Latest / Sober Readings / I Ask God To Decide
Transcript
- Scott Hayes: Hey everyone, welcome back to Sober Readings. Today is Thursday, the 23rd of July. 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. I ask God to decide. I pray that you now remove from me every single defect of character which stands in the way of my usefulness to you and my fellows. And that is also on page seventy six of the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. So that's the second line of the seventh step prayer. Having admitted my powerlessness and made a decision to turn my will and my life over to the care of God as I understand him, I don't decide which defects get removed, or the order in which defects get removed, or the time frame in which they get removed. I ask God to decide which defects stand in the way of my usefulness to him and to others, and then I humbly ask him to remove them. Today's reading from twenty four hours, july twenty three, AA Thought for the Day. We should remember that all AAs have clay feet. We should not set any member upon a pedestal and mark her or him as a perfect AA. It's not fair to the person to be singled out in this fashion, and if the person is wise, she or he will not wish it. If the person we single out as an ideal AA has a fall, we are in danger of falling too. Without exception, we are all only one drink away from a drunk. No matter how long we have been in AA, nobody is entirely safe. AA itself should be an ideal, not any particular member of it. So ask yourself, am I putting my trust in AA principles and not in any one member of the group? Today's meditation for the day. The inward peace that comes from trust in God truly passes all understanding. That peace no one can take from you. No person has the power to disturb that inner peace. But you must be careful not to let in the world worries and distractions. You must try not to give entrance to fears and despondency. You must refuse to open the door to distractions that disturb your inward peace. Make it a point to allow nothing today to disturb your inner peace, your heart calm. And today's prayer for the day. I pray that I may not allow those about me to spoil my peace of mind. I pray that I may keep a deep inner calm throughout the day. Today's meditation from Touchstone. He that to what he sees adds observation and to what he reads reflection is in the right road to knowledge. That's a quote from Charles Caleb Colton. We are not just feathers blown on the winds of a powerless life. We bring ourselves to our experiences. The dynamics of learning include first what happens, what we see or read or hear, and second, what we make of it. So, in our observations and reflections, we consider what an event means to us. As men in a spiritual program, we need some time to think and reflect. That is, we need time away from the phone, away from interruptions and work, where we can let ourselves learn and grow from our experiences. Some men get that by leaving the radio off while driving alone. Others get it on the bus, others light a candle in a quiet room at home and meditate. In this way, we are conscious and aware of what is happening in our lives, and we bring our wisdom to it. Through time, we deepen and grow stronger as we grow older rather than only accumulating more experiences. Today I will reflect on the meaning of my experiences and bring my wisdom to them. And for today's final reading, I'm going to read a short story from Forming True Partnerships. How AA members use the program to improve relationships and again this is an AA grapevine publication. So on page one five four, this is from chapter six, which is Pets and Animals. This is titled Puppy Love and it was written in February of two thousand three. One of the greatest gifts of my sobriety has been the ability to do things I could never have done as a practicing alcoholic. I've just returned from my veterinarian's office where my whole family gathered to put our dog, Alex, to sleep. For anyone with a pet, this kind of death is traumatic. As a recovering alcoholic, there's more to it for me than that. Nearly thirteen years ago, Alex became the first demonstration in my life of the twelfth step that we practice these principles in all our affairs. Alex was the answer to the question, would I ever be able to do more than shuffle from meeting to meeting and puzzle out this blueprint for living within the rooms of AA? Neither my wife nor I were looking for a dog when Alex, astray, came to us. We were barely beginning to wonder, bleary-eyed, who we had married back in the throes of our addictions. I was seven months sober, and Alex was the first real change I made in my newfound life after alcohol. The routine of feeding, walking, and caring for another living being was the first baby step toward outward change that I was able to take. From the beginning, Alex was a symbol of my strengthening recovery and the presence of a loving higher power in my life. For years, my wife and I joked to our AA and Al-Anon friends that Alex was proof that we could be good to any children that God chose to place in our care. For the first decade of sobriety, When our higher power said, not yet, again and again to children, Alex was our child. As he grew older, caring for him taught me many lessons that later proved so beneficial when God finally did bless us with two beautiful daughters. I learned the importance of constancy, of companionship, of love that demands no return. I learned to express joy, to persevere even when it seemed impossible, and most important, I learned to laugh. As a practicing alcoholic, I missed the opportunity to experience the good and the bad that life had to offer in so many relationships of much greater importance before Alex arrived. Alex taught me how to live those emotions in a caring, productive, and nurturing relationship that allowed me to try on my new sober principles before I was put to the test with a crying newborn or a questioning two-year-old. I can't tell you how many times in the rooms I've heard the drunkologue about kicking the cat or abusing the dog, and thought to myself thank you, God, that I did not do that. Or how many times I heard the same drunkalogue about a damaged child, and said to myself, Thank you, God, that caring for Alex taught me I do not have to do that. In his last few years, Alex grew old and frail. He climbed stairs slowly and with pain. His eyes were those of the old, grey and opaque. He heard and saw less. An inevitable end, one likely I would have missed or failed to fully experience if I were still drinking, lay clearly ahead. This too was one of the gifts of sobriety. After years of joy and love, my wife and I had to make the painful decision that our beautiful dog's quality of life was so poor that death was a better choice. Alex's death reinforced for me that So many of the principles of this program that govern my life today. Today, as an alcoholic who not only doesn't drink anymore, but depends upon a higher power and Alcoholics Anonymous for guidance, I can make the most difficult decisions. Today, as an alcoholic who strives to practice these principles outside the rooms as well as in, I can be there for my family in a difficult time. Today, as an alcoholic who can actually think about people other than himself, I can make the healthy choice to gently and lovingly introduce my two young daughters to one of the most important and defining events in life, death. And today, in remembering my beloved Alex, I can try as he did, even on his last morning, to live as we all hope we can, one day at a time, with a focus on a moment at hand, with no regret of the past or any wish to shut the door on me. That was written by Paul F in Wexford, Pennsylvania. So thank you, Paul, for sharing that story with us. I can relate to that. I've had to put a dog down in sobriety, and it is a very hard thing to do. And I don't think I would have been able to do it or go through it or feel the emotions had I been drinking at the time. And that's also the case with so many other big life events that I've had to go through in sobriety. And thank God that I've been sober to go through them. Because feeling the emotions is so much better than numbing them with drugs and alcohol. So that's gonna do it for today's episode of Sober Readings. I hope you enjoyed the show. If you did, do me a huge favor and hit that like button and share and also subscribe. And if you'd like to be a guest reader on Sober Readings, send me an email at soberreadingswithscott at gmail.com. And also if you'd like to drop a dollar in today's virtual donation basket, just go to my website, soberreadings.com, and click the donate button. So again, thank you so much for listening. Stay sober, keep reading, and I'll see 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.