ACCEPTING SUCCESS OR FAILURE

Furthermore, how shall we come to terms with seeming failure or success? Can we now accept and adjust to either without despair or pride? Can we accept poverty, sickness, loneliness, and bereavement with courage and serenity? Can we steadfastly content ourselves with the humbler, yet sometimes more durable, satisfactions when the brighter, more glittering achievements are denied us?
TWELVE STEPS AND TWELVE TRADITIONS, p. 112

After I found A.A. and stopped drinking, it took a while before I understood why the First Step contained two parts: my powerlessness over alcohol, and my life's manageability. In the same way, I believed for a long time that, in order to be in tune with the Twelve Steps, it was enough for me "to carry this message to alcoholics." That was rushing things. I was forgetting that there were a total of Twelve Steps and that the Twelfth Step also had more than one part. Eventually I learned that it was necessary for me to "practice these principles" in all areas of my life. In working all the Steps thoroughly, I not only stay sober and help someone else to achieve sobriety, but also I transform my difficulty with living into a joy of living.

Daily Reflections

Our lives can be like a battle

Our lives can be like a battle between darkness and light. The darkness might be in our moods when we wake in the morning with feelings of despair. Then we can turn to the light of a prayer for openness: "God help me feel your love and acceptance." The darkness is there when we are tempted to take advantage of a clerk who gives us too much change. Perhaps we tell ourselves, "Everyone does it, it won't matter if I do."

Then the light comes as we remember that this program demands rigorous honesty, and each choice for honesty promotes our growth. The darkness may be when someone we care about is hurt or in danger, and we think, "I have to step in to prevent bad things from happening."

Despair

Reflection for the Day
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 God 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. When I consciously surrender my will to God's will, do I see faith at work in my life?

Today I Pray

STEP 1 …foundation

It meant destruction of self-centeredness. (14: 1) STEP 1 …foundation… (12: 4)

Like Bill, we are alcoholics, and we have to hit bottom. The problem is our mental that leads us to take a drink, and our resulting physical compulsion to drink to excess. Our minds and lives are unmanageable; we must surrender. Working Step 1 begins when we become abstinent. We have to stop our personal addictive alcoholic behaviors so that our continued acting out does not hinder our surrender. If we are not drinking today, then we must abstain from that particular addictive thought or behavior that robs us of peace of mind.

This is a disease of isolation and loneliness. We are prisoners of our self-sufficiency, isolated inside. We admit we need to grow and that we are not free. We are people who appear to be sure of themselves but are actually eaten alive with fear inside. (193: 2) If anxiety is the existential basis of our addiction, then we must alter our fear, remorse, shame and guilt in order to find happiness so that we do not have to go back to drinking.

Looking beyond myself

Despair is the absolute extreme of self-love. It is reached when a man deliberately turns his back on all help from anyone else in order to taste the rotten luxury of knowing himself to be lost.
--Thomas Merton

The surest way to unhappiness is to concentrate only on ourselves. Nothing will bring on despair quicker than thinking only of our own concerns. Extreme self-centeredness brings alienation from God, from our friends, and loved ones.