Daily Recovery Readings: March 8th

Recovery Meditations: March 8th


~ FEELINGS ~
We honor ourselves and our friends
when we can tell them how we feel.
Theodore Isaac Rubin 

I always felt that if I didn't rob a bank or tell a lie that I was being honest. But when I began working the Twelve Steps, I learned what honesty really meant. Expressing my negative thoughts and feelings in the fast-moving world I found myself caused problems ... or I imagined it would. Therefore, I tried to pretend everything was wonderful and right and perfect.

One of the great blessings of my life is to know that I can now "feel" my emotions, express them to others who understand and somehow always feel better for having done so. Of course, I am still selective in choosing to whom I express my deepest feelings, but I do not pretend anymore that things are right when they're wrong. I do not gloss over bad things and make them good.

One day at a time...
I feel my feelings and express them honestly, knowing that they're neither right nor wrong ... and I rejoice at the feeling of freedom I experience when I allow my emotions to flow from me.

~ Mari ~

******************************

Each Day A New Beginning

To create is to boggle the mind and alter the mood. Once the urge has surged, it maintains its own momentum. We may go along for the ride, but when we attempt to steer the course, the momentum dies.
  —Sue Atchley Ebaugh
A sense of spiritual well-being warms us when we are selfless, when we step away from our obsessing egos, when we let our pure, unfettered desires direct our thoughts and our steps. Our egos may be keeping us caged in old behavior, old fears. Egos struggle for self-preservation; unfortunately, it's our old, unhealthy self the ego is preserving.

The Steps make it possible for us to unload our baggage from earlier days, baggage that intrudes on our perceptions of today's events. The Steps clear the path so we can move responsibly forward.

Living creatively is living in the thick of the flow, trusting the flow, spontaneously moving with the flow, not controlling the flow. We are Spirit-full when we let ourselves roll forward, resisting not, doubting not. And our greatest contributions will be discovered when our ego takes a rest.

My creativity awaits my discovery. It's there. I will release it from the clutches of my ego.

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

---

Food For Thought

"Normal" Eating

The idea that we will one day be able to eat spontaneously, like normal people, is a delusion. We compulsive overeaters tend to think that once we lose our excess pounds, we can go back to "normal" eating. Not so.

It is our experience that once a compulsive overeater, always a compulsive overeater. There is no way we will ever be able to eat spontaneously without eventually getting into trouble. When we reach our desired weight, we continue to eat three measured meals a day with nothing in between, and we continue to avoid entirely our personal binge foods.

When we accept our permanent need to abstain, when we accept the fact that we can never return to what we thought was normal eating, then we can stop making irrational attempts at experimentation which always fail. By accepting our disease and learning to live with it, we become sane and free. We see that our new eating plan is really very normal. It was the old compulsive overeating habit which was abnormal in the extreme.

Thank you, Lord, for sanity. 

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

---

The Language of Letting Go

Surrender

Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God, as we understood Him.
—Step Three of Al-Anon

Surrendering to a Power greater than ourselves is how we become empowered.

We become empowered in a new, better, more effective way than we believed possible.

Doors open. Windows open. Possibilities occur. Our energy becomes channeled, at last, in areas and ways that work for us. We become in tune with the Plan for our life and our place in the Universe.

And there is a Plan and Place for us. We shall see that. We shall know that. The Universe will open up and make a special place for us, with all that we need provided.

It will be good. Understand that it is good, now.

Learning to own our power will come, if we are open to it. We do not need to stop at powerlessness and helplessness. That is a temporary place where we re-evaluate where we have been trying to have power when we have none.

Once we surrender, it is time to become empowered.

Let the power come, naturally. It is there. It is ours.

Today, I will be open to understanding what it means to own my power. I will accept powerlessness where I have no power; I will also accept the power that is mine to receive. 

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

---

**********************

Today's thought from the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation is:

Love it the way it is.
--Thaddeus Colas

It's easy to love people who are like us, who may have been raised the same way, educated the same way, share the same values, or have had many of the same experiences. It's not as easy to love people who seem different. But if we are to fulfill God's plan for us, we should try.

It's not easy, either, to love the way we feel sometimes, or the unpleasant things that happen to us. But, like the people who are "different" from us, even our negative feelings need to be loved. Our fears, frustrations, pain, boredom, despair - these are part of us and they oftentimes have a greater purpose.

We may not think it's possible to love how we feel, but we can make the decision to love everything about ourselves - and then we can see what happens. We may not know God's purpose, but we may understand better if we learn to love ourselves the way we are.

I don't know God's plan for me, but I accept myself and others in love.

You are reading from the book:

In God's Care by Karen Casey