God wants to give us a new
life, of hope, peace, joy, and happiness. He doesn't ask us to
change our lives by ourselves, He only asks we come to Him just
as we are, trusting totally in His unconditional love, trust, and
forgiveness,and be willing to change, to let Him show us the way.
He will pass on the teachings of those who came before us. We
need to keep our thoughts on what we have been giving, not on
what we have lost. Our disease has already taken to much away
from us, recovery can give us a new way of life, filled with
love, peace, and hope, when I look at what God has given me, I
still wonder why He chose to save me, we can never make-up for
the damage we have caused, but we can make amends, to the ones we
have hurt, by making amends, we then can start fresh, its up to
those we try to make amends too, they can accept that we are
trying and hopefully forgive us, or they can wait and see by our
actions that we are changing. We
need never to accept the guilt or the failings of someone else,
if they have harmed, us the memories will haunt us until we
forgive them, for we need to let go of our anger and fear,
forgiveness lets this happen. Nothing in our lives is ever
wasted, no loss of material things can ever erase our memories,
or our love for what we cherished in our lives, when we forgive
ourselves, we always have hope to regain some of the things we
lost. Only we can destroy ourselves by given up to our disease. My
past will always be with me, no one can destroy our memories,
they will always comfort us, our old lives will always remind us,
that we have changed, to becoming loving useful members in
recovery, with a positive attitude about life. We can't become a
part of something, yet be separate from it. Tunnel vision, or
narrow mindlessness, will destroy every thing we have worked for,
if we focus on any one thing alone, we will lose the beauty of
the whole picture. We must stay focused on our recovery or we
will loose focus on everything else in our lives. A car
battery has positive and a negative, if you touch the two posts
together they will short out all the life it has. You must ground
the negative in order for the positive to flow thru the wires and
give power to everything it is connected to. We
are like the battery, if we ground the negative in our lives with
the twelve steps of our program, we will be able to stay grounded
with our negative past, we can now begin to project positive
thought for our future, thru our program of recovery, being open
in all our relationships will set us free, to let God's love flow
thru us, only by working thru our past, learning about life on
God's terms, will we be able to have our dreams come true. None
of us were asked to be born, but God did want us to have
children, so we could share He's joy when He creates new life,
unfortunately we came with-out directions, we have only learned
by our own experiences, and those of our caretakers, on how to
raise children, and sometimes we are wrong. If
only someone, at sometime in our lives, showed us God's love we
wouldn't make so many mistakes raising our own children, love
breeds love, if I teach my children to hate, be angry, make them
fearful or self-centered, they will become as I was, we must
change our way of living, and show our children how wrong we
were, so they may benefit from our mistakes, and not make the
same mistakes themselves, we can all break the chains of our
disease, set ourselves, and our children free, with God's care
and help. I
must always stay focused on my recovery, by sharing my
experience, strength, and hope, this also will help in the
recovery of others, we all need help at times, no matter how far
down we go, or how much recovery we have, at sometime in our
life's we are apt to have a bad day, that could wipe everything
out. We all need to express our feelings towards each other, to
show how much we need each others support. When we are
vulnerable, is when we need our inner circle of friends in
recovery. Anger,
fear, self-pity, loneliness, and despair are our constant enemy,
old timers need the support of the new comer, as much as the new
comer needs their support. Don't look for God around you, for He
dwells with-in you, by being less selfish, less self-centered, by
letting go of your old self completely, and shedding all your old
ways, you will feel His presents with-in you
Love begins with a
smile! Life begins with God!
