Thoughts To Help You On Your Recovery Path

[MajestyJo]

Shortcomings
I have shortcomings and defects of character. I never have been and never can be perfect.

As that realization became a part of me -- and it took time -- it brought me one of the greatest of the many blessings that have come to me from AA.

I learned to accept myself as a fallible human being. I do not have to strive for perfection.

Mistakes are permissible. I have the right to be wrong. And what a comfort that thought is to me, as I make my bemused way through life, one foot in a bucket, pushing on doors marked "Pull."

- The Best of the Grapevine [Vol. 2], pp. 167-168

Always look at these as two different things, most people say they are the same. For me, I have both. I can have a defect of character, but I don't have to act out in it. Shortcomings are being less than who my God would have me be in today. He really doesn't have high expectations, but I have always had them on myself. For me, a short coming is acting out in my defect of character.

It is one thing to think it, but quite a different thing to follow thought with action. That can be a good thing or a not so good thing. For me the not so good thing is a shortcoming.