I can help myself stop thinking about it. I have a job now. I get to see my kids and have a place to stay. Things are better now than they have been in years…why can’t I just stop thinking about using again?
Last evening in a small group discussion, not one, but two men said these words. Others in the group nodded their understanding, going through, or having been through the same thing. The fear of relapse is heavy on them. So heavy, in fact, that they cannot see solutions, hopelessly rambling to relieve some of the pressure.
“Keep doing what you are doing and you’ll keep getting what you’re getting.”
I heard this statement early on in my recovery from alcohol and drug use. That goes for recovery as well as using. If you and I keep doing what helped us get clean and sober, we stay clean and sober. If we keep using and boozing, we will keep losing. The one straddling the fence, however, has one foot in the past and one in the future and miss the concept, “just for today.” We only have a daily reprieve, and that is only if we do what is necessary to maintain freedom from addictions.
When most people struggle with their compulsion, they wrestle using willpower, doomed to fail and relapse. Forgetting how we received the gift of sobriety is where relapse begins, and that long before one actually does the deed. For some, they feel it would have been better for them to have never gotten clean, than to go back and do it again, killing their confidence, disappointing their loved ones.
“But it has happened to them according to the true proverb: A dog returns to its own vomit, ‘ and ‘a sow, after washed, to her wallowing in the mire.” 2 Pet.2:22
So if you are struggling to stay clean and sober, how did you get sober in the first place? If it came from being incarcerated, or from family insistence, or from most rehab programs, you have little to fall back on to maintain your freedom. If sobriety comes from getting to meetings, prayer, working the steps, serving others, etc., you have something to fall back on. Being diligent goes miles in recovery.
In short, if you are having a bad time with the compulsions, get to your knees, ask God for help. Get to a meeting, get on the phone to your sponsor…or get a sponsor, get into your devotional readings, get out of self and help another. The word get implies action and diligence. Diligence from the onset of recovery can keep the desire to do it again nothing more than a passing thought.
Thanks for reading, God bless and keep you all.
low living
Snitch
I never dreamed of being a rat when I lived the party life. That was death to friendships. It wasn’t only that people would isolate you permanently, it was that I would never be able to look at myself in the mirror again. No one wants anything to do with a tattle-tale. We alcoholics and addicts were a family, we had principles and standards.
Still Needing Help
Make it to Meetings
I share that sentiment with him. We have broken pasts that have had a great effect on our present and future. That effect is to infect as many as we can with the hope of living free from addiction, to stop attending meetings to just get help, and be a help. We both know we walk the razor’s edge when we stop attending, serving, and praying. Many have. Many have died because they did. He and I know we have to keep humility as an aim each day, asking God for help.
“There is a solution. Almost none of us liked the self-searching, the leveling of our pride, the confession of short comings which the process requires for its successful consummation. But we saw that it really worked in others, and we had come to believe in the hopelessness and futility of life as we had been living it….there was nothing left for us but to pick up the simple kit of spiritual tools laid at our feet. We have found much of heaven and we have been rocketed into a fourth dimension of existence of which we had not even dreamed.”
The Hurting and the Hidden
Get Up Off of Your Sorry Butt
The title of this post does not have anything to do with advent, I needed to change directions today. I’m a little perplexed today so I thought I may vent a moment, you kn0w, be angry and sin not. Actually, I am not angry, a bit frustrated by all of us recovering addicts, as well as those with hurts, habits, and hang-ups, and are sitting on our hands thinking any moment we may have an epiphany that provides the answer to overcoming our problem. “I’ve been praying hard,” or “I don’t know why I continue to struggle,” are two things I hear so often that really make me want to puke. If you and I hold our hands close to a fire and exclaim how hot the fire is and it is burning our fingers, what in the name of all that is good should we do? Try moving away from the fire!
When I was still in the throes of my addiction to alcohol I knew that this problem would not go away. I knew that God would help me if I asked Him to. So I asked, and drank, and asked and drank, daily, nightly, until I picked up the phone and called the pastor at the local Vineyard. He made several suggestions of things I could possibly do to overcome this addiction. Of course, I had an excuse for why those wouldn’t work for me. He said he would get back to me. I attended church faithfully for several weeks following our conversation and each time he saw me he would say, “I haven’t forgotten you.” Right, this guy couldn’t give a hoot if I live or die…another one of those too busy working for God to reach down and help you types, I thought. There was a method to his madness. He knew, I think, that I would get tired of the way I was living and finally take one of his original suggestions. And that is exactly what happened. I became so miserable that I prayed and then acted, and made my way to AA. If I had not put my faith into action and walked through the doors of AA, I would still be wrapped in the grip of alcohol. God didn’t walk through the door and hand me an addendum to the scripture. He didn’t cause that TV evangelist to look into that camera, describe me to a tee, and pronounce a miracle in my life….ah, sudden and miraculous healing!
