Letting Go

To let go doesn't mean to stop caring; it means I can't do it for someone else.
To let go is not to cut myself off; it's the realization that I can't control another.
To let go is not to enable, but to allow learning from natural consequences.
To let go is to admit powerlessness, which means the outcome is not in my hands.
To let go is not to try to change or blame another; it's to make the most of myself.
To let go is not to care for, but to care about.
To let go is not to fix, but to be supportive.
To let go is not to judge, but to allow another to be a human being.
To let go is not to be in the middle of arranging all the outcomes, but to allow others to affect their own outcome.
To let go is not to be protective; it is to permit another to face reality.
To let go is not to deny, but to accept.
To let go is not to nag, scold or argue, but instead to search out my own shortcomings and correct them.
To let go is not to adjust everything to my desires, but to take each day as it comes and to cherish myself in it.
To let go is not to criticize and regulate anyone, but to try to become what I dream I can be.
To let go is not to regret the past, but to grow and live for the future.
To let go is to fear less and love more.
To let go and let God, is to find peace.

Big Book on Resentments... Page 552, 4th Edition

Just typed this up for a friend, and since I had it transcribed, thought I would share it here as well...  has worked well so far for me, too.

"'If you have resentment you want to be free of, if you will pray for the person or thing that you resent, you will be free. If you will ask in prayer for everything you want for yourself to be given to them, you will be free. Ask for their health, their prosperity, their happiness, and you will be free. Even when you don't really want it for them and your prayers are only words and you don't mean it, go ahead and do it anyway. Do it everyday for two weeks, and you will find you have come to mean it and to want it for them, and you will realize that where you used to feel bitterness and resentment and hatred, you now feel compassionate, understanding and love.'

It worked for me then, and it has worked for me many times since, and it will work for me every time I am willing to work it. Sometimes I have to ask first for the willingness, but it always comes. And because it works for me, it will work for all of us. As another great man says, 'The only real freedom a human being can ever know is doing what you ought to do because you want to do it.'"

From 24 Hours a Day...

Thought of the Day for June 29th-

"The program... involves a continuous striving for improvement. There can be no long resting period.  We must try to work at it all the time.  We must continually keep in mind that it is a program not to be measured in years, because we never fully reach our goals nor are we ever cured.  Our alcoholism is only kept in abeyance by daily living of the program.  It is a timeless program in every sense.  We live it day by day, or more precisely, moment by moment - now."

Twenty Four Hours A Day, Hazelden Meditations, Reprint Edition 1992

Meditation for the Day...

The spiritual life has two parts.  One is the life apart, the life of prayer and quiet communion with God.  You spend this part of your life apart with God.  Every day your mind can be set in the right direction so that your thoughts will be of the right kind.  The other is the life impart - imparting to others what you have learned from your own meditative experience.  The victories you have won over yourself through the help of God can be shared with others.  You can help them by imparting to them some of the victory and security that you have gained in your life apart.

Twenty-Four Hours A Day, Hazelden Meditations copyright 1954, entry for June 18th

A New Way of Life...

As a part of my recovery, I am making an effort to be a bit more flexible with my schedule, and try and not get so anxious over getting things done.  For example, the other day, when I realized that my daughter had fallen asleep in the car, I stopped by the side of the road and picked some wild flowers that I had been admiring each time I drove past.

So today, on my way back from the garden center, I spied this Frau out working in the fields.  I went home, dropped off my plants, grabbed my camera and headed back to snap a few shots.  Hope you enjoy them as much as I did.

From some of my reading this morning...

In the AA book Living Sober (1), copy right 1975, 1998...

     "Anger in all its aspects is a universal human problem.  But it poses a special threat to alcoholics: Our own anger can kill us.  Recovered alcoholics almost unanimously agree that hostility, grudges, or resentments often make us want to drink, so we need to be vigilant against such feelings.  We have found much more satisfying ways than drinking for dealing with them.
     But we'll get to those later.  First, here is a look at some of the shapes and colors anger seems at time to arrive in:

• intolerance
• contempt
• envy
• hatred
• snobbishness
• rigidity
• cynicism
• discontent
• tension
• sarcasm
• self-pity
• malice
• distrust
• anxiety
• suspicion
• jealousy..."

