03/09

DAILY PONDERABLES

Together WE Trudge The Road OF Happy Destiny

Daily Reflections

SURRENDERING SELF-WILL

Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

TWELVE STEPS AND TWELVE TRADITIONS, p. 34

No matter how much one wishes to try, exactly how can one turn his own will and his own life over to the care of whatever God he thinks there is? In my search for the answer to this question, I became aware of the wisdom with which it was written: this is a two-part Step.

I could see many times where I should have died, or at least been injured, during my previous style of living, and it never happened. Someone, or something, was looking after me. I chose to believe my life has always been in God's care. He alone controls the number of days I will be granted until physical death.

The matter of will (self-will or God's will) is the more difficult part of the Step for me. It is only when I have experienced enough emotional pain, through failed attempts to fix myself, that I become willing to surrender to God's will for my life. Surrender is like the calm after a storm. When my will is in line with God's will for me, there is peace within.

From the book Daily Reflections

Twenty-Four Hours A Day

A.A. Thought for the Day

If we had absolute faith in the power of God to keep us from drinking and if we turned our drink problem entirely over to God without reservations, we wouldn't have to do anything more about it. We'd be free from drink once and for all. But since our faith is apt to be weak, we have to strengthen and build up this faith. We do this in several ways. One way is by going to meetings and listening to others tell how they have found all the strength they need to overcome drink. Is my faith being strengthened by this personal witness of other alcoholics?

Meditation for the Day

It is the quality of my life that determines its value. In order to judge the value of a person's life, we must set up a standard. The most valuable life is one of honesty, purity, unselfishness, and love. All people's lives ought to be judged by this standard in determining their value to the world. By this standard, most of the so-called heroes of history were not great men. "What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world, if he lost his own soul?"

Prayer for the Day

I pray that I may be honest, pure, unselfish, and loving. I pray that I may make the quality of my life good by these standards.

From the book Twenty-Four Hours a Day

NA - Just for Today

Small things

Page 71

"In the past, we made simple situations into problems; we made mountains out of molehills."

Basic Text, p. 90

Making mountains out of molehills seems to be our specialty. Have you heard it said that to an addict, a flat tire is a traumatic event? Or how about those of us who forget all pretense of principle when confronted with a bad driver? And what about that can opener that won't work

you know, the one you just threw out the second story window? We can relate when we hear others share, "God, grant me patience right now!"

No, it's not the major setbacks that drive us to distraction. The big things-divorce, death, serious illness, the loss of a job-will throw us, but we survive them. We've learned from experience that we must reach out to our Higher Power and others to make it through life's major crises. It's the small things, the constant day-to-day challenges of living life without the use of drugs, that seem to affect most addicts most strongly in recovery.

When the little things get to us, the Serenity Prayer can help us regain our perspective. We can all remember that "turning over" these small matters to the care of our Higher Power results in peace of mind and a refreshed perspective on life.

Just for Today: I will work on patience. I will try to keep from blowing things out of proportion, and walk with my Higher Power through my day.

From the book Just for Today

Thought for Today

Fear is the false belief that your will not have the resources you need to meet the challenges you face at the present moment. ~Matthew M.

Be Happy

"Be happy in the morning with what you have. Be happy in the evening with what you are. Be happy. Don't complain. Who complains? The blind beggar in you. When you complain, you dance in the mire of ignorance-condition. When you don't complain, all conditions of the world are at your feet, and God gives you a new name: aspiration. Aspiration is the supreme wealth in the world of light and delight."

Spirituality is best manifested on the ground, not in the air.

Rapturous day-dreams, flights of heavenly fancy, longings

to see the Invisible, are less expensive and less expressive

than the plain doing of duty. To have bread excite thankful-

ness and a drink of water send the heart to God is better

than sighs for the unattainable. To plow a straight furrow

on Monday or dust a room well on Tuesday or kiss a bumped

forehead on Wednesday is worth more than the most

ecstatic thrill under Sunday eloquence. Spirituality is seeing

God in common things, and showing God in common tasks.

-- Maltbie Davenport Babcock (thanks Bill C.)

Buddha/Zen Thoughts

Those who really seek the path to enlightenment dictate terms to their mind. They then proceed with strong determination.

Native American

"In the life of the Indian there was only one inevitable duty, the duty of prayer, the daily recognition of the Unseen and Eternal. His daily devotions were more necessary to him than daily food."

--Charles A. Eastman (Ohiyesa), SANTEE SIOUX

The most important habit one can develop is the daily act of prayer. Prayer is our eyes, our ears, our feelings, our success, our guidance, our life, our duty, our goal. There really is only prayer and meditation. We can only help others through prayer. We can only help ourselves through prayer. You can never become an Elder unless you pray. You can never stay an Elder unless you pray. You never get wisdom unless you pray. You never understand unless you pray.

Great Spirit, today, teach me to pray.

Keep It Simple

You've got to do your own growing, no matter how tall your grandfather was.

--- Irish Proverb

Each of us has been given recovery. Now it's up to each of us what we do with it. At times, we'll work hard to grow quickly. At other times, our growth will be slower. This is okay. We're not in a race. Our pace is not important. What is important is that we're always working on our recovery.

We're all part of a fellowship, a caring group. We're one of many. But we're each important. Each of us will have a special way to work our programs through our readings, friends, meetings, and what we know of how life works. each of us puts together a miracle of recovery. We than take our miracle and share it with others, so they can build their miracle.

Prayer for the Day: Higher Power, help me work at growing. Help me be a person who is an important part of a group.

Action for the Day: Today, I'll work at seeing myself as very important. I'll remind myself that other's recovery also depends on my recovery. I am needed.

Big Book

THE DOCTOR'S OPINION (pg. xxvi & top of xxvii)

We believe, and so suggested a few years ago, that the action of alcohol on these chronic alcoholics is a manifestation of an allergy; that the phenomenon of craving is limited to this class and never occurs in the average temperate drinker. These allergic types can never safely use alcohol in any form at all; and once having formed the habit and found they cannot break it, once having lost their self-confidence, their reliance upon things human, their problems pile up on them and become astonishingly difficult to solve.

Frothy emotional appeal seldom suffices. The message which can interest and hold these alcoholic people must have depth and weight. In nearly all cases, their ideals must be grounded in a power greater than themselves, if they are to re-create their lives.

If any feel that as psychiatrists directing a hospital for alcoholics we appear somewhat sentimental, let them stand with us a while on the firing line, see the tragedies, the despairing wives, the little children; let the solving of these problems become a part of their daily work, and even of their sleeping moments, and the most cynical will not wonder that we have accepted and encouraged this movement. We feel, after many years if experience, that we have found nothing which has contributed more to the rehabilitation of these men than the altruistic movement now growing up among them.

Men and women drink essentially because they like the effect produced by alcohol. The sensation is so elusive that, while they admit it is injurious, they cannot after a time differentiate the true from the false. To them, their alcoholic life seems the only normal one. They are restless, irritable and discontented, unless they can again experience the sense of ease and comfort which comes at once by taking a few drinks-drinks which they see others taking with impunity. After they have succumbed to the desire again, as so many do, and the phenomenon of craving develops, they pass through the well-known stages of a spree, emerging remorseful, with a firm resolution not to drink again. This is repeated over and over, and unless this person can experience an entire psychic change there is very little hope of his recovery.