April 2, 2020 - Readings in Recovery: Today's Gift from Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation

Thursday, April 2, 2020

Today’s Gift from Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation is:

Wheresoever you go, go with all your heart. — Confucius

Our program asks us “to be fearless and thorough from the very start.” We are warned that some of us will hold on to old ideas and that the result will be nil unless “we let go absolutely.” Recovery asks that we put our heart into our programs. How? By working the Steps. By calling group members to see how they’re doing or to let them know how we’re doing. By meeting with our sponsors so they can get to know us and guide us in working the Steps.

This is just what we need. We must not sit on the sidelines of the program. We should not settle for the illusion of commitment that we got by drinking and drugging. We need to surrender, to let go absolutely and enjoy the ride.

Prayer for the Day

Higher Power, I give my heart and soul to you to do with as you want. Place me where I can do the most good.

I pray for willingness to let go absolutely.

Today’s Action

For today I will work at stepping into the day with all my heart. I will work at having the attitude and actions of letting go absolutely.

Hazelden Foundation

April 2, 2020 - Readings in Recovery: Step by Step

Step by Step
Thursday, April 2, 2020

Today, I will not carry the pattern of compulsive and habitual behavior I perfected in my drinking days to other areas of my life. As a drinking alcoholic, I established the pattern of feeling and taking everything to an unhealthy and inappropriate extreme - all or nothing. That pattern is not necessarily in remission simply because my active alcoholism is. To shift the habitual and compulsive nature of my drinking to work, play, service or any other activity can be almost as self-defeating. And it is through the Steps of character rehabilitation that I need to tame unhealthy behavioral patterns. Today, I will seek a balance between giving everything, taking all and retain what I need for myself by seeking the guidance of my Higher Power and reciting the Program's mottoes: "A Day at a Time," "First Things First," "Keep It Simple" and "Easy Does It." And our common journey continues. Step by step. - Chris M., 2020

April 2, 2020 - Readings in Recovery: Twenty-Four Hours a Day

Twenty-Four Hours a Day
Thursday, April 2, 2020

AA Thought for the Day
Since I've been in AA, have I made a start towards becoming more loving to my family and friends? Do I visit my parents? Am I more appreciative of my spouse than I was before? Am I grateful to my family for having put up with me? Have I found real understanding with my children? Do I feel that the friends I've found in AA are real friends? Do I believe that they are always ready to help me and do I want to help them if I can?

Do I really care now about other people?

Meditation for the Day
Not what you do so much as what you are, that is the miracle-working power. You can be a force for good, with the help of God. God is here to help you and to bless you, here to company with you. You can be a worker with God. Changed by God's grace, you shed one garment of the spirit for a better one. In time, you throw that one aside for yet a finer one. And so from character to character, you are gradually transformed.

Prayer for the Day
I pray that I may accept every challenge. I pray that each acceptance of a challenge may make me grow into a better person.

Hazelden Foundation

April 2, 2020 - Readings in Recovery: A Day at a Time

A Day at a Time
Thursday, April 2, 2020

Reflection for the Day
What causes slips? What happens to a person who apparently seems to understand and live the way of The Program, yet decides to go out again? What can I do to keep this from happening to me? Is there any consistency among those who slip, any common denominators that seem to apply? We can each draw our own conclusions, but we learn in The Program that certain inactions will all but guarantee an eventual slip.

When a person who has slipped is fortunate enough to return to The Program, do I listen carefully to what he or she says about the slip?

Today I Pray
May my Higher Power - if I listen to Him - show me if I am setting myself up to get high again. May I glean from the experiences of others that the reasons for such a lapse of resolve or such an accident will most often stem from what I have not done rather than from what I have done. May I "keep coming back" to meetings.

Today I Will Remember
Keep coming back.

Hazelden Foundation

April 2, 2020 - Readings in Recovery: The Eye Opener

The Eye Opener
Thursday, April 2, 2020

Reduced to its simplest form, the only true worship is to love God, and the only way to demonstrate this love is to serve your fellow man.

We in AA show the extent of our moral growth in the extent of our service to others. It is the only true spiritual experience. The flash of light that some of us experience could be only the first ray of intelligence that finally penetrated the alcoholic fog and dazzled our minds.

The true spiritual experience is evidenced by a passion to do those things which delight the spirit. By their works shall ye know them.

Hazelden Foundation

April 2, 2020 - Good morning and let's hear it for this awesomely fabulous and fantastic Thursday

April 1, 2020 - Readings in Recovery: Today's Gift from Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation

Wednesday, April 1, 2020

Today’s Gift from Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation is:

Talk doesn’t cook rice. — Chinese Saying

Some of us are crazy about self-help books, inspirational tapes, and personal improvement seminars. We’ll buy or sign up for anything, whatever the price, if it promises revolutionary insights or a foolproof new system. We want relief in a day and deliverance in a weekend. And we want the expert of the hour to do it for us.

There’s nothing wrong with wishing, of course. But there’s a lot wrong with kidding ourselves as a way of life. Think about it: If progress could be bought, we wouldn’t need to be meditating. If personal transformation resulted from collecting new ideas, we’d have been transformed long ago. Exploring is great. And looking for all the inspiration and wisdom we can find is necessary for growth. But changing is doing. All the plans and schemes for improvement put together won’t change a thing if we don’t put the principles into daily practice. Even catchy words are just words.

Today, I will take the best plan I have and put it into action. Today, I will say less and do more.

