[bluidkiti]

September 18

You are reading from the book Today's Gift.
I will, I will accept myself
With hope and fear and wonder
And what I have joined together
Let no man put asunder.
--Dory Preven
There is a wonderful freedom in acceptance. When we accept ourselves, with all our imperfections, we can then begin to accept others just as they are. This is especially exciting when we apply this discovery to our own families. A family is like a bouquet of flowers arranged in a common vase. Each flower is different. One might be blue, one white, one a rose, one a chrysanthemum. But each adds to the beauty of the whole bouquet and enhances the vase that holds it.
It isn't important that we know why one flower is blue and one white. We don't have to understand how a rose becomes a rose to appreciate the arrangement. We just accept it for what it is. Acceptance of others does not mean agreement or approval. How boring if we only accepted those who reflected our own ideas and opinions! How dull to look upon a bouquet of exactly the same flowers.
Today, will I accept the differences between us as part of our beauty together?


You are reading from the book Touchstones.
Grace strikes us when we are in great pain and restlessness. It strikes us when we walk through the dark valley of a meaningless and empty life. --Paul Tillich
We are men who know the consequences of alcoholism, codependency, and addiction. We have walked dark valleys. We have felt meaningless and empty in our lives. Each of us has a story. The harder we worked to overcome those feelings by our individual efforts, the worse the feelings got. This program suggested we try something radically new --something we couldn't think up on our own.
Grace is the love and generosity of God, which comes through no effort of our own. Not until we felt defeated would we open ourselves to this gift of help from our Higher Power. Grace comes in many forms. It is in the hope we feel in the morning after a night of rest, and it's in the good feeling we get attending our meetings. Before this program, most of us were trying so hard to control our lives we couldn't notice any gifts that came from outside our efforts. These Twelve Steps train us for becoming receptive to the healing grace of God.
The grace of God surrounds me - even in difficult times. Returning to that message renews my strength.


You are reading from the book Each Day a New Beginning.
The future is made of the same stuff as the present. --Simone Weil
The moment is eternal. It is unending. When we move with the moment, we experience all that life can offer. Being fully awake to right now, guarantees rapture even when there's pain, because we know we are evolving, and we thrill with the knowledge. We are one with all that's going on around us. Our existence is purposeful and part of the whole of creation, and we can sense our purpose.
Nothing is--but now. And when we dwell on what was, or what may be, we are cut off from life--essentially dead. The only reality is the present, and it's only in the present that we are invited to make our special contribution to life; perhaps at this moment our special contribution is to reach out to another person, an act that will change two lives, ours and hers.
We must cling to the present, or we'll miss its invitation to grow, to help a friend perhaps, to be part of the only reality there is. The present holds all we need and all we'll ever need to fulfill our lives. It provides every opportunity for our happiness--the only happiness there is.
Abstinence offers me the gift of the present. I will cherish it, be grateful, and relish it.


You are reading from the book The Language of Letting Go.

Letting the Good Stuff Happen
Before recovery, my relationships were lousy. I didn't do very well on my job. I was enmeshed in my dysfunctional family. But at least I knew what to expect! --Anonymous
I want the second half of my life to be as good as the first half was miserable. Sometimes, I'm afraid it won't be. Sometimes, I'm frightened it might be.
The good stuff can scare us. Change, even good change, can be frightening. In some ways, good changes can be more frightening than the hard times.
The past, particularly before recovery, may have become comfortably familiar. We knew what to expect in our relationships. They were predictable. They were repeats of the same pattern - the same behaviors, the same pain, over and over again. They may not have been what we wanted, but we knew what was going to happen.
This is not so when we change patterns and begins recovering.
We may have been fairly good at predicting events in most areas of our life. Relationships would be painful. We'd be deprived.
Each year would be almost a repeat of the last. Sometimes it got a little worse, sometimes a little better, but the change wasn't drastic. Not until the moment when we began recovery.
Then things changed. And the further we progress in this miraculous program, the more we and or circumstances change. We begin to explore uncharted territory.
Things get good. They do get better all the time. We begin to become successful in love, in work, in life. One day at a time, the good stuff begins to happen and the misery dissipates.
We no longer want to be a victim of life. We've learned to avoid unnecessary crisis and trauma.
Life gets good.
"How do I handle the good stuff?" asked one woman. It's harder and more foreign than the pain and tragedy."
"The same way we handled the difficult and the painful experiences," I replied. "One day at a time."
Today, God, help me let go of my need to be in pain and crisis. Help me move as swiftly as possible through sad feelings and problems. Help me find my base and balance in peace, joy, and gratitude. Help me work as hard at accepting what's good, as I have worked in the past at accepting the painful and the difficult.


If something isn't working for me today, I am willing to let go of the struggle. I trust that God has something better in store for me. --Ruth Fishel

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Journey To The Heart

Open Up to New Energy

As you change, what works for you may change.

The purpose of the journey is to open up. But with it comes the responsibility of watching how we feel, how our bodies feel in certain circumstances. With it comes the responsibility of knowing that certain things that used to work for us, certain things we used to be able to handle, may not work as well any longer.

