Latest / Sober Readings / Seeking Emotional Stability
Transcript
- Scott Hayes: Good morning, everyone. Welcome back to Sober Readings. Today is Saturday, the twenty second of August. My name is Scott, and I am glad you're here with me today. Let's begin today's episode with the Serenity Prayer. God grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, courage to change the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Today's reading from Daily Reflections Seeking Emotional Stability. When we developed still more, we discovered the best possible source of emotional stability to be God Himself. We found that dependence upon His perfect justice, forgiveness, and love was healthy, and that it would work where nothing else would. If we really depended upon God, we couldn't very well play God to our fellows, nor would we feel the urge wholly to rely on human protection and care. And that's from Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, page one one six. All my life I depended on people for my emotional needs and security, but today I cannot live that way anymore. By the grace of God I have admitted my powerlessness over people, places and things. I had been a real people addict. Wherever I went there had to be someone who would pay some kind of attention to me. It was the kind of attitude that could only get worse because the more I depended on others and demanded attention, the less I received. I had given up believing that any human power can relieve me of that empty feeling. Although I remain a fragile human being who needs to work AA's steps to keep this particular principle before my personality, it is only a loving God who can give me inner peace and emotional stability. Today's reading from twenty four hours a day. August twenty two, AA thought for the day. Those who do not recover are people who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves. There are such unfortunates. They are not at fault. They seem to have been born that way. They are naturally incapable of grasping and developing a manner of living which demands rigorous honesty. Their chances are less than average. There are those too who suffer from grave emotional and mental disorders, but many of them do recover if they have the capacity to be honest. And today's question is Am I completely honest with myself and with other people? And that AA thought for the day is part of how it works. The meditation for the day. You can make use of your mistakes, failures, losses, and sufferings. It is not what happens to you so much as what use you make of it. Take your sufferings, difficulties, and hardships, and make use of them to help some unfortunate soul who is faced with the same troubles. Then something good will come out of your suffering, and the world will be a better place because of it. The good you do each day will live on after the trouble and distress have gone, after the difficulty and the pain have passed away. And today's prayer for the day. I pray that I may make good use of my mistakes and failures. I pray that some good may result from my painful experiences. And for today's final reading, I'm gonna read a story from Forming True Partnerships, How AA members use the program to improve relationships. And this is an AA Grapevine publication. So let's go to chapter two. Chapter two is titled Marriage and Divorce. And this is this story is titled Let's Get a Divorce, with an exclamation point at the end. And it's on page fifty-five of this book. And it was written in January of nineteen seventy-seven. So I made one year, and they weren't lying. Everything was better, just like they said it would be in meeting after meeting. Some of the fear dropped away, the paranoia. I could actually see a cop without having my bowels contract. And I figured if I made another year, I'd try getting involved with the human race again, maybe try answering the phone, going out into the yard. That sort of thing. I mean, I was sick. After the year, I slid for another six months. Making meetings, getting cocky, and it was right about then, with a year and six months that I decided to get a divorce. Just like that, no reason. I have a beautiful wife. She loves me and I love her. She stuck by me through some stuff that well, we all know about those days, don't we? But I decided to get a divorce, decided to make a change. I was sober, so why didn't I just go ahead and fix my whole life up and make it all new? At least I think that's what I was thinking, if I was thinking at all. My wife was surprisingly pleasant. You're out of your gourd, she said, smiling not unkindly. The same smile she'd used when I rediscovered sex, came home with a 160-pound great dane and 26 chickens, learned to practice scream therapy, and bought a six-foot plant that I named Igor. All of which decisive actions were part of my recovery process. She gave me that same smile. You wouldn't last twenty minutes without me. Seriously, I said, I think we should split the blanket. We're living together because of the drunk thing. I'd met her during my drinking days. We should try it another way sober. For a long time she studied me about the way a cobra looks at a bird just before striking. There's nobody else, is there? Well, no. Raquel Welch, maybe, but other than that, no. I shook my head. And I don't think she's available. So what's all this about a divorce? Again, the sharp look. Don't you love me? I nodded. Yep, more than ever. I just think we should make sure we aren't staying married because of the drunk thing. Well, hell, nobody says you have to be smart to be a drunk, right? So I went right ahead and talked myself into a pit. Just like in the old days. When I got done, she gave me that look again, smiled, and said, Alright, let's try an experiment. We'll stay in the same house to save money, but we won't talk. We won't do anything with each other. Just like we were divorced, alright? For the record, I made more than twenty minutes. She was wrong there. I made a lot more than a mere twenty minutes. I made it almost a full day. There are parts of that day I'd like to forget because I don't think it's good for your sobriety to dwell on things that are unpleasant. That night for supper, for instance, I ate a television dinner that was made in 1943 by the Germans, in revenge. How did they get the potatoes like that? Then I went down to wash clothes in a washer designed by a maniac. I swear the damn thing growled at me, and it was just a miracle that I got out of the basement alive. It jumped at me during the spin cycle. But the worst thing was all that stuff that happened during that day that I wanted to talk to somebody about. Not just anybody, but a program person. I mean, we're different, and seemingly ordinary things are different for us. Like a flat tire to a non alcoholic is just that a flat tire. A flat tire to a drunk can mean anything from the air leaking out of the tire to the To a major change in life structure and philosophical leanings, depending on the moon, the phase of sobriety, and whether or not the spare is also flat. Things would happen like that, and I'd turn to tell my wife, my Al Anon, the one who'd ridden the river with me, and now I couldn't talk to her. That was the worst. Not having that other program person around, the other person who would understand, and the more I thought about it, the more I realized that she was right. I was out of my gourd. I cracked about eleven that night. I'd been working on the tire. Yes, the spare was flat too, and I'd spent all day just getting a goddamn tire changed. And I finally got the thing fixed, and I rushed in the house, and there she sat, with that same smile on her face, and I looked at her for a full minute, the whole day's steam building up in me. The hell with it, I cried. And I glommed onto a cup of coffee and sat down across the table from her. See, it was like this. The tire was flat and the spare was down too, and I had to get the spare fixed, then run the regular tire over to get that fixed, and I didn't drink. Of course I talked to my sponsor later, and he told me that I'd simply gone through the great big divorce hassle, apparently common with recovering drunks who decide they should remake their whole lives to conform to the bliss of their newfound sobriety. Everybody does it. But revenge is sweet nonetheless. Alanons always win, of course, but this time I got at least a little even. I made her sit all night listening to me tell her about my day. The washer, the TV dinner, the tire, all of it. And I didn't even notice the smile. And that was written by GP in Elbert, Colorado. And that's gonna do it for today's episode of Sober Readings. I hope you enjoyed that last reading from Forming True Partnerships. If you'd like to help me pass along the message, just click that like and that share button and share this episode with someone you think might like it. And if you'd like to be a guest reader on Sober Readings, I'd love to have you just send me an email at Soberreadingswith Scott at gmail dot com and we can certainly make that happen. If you'd like to drop a dollar in the virtual donation basket for today's readings, just go to my website, soberreadings.com, scroll down a little bit, and find that donate button. So again, thank you so much for listening today. Stay sober, keep reading, and I'll catch you in the next episode. Until then, take care of yourselves and each other. And remember, just for today, don't drink, go to a meeting, and keep coming back. Have a great day, everyone, and as my friend Larry says, best day ever.