) How do I react when I believe the thought?

4) Who would I be without the thought?

With each and everyone I found that I could not say that the thought was absolutely true, there was always an element of doubt. In every situation I found that I was hanging onto a fear and trying to control the situation. In every situation I found that had I have the question and turned it over to God, relying on faith rather than being driven by fear, I could have enjoyed life the past two weeks instead of being filled with worry. The worry was wasted energy spent on trying to control that which i had no control over. Spelled out like this it looked so simple.....don't know why sometimes it is so hard for me to get the simple things in life.

Thanks so much for all the help Mable...you are the bestest!

The Right Path

Today's Thought

You are reading from the book Twenty Four Hours a Day Hardcover (24 Hours).

A.A. Thought for the Day

We come now to A.A. fellowship. It is partly group therapy. It is partly spiritual fellowship. But it is even more. It is based on a common illness, a common failure, a common problem. It goes deep down into our personal lives and our personal needs. It requires a full opening up to each other of our inmost thoughts and most secret problems. All barriers between us are swept aside. They have to be. Then we try to help each other get well. The A.A. fellowship is based on a sincere desire to help each other get well. The A.A. fellowship is based on a sincere desire to help the other person. In A.A. we can be sure of sympathy, understanding and real help. These things make the A.A. fellowship the best that we know. Do I fully appreciate the depth of the A.A. fellowship?

Meditation for the Day

The Higher Power can guide us to the right decisions if we pray about them. We can believe that many details of our lives are planned by God and planned with a wealth of forgiving love for the mistakes we have made. We can pray today to be shown the right way. We can choose the good, and when we choose it, we can feel that the whole power of the universe is behind us. We can achieve a real harmony with God's purpose for our lives.

Prayer for the Day

I pray that I may choose aright today. I pray that I may be shown the right way to live today.

I am experiencing growing pains right now. Lots of change is happening, more is being revealed, and the pains of moving toward healing are with me. It is difficult to see the path right now. I am relying on prayer and the guidance of a Higher Power and my fellowship right now. I have that knot in my stomach and that feeling that I want to run. They are not overwhelming me however. I have a sense of calm despite all that. I have a feeling this time that hasn't been there much in the past. That feeling is a sense of strength, of knowing that it will be okay and the path will appear eventually.....in the meantime I will have plenty of help along the way. It is strange to be here, as it is very unfamiliar, yet it is a relief to be able to make a choice to rely on my faith instead of letting fear be my guide.

The Key of Faith

Today's Thought

You are reading from the book Twenty Four Hours a Day Hardcover (24 Hours).

A.A. Thought for the Day

Unless we have the key of faith to unlock the meaning of life, we are lost. We do not choose faith because it is one way for us, but because it is the only way. Many have failed and will fail. For we cannot live victoriously without faith; we are at sea without a rudder or an anchor, drifting on the sea of life. Wayfarers without a home. Our souls are restless until they find rest in God. Without faith, our lives are a meaningless succession of unrelated happenings, without rhyme or reason. Have I come to rest in faith?

Meditation for the Day

This vast universe around us, including this wonderful earth on which we live, was once perhaps only a thought in the mind of God. The nearer the astronomers and the physicists get to the ultimate composition of all things, the nearer the universe approaches a mathematical formula, which is thought. The universe may be the thought of the Great Thinker. We must try to think God's thoughts after Him. We must try to get guidance from the Divine Mind as to what His intention is for the world and what part we can have in carrying out that intention.

Prayer for the Day

I pray that I may not worry over the limitations of my human mind. I pray that I may live as though my mind were a reflection of the Divine Mind.

This reading was ine I needed to hear today. With faith all things are possible.....or at least that is what I keep getting told anyway. I am praying for the willingness to rely on that faith right now. It's easy to say I'm relying on faith when things are great, but it gets harder when there are bumps in the road. My mind is full of limitations and the secret is to get beyind my mind. My mind is what landed my butt in a seat at Alcoholics Anonymous and it is my Higher Power that freed me from that hell. So I am reading that little note I wrote myself that hangs on my mirror..."Rex, this is God, I don't need your help today, but thanks for asking." His will today...not mine.....arrrrg.

