April 16 - Amends

One of the guys I sponsor came over to my house to get his steps 8 and 9 started. So we said a little prayer and I grabbed the big book, turned to page 76 and read, "We have a list of all persons we have harmed and are willing to make amends. We made it when we took inventory."

My guy got this worried look on his face and said, "Uh-oh."

I turned to him and said, "What's wrong?"

He gives me one of those guilty looks. "I was in a meeting a few months ago and this guy said that after he did step 5, he burned his inventory. I didn't burn mine though. I buried it in North Carolina."

We live in Canada.

I closed the book and told him to rewrite his inventory. He wasn't too happy about doing that, but he did do it. - excerpt High Road To Freedom

If I drove drunk over your picket fence, I could knock on your door, tell you about it, and apologize, or I could show up with wood, nails, and a hammer, and fix the damn fence.

April 1 - Snowballs

 It's no secret that I've been unhappy at my job lately. I don't like the hours. I work every weekend and that makes it impossible for me to attend many of the events that I like to go to. And there's just a bunch of little things........

Anyway, Sunday morning I'm sitting outside having a smoke. One of the owners is coming home from working the back shift at a job he has said that he doesn't like. He sees me, big smile and wave and a good morning Bernie. I smile and wave back and good morning to you (and I call him by name).

Tonight I came to work. There was a xmas card here for me from another tenant, a young lady who also smiles and says hello and sometimes we engage in mild chit chat.

Getting the card was nice but what was even nicer was what she wrote inside the card. Thanks for all that you do. It's always nice to see your smile.

Sometimes a bunch of little annoying things can become one big annoying thing, like a snowball rolling down the mountain can become an avalanche. But sometimes a few simple pleasant things can change your perspective. And sometimes it takes a while to see the good things, like rolling a snowball up a small slope to make a snowman.

I'm still looking around for another job but I'm not so unhappy now.

April 15 - Open-Minded

My sponsor had always told me to keep an open mind when it came to spiritual matters. When I first came around, I did not believe in God. I did not want to believe and I did not care if you believed as long as you did your believing someplace else. Sometimes, I would leave the meeting if another member started talking about God. But, this last time, I was more desperate. I had obviously missed the magic before. So, when I was in a meeting and a member said the word God in his or her share, I stayed. I often had to hold on to my seat so I wouldn't run away. I noticed something I had not noticed before. People would often mention the word God in their share but they very rarely talked about God. And where before I had missed out on everything else they said, now I began to hear the message, to hear the magic.

April 14 - Willingness

Willingness is defined as the quality or state of being prepared to do something. I remember hearing the following as a topic for a discussion meeting. What's the difference between being willing and being ready. I listened to the ensuing discussion and when it came to me, I pointed out that willingness and readiness are synonyms. In our literature, in a passage from Chapter 5 in the book Alcoholics Anonymous, it says “if you have decided you want what we have and are willing to go to any lengths to get it, then you are ready to take certain steps.” So, if you are willing, then you are ready. And, if we didn't get that the first time it was mentioned, in that same book, during the discussion on Step Seven, it goes on to say...”When ready, we say something like this, My Creator, I am now willing .....” So, if you are ready, you are willing.

Don't take my word for it. It's in the book.

 

April 13 - Service

A twelfth step call is when one or two seasoned members of Alcoholics Anonymous carry the message of hope to someone who thinks he or she may have a drinking problem. According to one of our co-founders, service work is anything that makes a twelfth step call possible. Whether I am the member making the twelfth step call, or the member chairing a meeting, or making the coffee, or serving on the literature committee, or answering the AA phones, or greeting people at the door, I am doing service work. And although I may not always be the member making the twelfth step call, I am always the member making the twelfth step call possible.

April 12 - Depression

 I do not suffer from clinical depression, however there are days when I do not want to get out of bed and face the world. Especially if the weather is cloudy for days at a time. I think that is called seasonal affective disorder, SAD for short. Whenever I find myself not wanting to get out of bed or not wanting to go outside, that's when I have to force myself to get up, have a shower, do the dishes or the laundry, go for a walk, check the mail, anything that will get me moving and active. Usually, about half into these activities, I'll start to feel better and realize that I was depressed.

April 11 - Fear

 In the book Alcoholics Anonymous, fear has been called “an evil and corroding thread; the fabric of our existence was shot through with it. “

In my own case, I drank because I was afraid, afraid that people wouldn't like me the way I was. Alcohol changed me into a person I thought other people would approve of, but ironically, I became less likeable.

As time progressed, again fear caused me to drink more, only now it was fear of things I had done or fear of what I had become. In the end, it was as the book Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions says....”self-centered fear. A fear that I would either lose what I possessed or fail to get what I demanded.”

As with anger, I needed only to turn to a power greater than myself and ask that Power to remove my fear and to direct me to those I could help. Because I trusted and relied upon my higher power, I began to lose my fears and they were later replaced by actions of a positive, helping nature.

Today, I only have fear when I begin to lose my faith.

April 9 - Denial

 

Denial has been called Don't Even No I Am Lying. Denying to others and to ourselves that we are powerless over alcohol and that our lives are unmanageable is ironically the chief symptom of a problem that we claim not to have. Denial was an interesting word to define my behavior since what I was really doing was outright lying. I would lie to my spouse that I had more than two drinks on the way home from work and I would lie to my friends that I had only had two drinks at the party because anyone that would engage in the insanity I chose to call having a good time must have had ten drinks. I lied all the time. I lied so much that I could not differentiate the true from the false. I did not even know I was lying.

