"It destroys more alcoholics than anything else." Alcohol had destroyed me physically and mentally. With careful medical care and good nutrition and exercise, I quickly recovered. Resentment on the other hand was a terrible spiritual disease that was eating me up. I thank God and AA for giving me a perfect program of recovery to deal with resentment. With my 1st inventory, I dealt with a cancerous resentment for my dad. I blamed him for all my failures. My sponsor asked me one question with regard to my dad. He said do you remember any good times you had with your dad? I vividly remembered a time when I was a little boy and my dad put me on the bonnet of his truck and called a street photographer to take a picture of me. Somehow this recollection melted away any anger that I had for him. It made me weep all the way home after my 5th step sharing. I got home and looked at my 2 year old boy and made a decision, never to subject him to the ravages of alcoholism. That was some 22years ago. I am grateful to you for giving me my life back. Today my 1st thing that I deal with is resentment because it is the number one offender and it has the capacity to completely destroy my recovery.
hey gone, thank you for the post. I too deal with a heavy resentment for my father. HE was never there for me, and our family. It is going to be hard to make amends, but I really want to do it while he is still alive. I also hope that I can be a good father, and be there for my 5 week old baby and never have to subject her to my disease, or me not being there.
It is plain that a life which includes deep resentment leads only to futility and unhappiness.
seems pretty clear
To the precise extent that we permit these, do we squander the hours that might have been worth while.
It was explained to me that this sentence was a mathematical equation
precise extent we permit resentment= squandered hours lost forever from our lives in a waste of time
But with the alcoholic, whose hope is the maintenanc e and growth of a spiritual experience, this business of resentment is infinitely grave. We found that it is fatal. For when harboring such feeling we shut ourselves off from the sunlight of the Spirit. The insanity of alcohol returns and we drink again. And with us, to drink is to die
If we were to live, we had to be free of anger. The grouch and the brainstorm were not for us. They may be the dubious luxury of normal men, but for alcoholics these things are poison.
We turned back to the list, for it held the key to the future. We were prepared to look for it from an entirely different angle. We began to see that the world and its people really dominated us. In that state, the wrong-doing of others, fancied or real, had power to actually kill.
It was pointed out that Bill was trying very very hard to make a point here
grave fatal Insanity Die Poison Kill
Wonder what he's trying to say? /scratches head.....
A state of mind can kill us......or at the very least, is frankly just a waste of time
-- Edited by LinBaba on Monday 22nd of November 2010 08:21:23 AM
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it's not the change that's painful, it's the resistance to change that is painful