I learned in treatment that anger is actually a secondary emotion, usually rooted in a primary emotion where we might actually feel hurt, afraid, attacked, offended, disrespected, forced, trapped, or pressured.  So if anger is secondary, then the list from Living Sober would actually become tertiary (in the third order.)  So when we feel these things, although anger may be the root, it is most likely pain, fear or some other primary emotion at the core.  (I googled secondary and tertiary emotions, and they have indeed seem to have been classified this way...)  I italicized some of the ones that I found more interesting, and probably would not have attributed to anger...

From Keep It Simple - June 7th -
     "We can't afford to hold grudges.  We have all felt hurt by others at times.  But when we stay angry at another person, it hurts us. It keeps our wounds open.  It takes our energy away from our healing.
     We can forgive now.  We know that living our program of honesty and love makes us safe.  We don't have to be afraid.  We don't have to be angry. We don't have to let old hurts stand in our way.  We let them go.  We empty the anger from our hearts to clear the way for love."

Nicely coupled with the meditation for the day from Twenty-Four Hours A Day -
     "You not only can live a new life but you also can grow in grace and power and beauty.  Reach ever forward and upward after the things of the spirit.  In the animal world, the very form of an animal changes to enable it to reach that upon which it delights to feed.  Your whole character changes as you reach upward for the things of the spirit - for beauty, for love, for honesty, for purity, and for unselfishness.  Reaching after these things of the spirit, your whole nature becomes so changed so that you can best receive and delight in the wonders of the abundant life."
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(1) Sober Living, AA, copy right 1975, 1998.
(2) Keep It Simple Hazelden Meditations, copyright 1989 - June 7th -
(3) Twenty-Four Hours A Day Hazelden Meditations, copyright 1954, 1975, 1992-

Freedom

When I met up with friends at my last meeting in the states I got to see a guy named Ron, that I hadn't seen for a few weeks - since he had hung his cup at Valley Hope.  He was asking me how it felt to be "out," and I told him that it felt very weird, because I was actually free. 

Being at Valley Hope, our time was very structured, which was good, because it kept us busy (except on the weekends!) and it kept our days in order.  Wake up early, breakfast, chapel, communications, lecture 1, women's group, lecture 2, small group, sometimes an appointment with our chaplain or counselor, and then a "hot seat" at 4 before dinner at 5.  Then usually we had an AA or NA meeting after dinner.  And of course going anywhere required that you sign out so that they knew where you were at all times.

So when I left - without signing out, and got in the car and was able to just decide on a whim what to do or where to go, whenever I pleased, it was almost like getting out of jail.  You always here how inmates struggle when they get out of jail, because they no longer have the structure that jail provides... I could relate - and I was only there a month (and it wasn't jail! I wanted to be there!)

And so yes, I felt free.  Free to go where I wanted and free to do as I pleased.  And I realized that not only was I free to do all that.... I was free from alcohol. 

Before I checked in to Valley Hope, I was free to come and go as I chose, but alcohol was making most of my decisions for me.  It dictated the schedule of my day, it whispered in my ear when I made decisions about social engagements and even where to go on vacation.  I was nowhere near free, and never free enough to NOT drink.

So driving down the road as we left Valley Hope I realized that for the first time in years and years I was actually free, and it was actually pretty uncomfortable!  It has been so long since I was truly free that I felt a little lost, a little naked.  After years of having alcohol tell me what to do and when to do it, it was a little disconcerting having to figure that all on my own.  Add in the fact that I now need to do all this AND stay sober, and it was a bit scary.  A healthy, welcome scary - but scary just the same.

At meetings you hear people talk about how happy they are that they now have the choice not to drink.  Always strikes me as funny, that an alcoholic, who has to make sure that they do not take that first drink, feels that they actually have the choice, now that they are sober.  Kind of ironic, because there's only one right choice if we want to stay sober.  But now I see that, it was before, when I was drinking, that I truly had no choice.  Alcohol was making all of my choices for me.  I never had the choice whether or not to drink, because I was completely under its control.  Today I have that choice, I just choose not to drink, because I know that one is too many and a thousand aren't enough.