Psalm 27:8
When thou saidst, Seek ye my face; my heart said unto thee, Thy face, Lord, will I seek.
Philippians 4:7
And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.
Jeremiah 29:13
And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart.
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My Prayer for the Day
"Heavenly Father-Let me always be reminded that ANY and ALL worry, obsession over others, and too much of anything-is a detraction from you and from my primary purpose. That this is a tactic used by evil that is deliberate- and by design specific to me, meant to drive my off course.
Father, it's a given that my life improves once I stop drinking and rid myself of the defects and purge the garbage of my soul-BUT, that ultimate goal was always to find You and then to work for You.
All the other "stuff" you let me keep and allow me to do-is a bonus. The people you allowed to still be in my life has nothing to do with me. They could and probably should have left me. Let me not take them for granted with selfish demands, let me not drain them with my behaviors, thoughts and ridiculous demands that I wouldn't want put upon me. Let me go to a fellow in AA and to You Father and not use people as a sounding board anymore. Father, make me a asset, not a liability to them.
Father-forgive me when I get distracted by worldly things or self imposed crisis. Let me not give power to the things that my mind tries to convince me is important...give me the eyes to see and the ears to hear through the false, through the lies, and through the noise...Father-let me not make this life harder than it has to be. In Jesus name-Amen."
Today’s action
- Today I will not bury my head in the sand-If something keeps looping back and around I will look at it square in the face. I will directly ask God..."what are you trying to show me Father..."What do I need to hear that I am avoiding?" Father grant me the courage to hear what I might not want to hear. Father grant me the courage to face what I might not want to face.
"Father grant me the willingness to confront all the darkness inside so that Your light may enter and clear this repetitive go to looping nonsense once and for all!!!"
2 Corinthians 8:12
For if there be first a willing mind, it is accepted according to that a man hath, and not according to that he hath not.
6th STEP
God help me become willing to let go of all the things to which I still cling. Help me to be ready to let You remove all of these defects, that Your will and purpose may take their place. AMEN
(p. 76 BB)
7th STEP
"I humbly offered myself to God, as I then understood Him, to do with me as He would. I placed myself unreservedly under His care and direction. I admitted for the first time that of myself I was nothing; that without Him I was lost. I ruthlessly faced my sins and became willing to have my new-found Friend take them away, root and branch."
(p. 13)
"My Creator, I am now willing that you should have all of me, good and bad. 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. Grant me strength, as I go out from here, to do your bidding. Amen."
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Podcast of he Day
Marion W. 2nd Session Winter 2018 Step Series
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12 x 12 on Step 6
“Were entirely ready to have God remove
all these defects of character.”
"What we must recognize now is that we exult in some of our defects. We really love them. Who, for example, doesn't like to feel just a little superior to the next fellow, or even quite a lot superior? Isn't it true that we like to let greed masquerade as ambition? To think of liking lust seems impossible. But how many men and women speak love with their lips, and believe what they say, so that they can hide lust in a dark corner of their minds? And even while staying within conventional bounds, many people have to admit that their imaginary sex excursions are apt to be all dressed up as dreams of romance."
"Self-righteous anger also can be very enjoyable. In a perverse way we can actually take satisfaction from the fact that many people annoy us, for it brings a comfortable feeling of superiority. Gossip barbed with our anger, a polite form of murder by character assassination, has its satisfactions for us, too. Here we are not trying to help those we criticize; we are trying to proclaim our own righteousness. When gluttony is less than ruinous, we have a milder word for that, too; we call it “taking our comfort.” We live in a world riddled with envy. To a greater or less degree, everybody is infected with it. From this defect we must surely get a warped yet definite satisfaction. Else why would we consume such great amounts of time wishing for what we have not, rather than working for it, or angrily looking for attributes we shall never have, instead of adjusting to the fact, and accepting it? And how often we work hard with no better motive than to be secure and slothful later on—only we call that “retiring.” Consider, too, our talents for procrastination, which is really sloth in five syllables. Nearly anyone could submit a good list of such defects as these, and few of us would seriously think of giving them up, at least until they cause us excessive misery."
"Some people, of course, may conclude that they are in-deed ready to have all such defects taken from them. But even these people, if they construct a list of still milder defects, will be obliged to admit that they prefer to hang on to some of them. Therefore, it seems plain that few of us can quickly or easily become ready to aim at spiritual and moral perfection; we want to settle for only as much perfection as will get us by in life, according, of course, to our various and sundry ideas of what will get us by. So the difference between “the boys and the men” is the difference between striving for a self-determined objective and for the perfect objective which is of God."
Hil's blah
To be "willing" to give up all the defects that I had come to perceive made me who "I" was isn't easy. I liked that I was a shocking, quick wit, fowl mouth smart ass with a dry sense of humor. I liked that I could steam roll anyone in a debate. I liked that I was hyper sexual. I liked that I got a rush from juggling men. All these defects were my way to feel somewhat "in control". That's the lie. I wasn't in control. I was an actor. If I could convince myself that I was somehow better than you, then I would have to look at what I was actually doing.
