Alcoholics Anonymous Blog December 29 2014 "Freedom To Choose”
Monday morning and I started the day with a great meeting, seeing people I know and am getting to know better. A great friend sat next to me, we have a few years between us and yet we learn just what it is like to be a newcomer in recovery pretty much every single day. And the gratitude for newcomers is absolutely true. We need every single person from the first moment we encounter them, it is always the many voices in Fellowship from day one to infinity that keeps me sober one day at a time.
The venue for the meeting had moved just a short distance from its usual location. And we were quite unprepared, but as luck would have it, people had literature and bits and pieces to keep the meeting on track and sharing about step ten. And everyone, or nearly everyone shared their experience strength and hope, of Christmas and what is happening towards New Year. Step ten, and the spot check inventory, coupled with gratitude for our new outlook one day at a time; we may not always be free and joyful, and at the same time, those painful moments are less painful as we learn all the lessons of life experience in the moment of now.
So beautifully shared, by everyone having a go at reading, and I stumbled over some words because I am out of practice speaking aloud over the last week. Brain going a bit too fast to read aloud, I needed to stop take a breath and start again. I am never ashamed when I cannot read out loud, because there is no shame in trying, and there is no shame in stumbling over words which I know so well and yet find it difficult to speak them out. A good lesson in slowing down to speaking pace in the moment of now. I could blame my dyslexia, I tend not to blame anything, simply take a breath and read more slowly from the page to fit the pace at which I speak. Understanding the text is what counts and it is very therapeutic to listen to others reading the words from step ten.
I've been cooking this morning, and posted a video of cooking in recovery, and at the same time pondering on step ten. My five-day stew is now in the oven, on a slow cook for a couple of hours. Experimentation in recovery, from cooking to dealing with the hardest problems in life, always brings me to a place of gratitude when I can have gratitude, and even when life is difficult, the serenity prayer: what I can do, and what I cannot do always leads to wisdom if I am open honest and willing to accept reality as it is. And sometimes reality is so difficult, denial is necessary until balance can be restored through time. This Christmas has been good, in contact with family, sometimes daily and also with the good fortune of another in the family in recovery, so it's not only me, one day at a time.
Step Twelve Reading 12 & 12
Alcoholics Anonymous Videos, AA is for Alcoholics, AA 12 Steps, Addiction And Recovery, DonInLondon, Don Oddy,
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