As we change, we will want and need the energy around us to change,too. We’ll want it to feel better, energize us, be good for us. At first we may say, This never bothered me before. I don’t know why I’m so sensitive now. Then we may wait for our bodies and lives to return to normal, to return to how they used to be.

You are becoming more sensitive, more open than you’ve ever been. When you were closed, you didn’t feel as much, didn’t respond as much. Sometimes you weren’t aware of what you were feeling or how your body reacted. Now that you are more open, your body, mind, spirit, and soul will be far more effected by what you take in– whether it is food, drink, or the energy of a person or situation. You will feel more intensely. You may want different foods, different people, different places, different clothing, different activities. As your energy changes, you will likely want different energy around you.

Listen to your body and emotions when they tell you something no longer works for you. Let the old fall away. Listen to your inner guidance as your heart leads you to someplace new.

*****

more language of letting go
Rise to the occasion

"You should have seen me when I was younger. I was something else then."

"Just wait until I'm older and bigger. Then I'll show you what I can do."

If all we do is remember the strength of our past, then we're denying ourselves the wisdom and abilities we carry with us in the present. And we deny the lessons that age teaches us about slowing down, being still, and letting things be the way they are. If we're waiting for the future to be happy, we're robbing ourselves of the vitality and joy in our lives right now.

Stop reminiscing about the past and anticipating the joys of the future-- that time when you become all powerful, bigger, and better than you are now.

You're as good as you need to be today. Let yourself be who you are, then enjoy being exactly that.

Rise to the occasion of today.

God, help me be the best me that I can be.

*****

A Dynamic Choice-Maker
Accepting Yourself

by Madisyn Taylor

Sometimes we choose or do something that takes us in the opposite direction of the reality we want to create.


There is no such thing as a good person or a bad person. There are choices and actions that lead us in different directions, and it is through those choices and actions that we create our realities. Sometimes we choose or do something that takes us in the opposite direction of the reality we want to create for ourselves. When we do this, we feel bad—uneasy, unhappy, unsure. We might go so far as to label ourselves “bad” when a situation like this arises. Instead of labeling ourselves, though, we could simply acknowledge that we made a choice that lead us down a particular path, and then let it go, forgiving ourselves and preparing for our next opportunity to choose, and act, in ways that support our best intentions.

Many of us experienced childhoods in which the words good and bad were used as weapons to control us—you were good if you did what you were told and bad if you didn’t. This kind of discipline undermines a person’s ability to find their own moral center and to trust and be guided by their own inner self. If you were raised this way, you may find yourself feeling shockwaves of badness when you do something you were taught was wrong, even if now you don’t agree that it’s bad. Conversely, you may feel good when you do what you learned was right. Notice how this puts you in something of a straitjacket. An important part of our spiritual unfolding requires that we grow beyond what we learned and take responsibility for our own liberation in our own terms.

You are a human being with every right to be here, learning and exploring. To label yourself good or bad is to think too small. What you are is a decision-maker and every moment provides you the opportunity to move in the direction of your higher self or in the direction of stagnation or degradation. In the end, only you know the difference. If you find yourself going into self-judgment, try to stop yourself as soon as you can and come back to center. Know that you are not good or bad, you are simply you. Published with permission from Daily OM

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A Day At A Time
September 18

Reflection For The Day

In every story we hear from others in The Program, pain has been the price of admission into a new life. But our admission price purchased far more than we expected. It led us to a degree of humility, which we soon discovered to be a healer of pain. And, in time, we began to fear pain less — and desire humility more than ever. Am I learning to “sit loosely in the saddle” — making the most of what comes and the least of what goes?

Today I Pray

If God’s plan for us is spiritual growth, a closer alliance with His principles of what is good and what is true, then may I believe that all my experiences have added up to a new and improved me. May I not fear the lessons of pain. May I know, that I must continue to grow through pain, as well as joy.

Today I Will Remember

I hurt; therefore, I am.

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One More Day
September 18

Our souls are hungry for meaning, for the sense that we have figured out how to live so that our lives matter, so that the world [will] be at least a little bit different for our having passed through.
– Harold Kushner

Even when we are no longer well, many of us continue to hunger for learning. We reach out to connect with other people and with book learning.

We continue to search on a deeper level as well. Not surprisingly, spirituality often takes a back seat, for a while, to the rigors of getting used to a changed medical condition. Ultimately, our souls cry out for growth as our minds do, and we turn to our Higher Power for comfort and understanding.

My diminished health does not affect my drive for meaning and for learning. I want and need to learn.

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Food For Thought

Bad Days

There are some days when we wake up in the morning knowing with a sixth sense that the day is going to be a hard one. These are the days when it is difficult to get out of bed, when we would prefer not to face whatever awaits us. There is no way around these days; we must get through them the best way we can.

Our most useful tool for coping with a bad day is abstinence. Nothing is impossible when we are abstaining from compulsive overeating. Often our problem lies not in the external events of the day but in recognizing a part of ourselves that has been hidden and repressed. We resist facing honestly what our Higher Power is revealing to us about our inner life.

When we are determined not to escape into food, we will come out of a bad day stronger than we were before. We reinforce our new way of living, which is to turn difficult situations over to our Higher Power and then act as He guides us, step by step.

May I be closer to You during the bad days.