No, God prompted me to try AA, and when I sat in recovery for a time, the epiphany came, the miracle happened! I can see how His grace worked marvelously for me. It was not just freedom from alcohol that I needed. I needed to understand my denial, accept and tolerate others with different problems, in short, I needed to get up off of my butt and grow up. That word tolerance is probably the reason for this post. If I were intolerant, I would not be posting this, I would be in someone’s face instead of typing. God is gracious and kind, and I am striving to imitate Him in patience and wisdom.
“Therefore be imitators of God as dear children, and walk in love as Christ has loved us and given Himself for us. an offering and a sacrifice to God”…Eph.5:1-2a
There it is. I want to be as much like Abba (daddy) as possible. I can say with righteous indignation, that you MUST do what I had to do to get better. Stop setting on your brains a rise and get healed! Don’t look for God to part the Ohio, and Mississippi rivers as a sign. He knows you would think, “wow, what a coincidence, I just prayed that would happen so I would know what to do, hmm, what about that,” then go on asking for a sign. You cannot lie in bed a wonder why your sick. You cannot look at the family Bible on the coffee table and believe it, nor understand what God wants you to know. Action, Action, and more action. Rise and be healed, body, soul, and spirit.
Thanks for reading, God bless and keep you all!
Came to Believe
I can be fixed on my personal way of thinking that I cannot see another’s point of view. The way I was raised was the right way. The foods I grew to enjoy were the right foods. The clothes I wore were the right clothes, there was nothing that my family did that was wrong. I’m sure you felt the same about your upbringing. The many things in life that I refused to accept as the right way changed for me and in time, and increased learning, I came to believe that there was other ways of doing things. Today I don’t feel there is much left of my past way of thinking I hold on to.
I have always held onto my belief in God even through years of alcoholism and drug use in which I seldom prayed or thought of God. When i came to the end of myself and began to ask God for help, He then took me places I didn’t expect, to experience things I would have never believed was right earlier in life. I finally made myself attend a meeting of alcoholics Anonymous because I could no longer manage my life. I was powerless over alcohol, the drink had whipped me good.
Step two: “Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.” The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous pg.59
This step puzzled me. A power greater than ourselves…isn’t that God? I thought they should say God could , not a higher power. I later discovered that AA is a program to help everyone, even the atheist or agnostic. Anyone seeking help would get help. All they needed was a desire to stay sober whether they believed in God or not. Many came to faith after they came to sobriety, because they came to believe. In AA/NA, Celebrate Recovery, and many other addiction programs, when people come to, they come to believe in God, at least the majority do.
Sanity needs to be restored for the addict/alcoholic. We have tried to control our drinking and drug use through various methods, switching from hard liquor to beer, drinking six days per week instead of seven, or going to pot smoking to avoid drinking altogether. But none of these methods came close to relieving us of are addiction. What worked for those early pioneers of AA was there same thing that relieved me. It was surrender. The total admission of my powerlessness and need for God’s help was the beginning of a new life, drink and drug free.
I have stopped thinking that my way is the right way. I have given up running the universe, that got me a seat in AA and was very expensive. Not money only, but broken relationships, loss of property, and letting down people who looked up to me. How about you? Have you surrendered your will and life over to God’s care? Maybe you are not an alcoholic or drug addict, but a family member is, and you are codepedent. Surrender is a must for you too. God is waiting, come back to the land of the living, you won’t be sorry.
Thanks for reading, God bless and keep you all!
I Struggle With…Recovery Meetings
Blessing For All
Politics and Poppycock
There we go again, gearing up for the next election and who we shall give the reins of leadership of our beloved nation. We pick a leader we think will guide us into peace and prosperity, giving us and our children a hope and a bright future. Not me. I want to elect a leader that is ready to go to war! I want someone who can say what they mean and mean what they say. To have a leader that leaves the world of politics by not dancing around issues, and speaking with the proverbial “forked tongue,” would be novel, wouldn’t it.