The Twelve Rewards of Sobriety

THE TWELVE REWARDS OF SOBRIETY

o Faith instead of despair.
o Courage instead of fear.
o Hope instead of desperation.
o Peace of mind instead of confusion.
o Real friendships instead of loneliness.
o Self-respect instead of self-contempt.
o Self-confidence instead of helplessness.
o A clean conscious instead of a sense of guilt.
o The respect of others instead of their pity and contempt.
o A clean pattern of living instead of a hopeless existence.
o The love and understanding of our families instead of their doubts and fears.
o The freedom of a happy life instead of the bondage of an alcoholic obsession.

The rewards of sobriety are unimaginable. I never would have believed life could be this good. One of my favorites is the true friendships. I have met some incredible people, all because I made a decision to put the drink down.

Steps Six and Seven

The several objects of Steps six and seven are:

1. To become honest and humble. To willingly seek God's help without resevation.
2. To perfect ourselves in the practice of unselfish prayer.
3. To be aware of our defective character traits.
4. To desire their removal.
5. To surrender completely all defects of character.
6. To believe God can remove them.
7. To ask Him to take them all away.

The results we expect from pursuit of these objects are:

1. A reconciliation to God's way of doing business. We become "fed up" with our way and with further practice of trying to run the show ourselves.
2. A willingness to work out a plan for suppression f self-centeredness through faith and a consious contact with God.
3. To experience disastisfaction as a result of our alcoholic practices and to seek a spiritual inspiration that will bring us an inner sense of pece and security.
4. Increased faith, clean hearts and minds, ability to offer unselfish prayer.
5. A spiritual courage that is fearless in its outlook on life; a desire to make restittion to those our drinking has harmed.
6. A desire to quit bluffing and honestly give God a chance to remove from our lives all that stands in the way of our usefulness to Him and t others. True humility.
7. Elimination of our defective character traits, acquistion of peace of mind, and sobriety.

Taken from The Little Red Book For Women

Now is a good time for me to concentrate on giving the old habits to God and concentrating on new ones. I herniated my disc again this afternoon. The pain is intense. My head of course is sceaming at me...morphine, fentonal, vicadine, lortab...all ot it. I had that brief moment when the Doctor asked which one I wanted....but in the end honesty won out....I said all of it, but Doc the problem is I'm a drug addict and can't have any of it. I am full of fear as this is the very way I relapsed just over a year ago.. I have 20more days to go and I can say I have made it a year clean and sober. I must rely on God and new habits to get through this. Pain killers are not an option for me....they are poison for me....so I must quite the voices and learn new ways of getting through this. One good thing in all this is I'l get a few days off from work and can catch up on some reading and some much needed sleep.

Dreams

Today's thought is:

How will you dream if you don't sleep? How will you hear yourself?--Michael Dorris

Sleep is a wonderful gift in our lives. For eight hours, we rest our bodies. We let the thoughts, feelings, and events of our lives tumble through our sleeping minds as they sort themselves through our dreams.

But dreams are not always happy. Some of us are afraid to sleep. Our dreams scare us. We may dream about using again or about bad things that happened. But we shouldn't let our dreams fool us. They are not reality. They are just feelings, thoughts, and memories working themselves out.

In early recovery, there are a lot of things to sort out.
We create the reality of our lives by the choices we make when we are awake: how much we trust in our Higher Power, how we care of ourselves, how we treat others, how we work our program.

Prayer for the Day
Higher Power, help me listen to the messages of my dreams. Help me understand that my dreams will get better as my life gets better.

Today's Action
I will listen to my dreams. What is my mind working out in my sleep? If I remember my dreams, I will talk about them with my wide-awake friends.

You are reading from the book:

God Grant Me... by Anonymous

This was a good read for me. For so long I have battled with dreams. There have been times when I got to the point of not sleeping almost all week because I didn't want dreams to come. I have learned to take the dreams as they come. They don't frighten me much anymore. Instead, I now see them as guides, indicators that there is new work to be done, new lessons to learn. When things are right the dreams are pleasant. When things are not balanced in my life my dreams often are the first thing that tells me to take a look in a differrent direction. Thanks to Mable for sharing this reading with me, as well as, the lessons of my dreams.

12 Steps I Took

12 STEPS I TOOK

I took one step, began to moan,
I can't do this thing on my own.

I took two steps, began to pray,
restore me, God, today.

I took three steps, gave up my will,
maybe God will love me still.

I took the fourth, I looked inside,
There's nothing more that I would hide.

And with the fifth, I said out loud,
I've done some wrong, and I'm not proud.

I took six steps, and was prepared,
to loose my defects, I was scared.

Now I'm at seven take them away,
God, for this I pray.

