Recovery
Meditations: December 2nd
FAITH
I try to avoid looking
forward or backward,
and try to keep
looking upward.
Charlotte Bronte
If only I would remember to keep my focus on God and today,
not yesterday and not tomorrow. The past is just that ... the past. I can't
change any of it, the good memories or the bad. They are just memories. I don't
have to forget my past; I just have to stop hurting myself by constantly
agonizing over what I consider mistakes and failures.
Tomorrow is in God's hands. What better place for it to be!
I have to learn to trust God to hold me in the palm of His hands, the same way
He holds tomorrow. He isn't going to drop me or close His fist around me so
tightly that I can't breathe.
We are all created with the ability to make choices, and He
gives us that freedom. He will hold us securely, and help us make the right
choices, if only we let go and let Him.
One day at a time . .
.
I will forget
yesterday and tomorrow. I will not look backward or forward. I will look up and
put myself in God's care, knowing He will hold me safely in the palm of His
hand.
Debbie K.
**************************************
Each Day A New Beginning
—George Sand
Change is constant. And we are always becoming. Each chance, each feeling, and each responsibility we commit ourselves to adds to the richness of our womanhood. We are not yesterday's woman, today. Our new awarenesses have brought us beyond her. And we can't go back without knowing, somehow, that she no longer meets the needs of today.
We can look forward to our changes, to the older woman we are becoming. She will have the wisdom that we still lack. She will have learned to live and let live. She will have acquired, through years of experiences, a perspective that lends sanity to all situations.
The lessons we are learning today, the pain that overwhelms us now and again, are nurturing the developing woman within each of us. If only we could accept the lessons and master them. If only we could trust the gift of change that accompanies the pain.
I am becoming. And with the becoming, comes peace. I can sense it today. I know where I was yesterday.
From Each Day
a New Beginning: Daily Meditations for Women by Karen Casey © 1982,
1991 by Hazelden Foundation.
Food For Thought
It was often a feeling of guilt, which led us to overeat, and the more we overate, the guiltier we felt. A Fourth Step inventory can pinpoint the reasons for the guilt that we still experience, and by taking the Fifth Step we are able to express and release this guilt.
Some of our guilt feelings are unnecessary. We may experience a sense of guilt when we say no to requests and demands, which infringe on our legitimate rights. We may feel guilty when we do not live up to the expectations of someone close to us. We need to develop a strong sense of self worth so that we do not suffer from guilt at not conforming to someone else's image of who we should be.
Working our program relieves us of unnecessary guilt. When we make amends to those we have in fact injured, we are freed from a heavy burden of real guilt. When we experience confirmation of who we are through contact with our Higher Power, we are liberated from the constraint of imagined guilt.
Show us how to deal with guilt.
From Food for
Thought: Daily Meditations for Overeaters by Elisabeth L. ©1980, 1992
by Hazelden Foundation.
The Language of Letting Go
We cannot afford to put our needs on hold, waiting for another person to fulfill us, make our life better, or come around and be who and what we want that person to be. That will create resentment, hostility, an unhealthy dependency, and a mess to deal with later on.
If we have decided we want a particular relationship or want to wait about making a decision in a particular relationship, then we must go on with our own life in the interim.
That can be hard. It can feel natural to put our life on hold. That is when we get caught up in the codependent beliefs: That person can make me happy... I need that particular person to do a particular thing in order to be happy....
That's a circumstance that can hook our low self-esteem, our self-doubt, and our tendency to neglect ourselves.
We can get into this situation in a number of ways. We can do this waiting for a letter, waiting for a job, waiting for a person, waiting for an event.
We do not have to put our life on hold. There will be repercussions from doing this. Go on with your life. Take life a day at a time.
What is something I could be doing now to take care of myself, make myself feel better, get my needs met in an appropriate, healthy way?
How can I own my power to take care of myself, despite what the other person is or isn't doing?
What will happen if I break the system and begin taking care of myself?
Sometimes, we get the answer we want immediately. Sometimes, we wait for a while. Sometimes, things don't work out exactly the way we hoped. But they always work out for good, and often better than we expected.
And in the meantime, we have manifested love for ourselves by living our own life and taking the control away from others. That always comes back to us tenfold, because when we actually manifest love for ourselves, we give our Higher Power, other people, and the Universe permission to send us the love we want and need. Stopping living our life to make a thing happen doesn't work. All it does is make us miserable, because we have stopped living our life.
Today, I will force myself, if necessary, to live my own life. I will act in my own best interest, in a way that reflects self-love. If I have given power or control of my life to someone other than myself, and someone besides a Power greater than myself, I will take it back. I will begin acting in my own best interests, even if it feels awkward to do that.
From The
Language of Letting Go by Melody Beattie ©1990, Hazelden Foundation.
Today's thought from the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation is:
He that knew all that learning ever writ
Knew only this - that he knew nothing yet.
--Aphra Behn
It's true that the more information we have about the world, the more clearly we see the shape of what we don't know. It's also true that we don't need to learn anything at all in order to deal fairly with others and to walk gently in the world.
The wisdom that we need is inside us. Before our schooling teaches us to forget it, we know instinctively how to treat others because we know how we wish others to treat us, and we know that all people are one.
This primitive knowledge mustn't be buried under the classifications and analyses we pick up along the way. We can, if we try, de-school ourselves to the point where we can listen to our spirits, trust our bodies, and revere the world for the seamless whole it is.
If I cherish my original wisdom, then learning can help me to be comfortable in my ignorance.
He that knew all that learning ever writ
Knew only this - that he knew nothing yet.
--Aphra Behn
It's true that the more information we have about the world, the more clearly we see the shape of what we don't know. It's also true that we don't need to learn anything at all in order to deal fairly with others and to walk gently in the world.
The wisdom that we need is inside us. Before our schooling teaches us to forget it, we know instinctively how to treat others because we know how we wish others to treat us, and we know that all people are one.
This primitive knowledge mustn't be buried under the classifications and analyses we pick up along the way. We can, if we try, de-school ourselves to the point where we can listen to our spirits, trust our bodies, and revere the world for the seamless whole it is.
If I cherish my original wisdom, then learning can help me to be comfortable in my ignorance.
You are reading from the book:
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