We learn that prayer is only a wish away. When we wished for recovery more than anything in the world, we found it. Thus our wishes became our prayers. It was that simple.
We discover in recovery that prayer is best when it is a conversation with a Higher Power. It isn’t just a one-way speech where we tell God what we expect to have happen.
"I
was also able to realize that this bonfire of resentment and rage was
beckoning me to pick up a drink and plunge in to my death. Then I
realized that I had to separate my sobriety from everything else that
was going on in my life. No matter what happened or didn't happen, I
couldn't drink. In fact, none of these things that I was going through
had anything to do with my sobriety; the tides of life flow endlessly
for better or worse, both good and bad, and I cannot allow my
sobriety to become dependent on these ups and downs of living. Sobriety
must live a life of its own."
Our
spiritual and emotional growth in A.A. does not depend so deeply upon
success as it does upon our failures and setbacks. If you will bear
this in mind, I think that your slip will have the effect of kicking you
upstairs, instead of down.
AS BILL SEES IT, p. 184
In
keeping with the pain and adversity which our founders
encountered and overcame in establishing A.A., Bill W. sent us a clear
message: a relapse can provide a positive experience toward abstinence
and a lifetime of recovery.
Lifting our self-esteem is not a particularly easy task for most of us. It's probable that again and again our confidence wavered before we sought help from the program. It's also probable that our confidence still wanes on occasion. The old fears don't disappear without effort.
Life is full of wonderful gifts. Recovery is life’s greatest gift to us. If we’re not excited about being sober, we need to check on ourselves. Are we keeping something secret? Is there a sadness we need to talk about? Are we stuffing anger? These things eat away at our excitement for life.
Many addicts never get the gift of recovery. Those of us in recovery are special. We’ve been given a new life. There will be hard times. But the joy of getting a second chance will be stronger. Am I grateful that I’ve been given recovery?
So many of us suffer from despair. Yet we don’t realize that despair is purely the absence of faith. As long as we’re willing to turn to a Higher Power for help in our difficulties, we cannot despair. When we’re troubled and can’t see a way out, it’s only because we imagine that all solutions depend on us. The program teaches us to let go of overwhelming problems and let God handle them for us.
A tree’s roots seek water and minerals. Though the roots can’t be easily seen, they are there. The life of the tree depends on them. The stronger a tree’s roots, the higher a tree can grow.
We need to set deep roots into the soil of recovery. The soil of recovery is made up of the Twelve Steps, fellowship, and service to others. We’ll have to get through storms and high winds in our return to health.
Twelve Step programs expose us to ideas that seem foreign. It takes time to embrace a new value system we can live by every day. Absorbing and using these principles for every decision and action removes the worry from our lives.
Changing how we’ve thought and acted doesn’t happen overnight. Changing one thing at a time is enough at first. Perhaps we’ll give up our feeling of hopelessness. The Second Step tells us that God can free us from our insanity, our hopelessness. All we need do is ask for help, and hope will come. Maybe we decide the urge to take over someone else’s life must end.
Not many things would send fear through us if we remembered to rely on our Higher Power at all times. Yet we try to handle circumstances ourselves first. It’s often only when we finally feel hopeless that we turn to our Higher Power for the help that awaited us all along.
We make our lives much more difficult than they need to be. Let’s quit thinking through our problems alone, no matter how foolish they seem. Let’s quit trying to handle tough people alone.
