Valuable

Thinking about this way of life brings up a lot of things. One of which is imperfection. No matter how often my thoughts go to doing the right thing, as many times as I do, there is always that moment of failure.

Once again that thought brings me back to the Tenth Step, where Bill W. talks about how sometimes failure can become one of the greatest credits of all. Hard to think about it that way, but he goes on. He tells me that the pains of failure can become assets. Why? Out of them, he says, we receive the stimulation to go forward. To try to do better the next time.

Sometimes what he said is not always easy to see. But experience has shown me that he is right. I don’t know where I’d be, if I failed to recognize what he was trying to say. How my thinking and acting can be going one way one minute and in the opposite direction the next. Sometimes the repercussions within can be, as he said, painful. The difference between recognizing what is spiritual and what isn’t.

Often at this time I think about the words of the man, who said that that which he would not do he does, and that which he would do he does not. That from a revered spiritual man.

But then Bill goes back to the words that pain is the touchstone of all spiritual growth. And why go through all of this? Because it is in the struggle to live a spiritual life that is the foundation of my sobriety. Without it, I probably would have been dead from drinking a long time ago.

Looking at all of this, I find myself grateful for all that has been given to me. The opportunity to stop, pick myself up, dust myself off, and then go on. Thank God for all the directions those men, who founded and preceded us laid out for us. Where would someone like me be without them? Their experience in trying to stay sober is so valuable.