Hazelden Foundation

April 1, 2020 - Readings in Recovery: Step by Step

Step by Step
Wednesday, April 1, 2020

Today: Faith in the Program and my Higher Power and offering to someone else what I have found in recovery. Today, I will relinquish all that is selfish and impedes or blocks my progress, my growth, and extend a hand of service to someone in need. Borrowing from Mother Teresa: If I grieve, I will find someone who needs consoling; if I am hungry, I will find someone to feed; if I am thirsty, I will quench another's thirst; and, if I am cold, I will give warmth to someone else. If someone seeking recovery from active alcoholism calls on me, I will not turn away and instead offer what I have - hope, promise and rebirth in a Program that has been passed on to me through grace. Today, I will accept that I can keep what I have only by sharing it with someone else. And our common journey continues. Step by step. - Chris M., 2020

April 1, 2020 - Readings in Recovery: Twenty-Four Hours a Day

Twenty-Four Hours a Day
Wednesday, April 1, 2020

AA Thought for the Day
Since I've been in AA, have I made a start towards becoming more honest? Do I no longer have to lie to my husband or wife? Do I try to have meals on time, and do I try to earn what I make at work? Am I trying to be honest? Have I faced myself as I really am and have I admitted to myself that I'm no good by myself, but have to rely on God to help me do the right thing?

Am I beginning to find out what it means to be alive and to face the world honestly and without fear?

Meditation for the Day
God is all around us. His spirit pervades the universe. And yet we often do not let His spirit in. We try to get along without His help and we make a mess of our lives. We can do nothing of any value without God's help. All our human relationships depend on this. When we let God's spirit rule our lives, we learn how to get along with others and how to help them.

Prayer for the Day
I pray that I may let God run my life. I pray that I will never again make a mess of my life through trying to run it myself.

Hazelden Foundation

April 1, 2020 - Readings in Recovery: A Day at a Time

A Day at a Time
Wednesday, April 1, 2020

Reflection for the Day
If we don't want to slip, we'll avoid slippery places. For the alcoholic, that means avoiding old drinking haunts; for the over-eater, that means by-passing a once-favorite pastry shop; for the gambler, that means shunning poker parties and race tracks. For me, certain emotional situations can also be slippery places; so can indulgence of old ideas such as a well-nourished resentment that is allowed to build to explosive proportions.

Do I carry the principles of The Program with me wherever I go?

Today I Pray
May I learn not to test myself too harshly by "asking for it," by stopping in at the bar or the bakery or the track. Such "testing" can be dangerous, especially if I am egged on, not only by a thirst or an appetite or a craving for the old addiction, but by others still caught in it whose moral responsibility has been reduced to zero.

Today I Will Remember
Avoid slippery places.

Hazelden Foundation

April 1, 2020 - Readings in Recovery: The Eye Opener

The Eye Opener
Wednesday, April 1, 2020

What exists in the life to come, we can leave to the theologians. But the actual existence of Heaven and Hell here on earth is indisputable to us who have lived in both.

If most of the Bible thumpers that continually rave about the threats of Hell could know the Hell the poor practicing alcoholic is going through, it would scare them to death.

Hazelden Foundation

April 1, 2020 - Good morning with optimism that today is going to be an awesome Wednesday

March 31, 2020 - Readings in Recovery: Today's Gift from Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation

Tuesday, March 31, 2020

Today’s Gift from Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation is:

Freedom is the right to choose; the right to create for yourself the alternatives of choice. Without the exercise of choice, a man is not a man but a member, an instrument, a thing. — Archibald MacLeish

Gaining personal freedom is no easy matter. Not that it’s impossible to achieve; rather, it’s all too possible, in our heart of hearts, not to really want authentic freedom.

One of the prices of freedom is the requirement that we name our deficiencies. How we dig in our heels when it’s time for such honesty! We dread it so much we may refuse to even attempt change, let alone accept a program of change and stick with it. But there is no other way. We can’t break our own bindings if we refuse to acknowledge them!

But however deep our habits or powerful our compulsions—there are others of us in the program who have had similar feelings. We are not the first or the worst. If we must begin by praying to want freedom, then that’s where we begin.

Today, I move toward greater freedom by looking with greater understanding on my fears.

Hazelden Foundation

March 31, 2020 - Readings in Recovery: Step by Step

Step by Step
Tuesday, March 31, 2020

Today, no self-pity to shake my recovery regardless if my recovery began 24 months or 24 hours ago. Self-pity may be the deadliest of poisons that can undo, in the blink of an eye, any progress I've made. Self-pity is giving up my belief and total surrender to my Higher Power and is the epitome of selfishness. If there is adversity this day, I will face it with the courage, strength, hope and dignity with which AA endows me, and I've already been endowed with courage, strength, hope and dignity merely by committing myself to recovery. Nor will I whine, "Why me?" And if I say no to self-pity today, I have no reason or excuse to drink, to use - and this day, then, will be good. And our common journey continues. Step by step. - Chris M., 2020

March 31, 2020 - Readings in Recovery: Twenty-Four Hours a Day

Twenty-Four Hours a Day
Tuesday, March 31, 2020

AA Thought for the Day
Since I've been in AA, have I made a start towards being more unselfish? Do I no longer want my own way in everything? When things go wrong and I can't have what I want, do I no longer sulk? Am I trying not to waste money on myself? And does it make me happy to see my family and my home have enough attention from me?

Am I trying not to be all get and no give?

Meditation for the Day
Each day is a day of progress, steady progress forward, if you make it so. You may not see it, but God does. God does not judge by outward appearance. He judges by the heart. Let Him see in your heart a simple desire always to do His will. Though you may feel that your work has been spoiled or tarnished, God sees it as an offering for Him. When climbing a steep hill, a person is often more conscious of the weakness of his stumbling feet than of the view, the grandeur or even of the upward progress.

Prayer for the Day
I pray that I may persevere in all good things. I pray that I may advance each day in spite of my stumbling feet.

Hazelden Foundation