April 10 - Anger

 

Anger has been called “the dubious luxury of normal men”. The word dubious means under suspicion or untrustworthy, not to be relied upon. Our literature says that for alcoholics, things like anger are poison. Usually, my own anger was unjustified. I often suspected people in my life of doing things or saying things that they had not done or said. But, “the wrongdoings of others, fancied or real, had the power to kill.” So, it didn't matter if people had truly screwed me or if I just thought they had, the result was the same.

So, it was important for me to be free of anger. But, how can I do that. I have found that a good way to begin to do that is to place my trust, my reliance, upon something not dubious, in this case upon a power greater than my own.

To quote the book Alcoholics Anonymous, pg 66-67, “This was our course: We realized that the people who wronged us were perhaps spiritually sick. Though we did not like their symptoms and the way these disturbed us, they, like ourselves, were sick too. We asked God to help us show them the same tolerance, pity, and patience that we would cheerfully grant a sick friend.”

April 8 - Monkey Fist

There was a rare monkey in Madagascar and the local natives were having trouble catching this monkey. Apparently, monkey brains are a delicate meal there. Anyway, the natives came up with a plan to catch this monkey.

They knew he liked peanuts. So they got a coconut gourd, carved a hole big enough for the monkey to put his paw inside, cleaned all the junk out of the gourd and put the peanuts inside. Then they tied the gourd to the ground where the monkey would see it and hid in the bushes with their knives and machetes.

Sure enough, the monkey spied the gourd, sniffed out the peanuts and thought with his little monkey brain, I'm getting me some of them peanuts. So he reached into the gourd and grabbed a handful of those yummy peanuts.

Now the hunters attacked. The monkey saw them coming with their spears and machetes and he tried to escape. But now his paw was clenched like a fist around those peanuts and he couldn't get it out. He knew the hunters would catch him and kill him, but he didn't want to give up those peanuts.

I don't know what happened to that monkey. I knew I better go to a meeting because I was holding on to some peanuts of my own and I knew if I didn't let go of them, I was going to die too.

April 7 - Acceptance

 My sponsor and I went to a meeting a few days ago. One of the topics for discussion was Acceptance. I suggested they try the 12 steps. They were the solution to all my problems.

On the drive home, we talked and I pointed out that acceptance is the basic principle of each step. Other principles embedded in the steps are honesty and humility, but acceptance is the underlying one.

Look at Step 1. "We admitted we were powerless over alcohol - that our lives had become unmanageable." I always get a kick out of those shares that start with, "Well I can admit that I'm powerless but I don't think I've accepted it yet......" Accept is a synonym of surrender. Admit is a synonym of surrender. So is concede, decide, come to terms with, etc. So, it's the same thing said using a different word. I know in one of our books it says that the underlying principle of the first step is that we shall find no strength until we first admit complete defeat. - Surrender.

In step 2, it says, "Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity." Surrender/acceptance again.

In step 3, "We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him." That sounds like acceptance to me.

In Step 4, we "Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves." Acceptance again. After all, what's the point of making an inventory, of searching out and coming to terms with our defects of character, if we're not going to use it.

In Step 5, we "Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs." We already know that to admit and to accept means the same thing.

Again, in step 6, we "Were entirely ready to have God remove our defects of character." We developed this degree of readiness by surrender of our ego, by acceptance.

Further, in step 7, we "Humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings." We wouldn't do that unless we had surrendered to, unless we had accepted that he would.

And it continues throughout all the steps. When Little Johnny told his teacher he was having difficulty with math, she gave him math homework.

If you're having difficulty with the practice of acceptance, with the practice of humility, or with the practice of honesty, do your homework. Work the steps. That's what they're for.

April 6 - Humility

In February of 2016, the organization I do volunteer work with received a certificate of appreciation from the Mik'maw Native Friendship Centre. In April of that year, my wife and I received an award from the Province in recognition of volunteer work we do. In November of that year we were nominated as Halifax Heroes in a local newspaper and the following year we received Canada 150 awards from the Government of Canada.

We do not do the volunteer work we do to get recognition. We do it because there is a need for it to be done. Getting recognition is a side effect. Many years ago, I placed my will and my life into the care of God as I understand God. So, we are doing, as it is said, God's work. I am ever mindful that any success I experience today is far greater His success than mine.

That keeps me humble.

April 3 - One Day At a Time

Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. When I first tried to stop drinking, I tried to do it for the rest of my life which, I hoped, would be a long time. It was too large a chunk of time. It was suggested to me, by seasoned AA members, to just try to stay sober for one day and if when I woke up the following day I wanted to try it again, I could do it again, for one day. Eventually, the days became a week and the weeks became a month, the months became a year and now the years have become decades.

My wife tells a story about a pot of spaghetti sauce. She had made it in a large pot and during the evening she taste tested it a little at a time. When the evening was over, she had finished the whole pot. She knows if she had sat down with a spoon and tried to eat the whole pot, she never could have done it, but a little bit at a time, no problem.

Show me the stairway I have to climb. Lord, for my sake, teach me to take one day at a time.

April 2 - Honesty

 We found we had to concede to our innermost selves that we were alcoholic. This is the first step in recovery from alcoholism. - Alcoholics Anonymous, pg. 30

Honesty with others is as necessary to our continued recovery as is honesty with ourselves. We learn this through the fourth and fifth steps of our program.