I justified my grossness by what I saw everyone on TV or in Hollywood doing. I know that sounds silly BUT-it's truth. I was weak in spirit and easily influenced without knowing it. Around 2004 and on, there was a serious shift in not only my life sexually, but in other women around me. Every women I worked with, was friends with-even family members, started to act out in ways sexually that they normally wouldn't have. I was talking to my boyfriend about this. His ex wife had cheated on him around this same time. A boyfriend before him, same. I got to thinking about it and what was going on in our society around this time...why were the women doing this crap? Well, look what we were watching..Shows like Sex and the City. Desperate Housewives. Movies that were glorifying cheating and having sex with younger men. Cougar Town....Demi Moore and her young dude...etc.
If I sound "consepicey"- I don't care. We have to look at this. We have to stop acting like we are not influenced by the stuff we take in. Just like alcohol...anything we take into our bodies..via the eyes, ears, can be equally if not more toxic an actual substance. Once I shut off my TV, disconnected from facebook, and stopped feeding my soul the vile shit that is out there through these "mediums", I could heal on a whole other level. Bombarded with ads telling me that I am fat or that I am not good enough because I don't have this car or this new phone or that my man doesn't look like him....Not to mention the disgusting way they portray men. Either as buffoons or overly feminized. Men have been destroyed by this. I pray we all unplug from our stupid phones and start going outside for walks. I pray that we stop comparing our life to people that we went to high school with. I pray that we stop putting unrealistic fairy tail demands on men and stop forcing them to be chicks. I pray for the future of the male and female...as the agenda seems to be making it almost impossible for us to be seperate genders.
Deuteronomy 22:5
The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman's garment: for all that do so are abomination unto the Lord thy God.
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Big Book
More About Alcoholism Continued...
"Though there is no way of proving it, we believe that early in our drinking careers most of us could have stopped drinking. But the difficulty is that few alcoholics have enough desire to stop while there is yet time. We have heard of a few instances where people, who showed definite signs of alcoholism, were able to stop for a long period because of an overpowering desire to do so. Here is one.
A man of thirty was doing a great deal of spree drinking. He was very nervous in the morning after these bouts and quieted himself with more liquor. He was ambitious to succeed in business, but saw that he would get nowhere if he drank at all. Once he started, he had no control whatever. He made up his mind that until he had been successful in business and had retired, he would not touch another drop. An exceptional man, he remained bone dry for twenty-five years and retired at the age of fifty-five, after a successful and happy business career. Then he fell victim to a belief which practically every alcoholic has —that his long period of sobriety and self-discipline had qualified him to drink as other men. Out came his carpet slippers and a bottle. In two months he was in a hospital, puzzled and humiliated. He tried to regulate his drinking for a while, making several trips to the hospital meantime. Then, gathering all his forces, he attempted to stop altogether and found he could not. Every means of solving his problem which money could buy was at his disposal. Every attempt failed. Though a robust man at retirement, he went to pieces quickly and was dead within four years."
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AA History
LETS ASK BILL W. Q&A NO.5
Question:
When you first sobered up how did you approach alcoholics and did you change that approach?
Answer:
I took off to cure alcoholics wholesale. It was twin jet propulsion; difficulties meant nothing. The vast conceit of my project never occurred to me. I pressed my assault for six months; my home was filled with alcoholics. Harangues with scores produced not the slightest result. None of them got it. Disappointingly, my friend of the kitchen table, who was sicker than I realized, took little interest in other alcoholics. This fact may have caused his endless backslides later on. For I had found that working with alcoholics had a huge bearing on my own sobriety. But why wouldn't any of my new prospects sober up?
Slowly the bugs came to light. Like a religious crank, I was obsessed with the idea that everybody must have a "spiritual experience" just like mine. I'd forgotten that there were many varieties. So my brother alcoholics just stared incredulously or kidded me about my "hot flash." This had spoiled the potent identification so easy to get with them. I had turned evangelist. Clearly the deal had to be streamlined. What came to me in six minutes might require six months in others. It was to be learned that words are things, that one must be prudent. It was also certain that something ailed the deflationary technique. It definitely lacked wallop. Reasoning that the alcoholic's "hex" or compulsion must issue from some deep level, it followed that ego deflation must also go deep or else there couldn't be any fundamental release. Apparently religious practice would not touch the alcoholic until his underlying situation was made ready. Fortunately, all the tools were right at hand. You doctors supplied them.
The emphasis was shifted from "sin" to "sickness" - the "fatal malady," alcoholism. We quoted doctors that alcoholism was more lethal than cancer; that it consisted of an obsession of the mind coupled to increasing body sensitivity. These were our twin ogres of madness and death. We leaned heavily on Dr. Jung's statement of how hopeless the condition could be and then poured that devastating dose into every drunk within range. To modern man science is omnipotent; it is a god. Hence if science could pass a death sentence on a drunk, and we placed that verdict on our alcoholic transmission, it might shatter him completely. Perhaps he would then turn to the God of the theologian, there being no place else to go. Whatever the truth in this device, it certainly had practical merit. Immediately our whole atmosphere changed. Things began to look up. (Amer. J. Psychiat., Vol.106, 1949)