And on the eighth, my list was long,
amends to make for all the wrong.

I took nine steps, put down my pride,
forgiveness asked,

I did not hide,Ten steps I take, each day I pray.
Making amends along the way.

And with the eleven I pray to know each day
His will, which way to go.

I took twelve steps, I'm like a bird
to others now, I spread the word.

The Grand Canyon

I've seen You calm the waters raging
in the rivers of my mind
Your spirit blows a breeze into my soul
And I've felt the fire that warms the heart
Knowing that it comes from You
Then I've let it turn as cold as a stone

Sometimes I feel like I'm as close as your shadow and
Sometimes I feel like I'm looking up
at You from the bottom of the
Grand Canyon,
so small and so far
From the Grand Canyon, with a hole in my heart
And I'm a long way from where I know I need to be
When there's a Grand Canyon between You and me

I've had the faith that gave me strength
for moving any mountainside
I've felt the solid ground beneath my feet
But I've had the bread of idleness while
drinking from a well of doubt
And it shakes the core of all I believe

Sometimes I feel like I'm as close as your shadow and
Sometimes I feel like I'm looking up
at you from the bottom of the
When there's a Grand Canyon between You and me

Sometimes I feel like I'm as close as your shadow and
Sometimes I feel like I'm looking up
at you from the bottom of the
When there's a Grand,
Grand Canyon between You and me
by Susan Ashton

This song so describes the way my relationship with my Higher Power seems to be. There are times when I feel my Higher power in and all around me, she comes to me in the people I interact with everyday. During those times I feel that no challenge is too great for me to endure. Yet, there are times when I struggle to find even a shimmer of my Higher Power. I feel isolated and alone during those times when she eludes me. I often wonder if my Higher Power isn't really there all the time and I am the one who does not recognize her presence..........

Eagles Fly

Sunday morning 9 a.m.
I saw fire in the sky
I felt my heart pound in my chest
I heard an eagle cry

Now I'm alive
I can breathe the air Feel the wind,
smell the earth in the air
I watch an eagle rise above the trees
Project myself into what he sees

Hey- Take me away
Come on and fly me away
Take me up so high
Where eagles fly

I often dream I sail through the sky
I've always wished I could fly
The simple life of a bird on the wing Oh Lord,
I could sing Take me away
Come on fly me away
Lift me up so high
Where eagles fly Oh yeah-

I'm alive,
I breathe the air
Wash the earth from my face
I catch a glimpse of another dream
I turn,
I look but there's no trace

Take me away
Come on,
fly me away I wanna fly away
Pick me up so high
Where eagles fly Oh yeah-

Eagles fly, oh,
take me away Eagles fly, oh,
take me away Come on,
let's fly away where eagles fly Come on,
fly away where eagles fly

A very special person sent me this song by Sammy Hagar. I was struggling through the darkness and losing my will to keep on trudging. She said she wanted me to keep going because someday she wanted me to be free to fly where Eagles fly. I am grateful for that reminder that faith will get me through the darkness and into the light. Someday with the help of a power greater than myself I will soar like an eagle. Today I took a leap of faith. I was fearful and felt like getting up and running the whole time I was there. Yet I drew on the faith that has been passed to me. I was once told by a wise person, that when you come to the edge of all you know, it's okay to jump off and have faith that you will either be given wings with which to fly, or ground will appear beneath you on which to stand. I took a deep breath and I stepped off the edge of all that I know. The earth didn't open up and swallow me, lightening didn't strike, I got through it and everything was okay......I was given wings, just like I was promised. Thank you so much for this gift of hope. You were right, but you are always right......just takes me a while to hear it sometimes.

Surgery Day

Today is the day Justin has surgery. It is a tough day today. Justin has show us all what a fighter he really is. Despite his weakend condition he has played everygame so far this season, and his batting average thus far show's just how strong he is. I have every confidence that he will fly through this with great success just as he has so far. He has made it through numerous rounds of chemo without complaint. His only complaint thus far has been that he can't finish out the season before surgery. I am so grateful to have Justin in my life because he has shown my what it means to have strength and courage to face all that life has to offer. He has shown me how to live life on life's terms. Most of all he has shown me what it means to face FEAR, because he has Faced Everything And id Recovering. His determination to go to any lengths necessary will carry him across the finish line. My thoughts and prayers are with you buddy. I will be there when you awaken from surgery and give us that smile that says, we will beat this, don't worry. Thanks so much for all the gifts you have given me. I Love ya, Justin