I’m not a war-monger, I do not want another Iraq or Afghanistan, nor do I want our nation to police the entire globe. I do want a fight, here, at home. This fight is one that requires a man or woman who will give their agenda out in detail, and if elected, goes directly to work on it. This leader is not going to ignore the will of the people. We have leaders now who fight alright, but they fight to keep things as they are and retain what they have…power. Servants? Not these guys. For the most part they are self-serving. There needs to be a 12 step program for politicians that teaches them how to serve the people and be genuine. I think I would like to attend one their recovery meetings. Hello, my name is …..and I am an ego-maniac.
This country seems to want to please everyone with an issue that the majority disagrees with. The majority does not mind having the ten commandments on a school lawn. An individual may find it offensive, and the monuments are removed. Their claim is they do not believe in religion. The ACLU rushes in with demands of immediate removal or funding from the government will be cut off, citing the separation of church and state. (By the way, that term is not in the Constitution.) The end result is a law suit defending the rights of the individual, a judge that rules that they must be removed from government property because the students may read them and believe them, and they are removed.
Does anyone care about the rights of the majority? The voters do not seem to care. You’ll get no fight here. Side note: could it be the reason for the drop in rank from the top ten in education worldwide, to twenty-seventh? Or maybe the reason for troubled youths entering into addictions in adolescence? I want a fight against this insanity.
“Where there is no revelation the people cast off restraint; but blessed is he who keeps the law.” Prov. 29:18
“When the righteous thrive, the people rejoice; but when the wicked rule, the people groan.” Prov. 29:2
The truth is, we don’t fight anything regarding politics, out of fear of what people may say and think about us. There is not any real war on drugs as far as I can see. Youths under eighteen, even as young as seven or eight, are hooked so bad they prostitute themselves out to afford their fix. The pedophile community is growing, and becoming fearless, knowing there is judges that will not keep them out of society very long if they are caught and jailed. The drug and alcohol problem helps feed their addiction by supplying drugs to kids, they get what they want. We have no restraint. There are few voices that cry out against these evils. I want war! I want leaders that want to fight!
The media outlets have an agenda that serves both the left and the right, but not the people. They think the people too ignorant to know the truth on any topic, so they give you what they want you to believe, and do this convincingly. They say very little about the decline in education, the rampant drug addictions on nearly every street in our cities, or the evils of pornography that is consuming the minds of men and women, and kids, destroying families. Why? Because it is more important to talk about Lindsey Lohan, or to give the wacko who kills a dozen people a grandstand of publicity, and make the next shooter determined to do the same and receive the same attention. We don’t fight that. In fact, we concur with their reports on nearly every issue because they are the news, that is all they report, they are not biased because they say they are not.
Politicians that are honest walk very softly, and speak even softer, knowing that if they speak the truth they will be crucified politically. If a minister says these national evils and natural disasters we face are satanic, or judgment from God, they are vilified and publicly disgraced. Give me a leader to follow, one who wants to fight back. The government is not the answer and cannot make enough programs to “fix” this morally bankrupt society. We need less programs and big goverment and more self-government.
The current administration really believes that the government can fix the problems by taking more from the rich and distributing it to the poor. Socialism does not work, and never will. Hating the wealthy is normal for the poor, but the wealthy is who writes your paycheck, not the poor. The fight is coming, like it or not, no matter who wins.
We are a divided people. The youth today, as in my day is attracted to the speech, to the glitter of fame, and believe the one who talks the best. Adolf Hitler talked the best in his day. He talked much about goodly morals and principles he believed in, but proved himself a liar to the people, imprisoning Christian leaders, eventually murdering them, along with the Jews, Gypsies, handicapped, and anyone he deemed inferior. Satan himself appears as an angel of light. I am convinced of this, what you say you believe is reflective of how you live. Saying and doing are politicians big dilemma, being, what do I need to say to get elected? And then doing what you planned if elected. We are divided. Multiculturalism can cause us to think differently, that is normal. But it does not change history. When we see a direction, and know historically that the direction will be bad for the people, that person should look for another career. We must fight, and win.
There will soon be another election that this divided nation must decide on whom will lead us the next four years…God be merciful! I am concerned that the wrong choice will be the death-blow to the country, already rapt in turmoil. Our children and theirs will not know much of the freedoms we have enjoyed in our lifetime, and eventually this nation will be completely absorbed into a world community. We must fight for right, but we also must know what is right. Know history, read and pray for God to help us as individuals to make right choices in electing our leaders, and in personal repentance for looking the other way for so long.
Thanks for reading, God bless and keep you all.