We were talking about the Serenity Prayer again and something about our relations. That made me stop and think about, not just that prayer, but once more the Tenth Step in the Twelve and Twelve. Especially the spiritual axiom: that when I find myself disturbed there’s something wrong with me.
I’ve always had to learn to back up, when I find myself disturbed about someone. I had to learn that I was the problem. Not someone else. They might have a part in what I’m going through, but their part is their problem. My part in it is mine and that’s what I need to deal with. I can’t do anything about another person.
That’s part of what those old timers used to talk about. Principles over personalities. Intellect over emotions. I was made to take a look at my feelings, my emotions. I had to learn to step back and ask my Higher Power to help me to begin to separate from how I was feeling and to begin to do what my sponsor told me to do. He told me that I was to think with my head and not my heart.
All this always takes me back to the BB, where it talked about the alcoholic suffering from resentments, having them driving the alcoholic back to drinking again, and then dying. It was that which woke me up. I had two men I knew, who had ten years in, one my first sponsor, Both had resentments, both went back out and drank, and both died a short time after. I knew then that I was going to have to do something to change. I never ever wanted to drink again.
Anyway, I had to think about this during the meeting, and then later on. It was all of this, which got me to begin to change, hopefully for the better. I know that in dealing with this stuff I was restored to sanity and had a spiritual awakening. It really woke me up to staying sober a day at a time. Whenever I’m disturbed to stop and change from he negative to the positive. Like I said relying on my Higher Power, but also the people in this program. To know that I have to be grateful for all I have been given.
I know that I’m human. An alcoholic, who still has this disease, although it’s been arrested, as far as drinking goes. But no matter what I can still find myself getting tripped up from my old defects. I have to be able to back up and start my day over. To be able grow along spiritual lines. Enough for now.