Last night a friend of mine reminded me of something. Not to lose heart. To continue though discouraged. To overcome my thoughts and feelings and to continue to not only work this program, but to give it away to others.
I know from past experiences how easy it is to give up just because I have felt that I failed. Maybe because someone I was trying to help gave up and went back out and drank again. Or that my “problems” seemed so overwhelming that I lost hope. There were times when I found myself lacking faith and the resolve to push forward in trying to practice these principles in all of my affairs.
Then there were moments, when anger and resentments dominated my thinking and my emotions were running my life. The stress and discouragement from those or something else, like the loss of someone I loved, pulled me down. The result being that I stalled and didn’t feel I could continue.
In all these instances I lost the awareness that I was operating on my own strength alone. I wasn’t paying attention to the help I had at hand. The people in this program and my higher power. I was, as my sponsor said, going it alone. I had forgotten what I had learned in here.
What I had learned from the very beginning was that I couldn’t stay sober by myself. I needed help. Help came to me from all sides in the rooms. People came up to me and not only gave me suggestions, but encouragement to continue to strive to overcome what for me was a deadly disease. My alcoholism. They gave me hope from the start of coming through the doors of this program. Something I needed to remember. And at times I forgot.
How often I found how easy it was to forget. I forgot what one old timer had told me. That when it came to this program we all had short term memories. I heard others tell how they stepped out the doors of a meeting and some emotion hit them and everything they had heard vanished in an instant.
It’s in meetings and talking with others just like myself that I’m not only reminded of what it is I need to do, but along with those reminders I receive reinforcement. I’m given courage rather than fear, because I see the evidence of how they are leading their lives despite some obstacle in their paths. How could I not do otherwise?
Over and over again I have seen how effective this program has been in my life and that of others. With time I’ve learned not to let my emotions or my thinking mislead me and when troubled to go to someone and talk to them. To pray to my higher power and ask for help and guidance. Not to close my mind but listen. And then to continue to work this program and reach out to others, who ask for help.
Anyway, today we were talking about how we stopped fighting everyone and everything, including alcohol. And what else did the BB say after that statement? For by this time sanity will have returned. And that indeed is what happened to me.