I'm determined to make today a good day. I've been feeling really goofy lately and not in a good way. I'm going to go to a meeting in a couple of hours and go to my IOP late. I need to hear the message. I haven't been to a morning meeting in a year and a half. I remember how much I used to love starting the day off with a meeting. I've been going to my IOP classes for about a month and I don't get much out of their meetings as compared to A.A. What a wonderful thing it is having A.A. That's where I get my hope from. I know that even though life sucks real bad right now it will get ironed out as long as I keep attending meetings and working with my sponsor. If I didn't have this glimmer of hope I would be drunk and high right now.
I went to court yesterday and the judge said I didn't have to pay any restitution. I feel real bad about my part in what I did. I put this lady through hell and I never even met her and now she has this financial problem due to my screwed up actions. This disease has taken me to the darkest, most horrible place and I don't ever want to go back.
We were talking about what it took to get to A.A. at a meeting. I heard something good. What I believe to be my bottom, that deep dark place from where I came, is not really a bottom at all. I can dig deeper. I've heard lots of people talk about finding their low point while in A.A. dealing with the wreckage. How far do I want to dig?
I'm just sitting here listening to some cheerful music and thinking about this day. I need to get my head out of my ass and see the day. It's spring and everything is growing. I've never been one for nature but my sponsor told me to try and appreciate it.
I hope everyone is doing alright. As Dr. Spock said "This is life Jim, but not as we know it......"
Hope was something I never had until I found AA. I also believe that I would be drunk right now if it weren't for that little bit of hope.
I often hear people in meetings talk about the "Yets" I didn't go that far down.....yet.
It is important for me to remember that there are still many yets for me. It wouldn't take long to get there if I picked up a drink today. Just because I didn't lose my family doesn't mean that I won't if I drink. There is a natural progression to this disease and if I let it, it will take me down to the pits of hell.
I hope you have a good day today in sobriety. It sure beats finding out what hell looks like!!
Good morning , everybody! It sounds like we have some positive thinking going on here,,, and accepting our part of the responsibilities for things. Today will have its ups and downs,,, pros and cons,, like all days do... but if we are focussed on the constructive and positive side we are bound to do better, eh?
God bless you all,
love in recovery,
amanda
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do your best and God does the rest, a step at a time
Wow, I am thinking back to last week, and the Positive place you were coming from. And then life throws you back, reminds me of that saying "two steps forward, one step back" and we all share, I think, that the backward motion makes us feel like, 1. we have gained nothing, and 2. we cannot see ahead. That is how is ALWAYS feels to me.
But watching your faith in the Process, there is so much Hope in that, to me, you cannot see it, but I can from my presceptive.
As far as the Bottoms go, in a Meeting yesterday, there was almost a competition going on (smile), about how low a bottom some of us came into this Program from. Takes me back to a similiar meeting several years ago, when one guy spoke up, and said "you're here aren't you" well then look at that!, and went on to say The REAL TRUE BOTTOM of this Disease is when you are underground". He talked about SEVERAL people in the Program, that had died of this Disease, and said "Now they did have a REAL bottom to this Disease"
Never forgot that, made sense to me.
The meeting yesterday went on to talk about how good Recovery feels, (there were 4 newcomers in the room that everyone was really trying to focus on). When I put my two cents in, I said I thought that the room was full of people, that if they were in that "Natural state, we would all be Drunk, and that Recovery is nothing Less than a Miracle. Because most of us were in the un-natural state on being Sober.
You talked about in an Earlier Post, about the difficulties you were having with an "epifany" I just want to tell you that when I surrendered to living a different way, I had asked God to show me a different way. But the God I was asking, was VERY foreign to me.
I began AA Meetings, one every day, motivation was that I was "scared to death" of returning to drinking, in the first year, and it was on my 1st year AA meeting, where they had given me the meeting as a Birthday Meeting. It was this awareness that this God that was foreign to me, was now a force that I could feel in my life, as a fact, based on only one thing, I could not POSSIBLY have STAYED sober for a year, on my own, that was a fact, with my 10 year history of Relapse, that was my natural state. And if I had not picked up a drink, and gone back to a drunk, again, there HAD to be something else working in my life. That is when my real Spiritual Foundation began, in this program, I don't think of it as an Epifany, more like this huge light bulb was on and with work, I wanted to keep the light on.
I had also used that little 24 hour Prayer book, every morning, before I made coffee, on my first waking moments, and did use those Thoughts, Meditations, and Prayers, read them over and over to keep them at the foreground of my daily thinking, they were so incredible helpful to me.
My first year Birthday in AA was the real Birth of my Faith, that now had a very Powerful root to it, was in that awareness of a Force, that I was willing to now turn my life over to. You and I are Miracles, as well as all the others here, and in the Meetings, nothing less than Miracles. We can't, He can, and We Let Him.
Prayer is now part of my daily life, Gratitude that I was spared an ugly death, and was given my life back. Everyday.
I really enjoy watching your Progress in Recovery, thanks for sharing it with us.
