Sunday, April 5, 2015

Daily Recovery Readings: April 5th



Recovery Meditations:  April 5, 2015

~ Acceptance ~

Until you make peace with who you are,
you will never be content with what you have.

Doris Mortman



Through abstinence and recovery, I can begin to accept myself. I can pay attention to my likes and my dislikes as I continue to grow and learn about me. Learning about myself is a new adventure. There are so many layers that have been hidden under years of food abuse and weight obsession. Exploring and discovering the new me requires a lot of acceptance. There are parts of me that I do not like, and there are also wonderful surprises. By accepting all parts of myself, I am honoring my Higher Power and demonstrating spiritual recovery.


One Day at a Time . . .
I will accept myself. By learning to accept myself, I will find myself growing in my acceptance of others.

~ Christine S. ~

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Each Day a New Beginning
I came to the conclusion then that "continual mindfulness". . . must mean, not a sergeant-major-like drilling of thoughts, but a continual readiness to look and readiness to accept whatever came.
  —Joanna Field


Resistance to the events, the situations, the many people who come into our lives blocks the growth we are offered every day. Every moment of every day is offering us a gift: the gift of awareness of other persons, awareness of our natural surroundings, awareness of our own personal impact on creation. And in awareness comes our growth as women.

Living in the now, being present in the moment, guarantees us the protection of God. And in the stretches of time when we anxiously anticipate the events of the future, we cheat ourselves of the security God offers us right now.

We are always being taken care of, right here, right now. Being mindful, this minute, of what's happening and only this, eases all anxieties, erases all fears. We only struggle when we have moved our sights from the present moment. Within the now lies all peace.

The most important lesson I have to learn, the lesson that will eliminate all of my pain and struggle, is to receive fully that which is offered in each moment of my life.

From Each Day a New Beginning: Daily Meditations for Women by Karen Casey © 1982, 1991 by Hazelden Foundation.

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Food for Thought
Fears

Do you eat when you are afraid? Many of us do. When we were babies, being fed brought the safety of our mother's arms. As adults, we subconsciously give food a sort of magic ability to ward off real or imagined danger.

There are times when food may serve as a temporary tranquilizer, but overeating prevents us from facing what we fear and learning how to deal with it. Eating compulsively, moreover, usually produces a feeling of guilt and a fear of "getting caught." The fear that we will not be able to stop eating is added to the fear that prompted us to reach for food, and the more we eat, the greater our fears.

Many of our fears are groundless and irrational. Through contact with our Higher Power, we are given the sanity, which causes them to disappear. Those fears that remain are often the result of the self-centeredness, which prevents us from turning our lives completely over to God. When we give Him absolute control, we have nothing to fear.

May I love You enough to let go of my fears. 

From Food for Thought: Daily Meditations for Overeaters by Elisabeth L. ©1980, 1992 by Hazelden Foundation

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The Language of Letting Go
Detaching in Love

Detachment is a key to recovery from codependency. It strengthens our healthy relationships - the ones that we want to grow and flourish. It benefits our difficult relationships - the ones that are teaching us to cope. It helps us!

Detachment is not something we do once. It's a daily behavior in recovery. We learn it when were beginning our recovery from codependency and adult children issues. And we continue to practice it along the way as we grow and change, and as our relationships grow and change.

We learn to let go of people we love, people we like, and those we don't particularly care for. We separate ourselves, and our process, from others and their process.

We relinquish our tight hold and our need to control in our relationships. We take responsibility for ourselves; we allow others to do the same. We detach with the understanding that life is unfolding exactly as it needs to, for others and ourselves. The way life unfolds is good, even when it hurts. And ultimately, we can benefit from even the most difficult situations. We do this with the understanding that a Power greater than ourselves is in charge, and all is well.

Today, I will apply the concept of detachment, to the best of my ability, in my relationships. If I cant let go completely, I'll try to hang on loose. 

From The Language of Letting Go by Melody Beattie ©1990, Hazelden Foundation.


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Today's thought from Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation is:

Reflection for the Day

The Program is a road, not a resting place. Before we came to The Program - and, for some of us, many times afterward - most of us looked for answers to our living problems in religion, philosophy, psychology, self-help groups, and so on. Invariably, these fields held forth the goals that were precisely what we wanted; they offered freedom, calm, confidence and joy. But there was one major loophole: They never gave us a workable method of getting there. They never told us how to get from where we were to where we were supposed to be. Do I truly believe that I can find everything that I need and really want through the Twelve Steps?

Today I Pray

May I know that, once through the Twelve Steps, I am not on a plane surface. For life is not a flat field, but a slope upward. And those flights of steps must be taken over and over and remembered. May I be sure that once I have made them totally familiar to me, they will take me anywhere I want to go.

Today I Will Remember

The Steps are a road, not a resting place.
You are reading from the book:

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