Today's Thought - April

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April 16

To show great love for God and our neighbor, we need not do great things.

~Mother Teresa

We don't have to invent a cure for cancer or lift the burdens of a friend to prove our worth to other people. Being considerate of someone's feelings is quite enough, and it is something any of us can do. It takes only a moment's thought and the willingness to treat others as we'd like them to treat us. The real blessing is that we feel much better each time our heart guides our actions.

Loving others is perhaps the simplest of all actions we can take in this life. It requires no planning, no money, no muscle power, no problem solving. It's a simple decision we can make daily or hourly. Every person we encounter, every situation we face, is an opportunity for us to hone the skill. And every loving act or thought makes the world a better place.

It's human nature to treat others as we are treated. If each of us becomes willing to offer the hand of love to someone else today, we will indeed have done a great thing!

I can make a worthwhile contribution today. I can be kind to a stranger.

Today's reading is from the book A Woman's Spirit: More meditations for Women*

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April 17

Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a stroke of good luck.

~H. Jackson Brown Jr.

Managing desires is one of the most crucial elements of being an adult. Children want many things that aren't good for them, and their impulses can often get them into trouble. They need loving, caring adults to protect them from the harm that can come from getting what they want.

As adults, our spiritual development includes learning how to regard our desires and how to manage them. On the one hand, it isn't healthy to become so controlled and repressed that we never let ourselves have fun, and on the other hand, we know that indulging every desire will kill us.

Sometimes we want something very badly and when we don't get it, we feel desperate or very disappointed. However, life continuously points us in directions we hadn't expected. Disappointment can serve to reset our lives. Not getting our desires, if we keep our eyes open, points us in directions that can be better than what we had imagined for ourselves.

Today, I will be open to the new directions that life points me toward.

Today's reading is from the book Stepping Stones: More Daily Meditations for Men*

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April 18

AA Thought for the Day

In following the AA program with its Twelve Steps, we have the advantage of a better understanding of our problems. Day after day our sobriety results in the formation of new habits, normal habits. As each twenty-four-hour period ends, we find that the business of staying sober is a much less trying and fearsome ordeal than it seemed in the beginning. Do I find it easier as I go along?
Meditation for the Day

Learn daily the lesson of trust and calm in the midst of the storms of life. Whatever of sorrow or difficulty the day may bring, God's command to you is the same. Be grateful, humble, calm, and loving to all people. Leave each soul the better for having met you or heard you. For all kinds of people, this should be your attitude: a loving desire to help and an infectious spirit of calmness and trust in God. You have the answer to loneliness and fear, which is calm faith in the goodness and purpose in the universe.
Prayer for the Day

I pray that I may be calm in the midst of storms. I pray that I may pass on this calmness to others who are lonely and full of fear.

Today's reading is from the book Twenty-Four Hours a Day: A Spiritual Resource with Practical Applications for Daily Life*

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April 19

Live robustly

Even when you’re surrounded by apathy and incompetence, avoid letting it absorb you. Remain true to who you are and the good you can do.

When nearly everyone else seems to be making flimsy excuses and getting away with carelessness, it’s tempting to go along. It can make you question why you should bother to distinguish yourself when no one else is doing so.

Yet life is about more than merely what you can get away with. You gain great richness with what you accomplish, the positive impact you have, the value that’s generated by your actions.

Every approaching moment offers a choice. You can either coast through with minimal effort, or you can wisely invest your full attention, energy, and action.

Whatever anyone else may or may not be doing, you have the opportunity to live robustly. In any circumstance, in every stretch of time, you can add meaning and fulfillment to life.

Seize the opportunity, now and always, to act as if life has great potential. Continue proving to yourself and others that it does indeed.

— Ralph Marston

Today's reading is from the book Today's Gift: Daily Meditations for Families*

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April 20

One meets one's destiny often on the road one takes to avoid it.

~French proverb

None of us, perhaps, ever thought we'd end up in recovery. But we were working at joining recovery years before we got here! Maybe recovery was our fate from the day we first took a drink or a pill. Others around us could see the writing on the wall, but we couldn't. We were too busy trying to avoid pain.

Alcoholism and other drug abuse have to do with us trying to find spiritual wholeness - the kind of spiritual wholeness we're finding now … in recovery. So let's welcome recovery into our lives. We have found our spiritual home.
Prayer for the Day

Higher Power, I got lost because I acted like I knew the way to a good life. You lead the way. Thank You for putting me on the right track.
Action for the Day

Today I'll think about why it's my fate to be in recovery. I will list ways that I try to avoid my fate.

Today's reading is from the book Keep it Simple: Daily Meditations for Twelve Step Beginnings and Renewal*

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April 21

Do not reveal your thoughts to everyone, lest you drive away your good luck.

~Apocrypha, Ecclesiasticus 8:19

We've had problems in our lives with limits. We have done some things to excess, and others we have endlessly postponed. Sometimes we haven't had good judgment about what we ought to tell someone or whom we ought to tell. We may have kept secrets that made us lonely and sick. Other times we exposed too much in inappropriate situations and hurt someone else or ourselves. Developing these internal limits is a quiet change that comes with recovery. Gradually, we gain a stronger feeling of self-respect and become more intuitive about when to express something and when not to.

Secrets are links in our chains of bondage to isolation, addiction, and codependency. On the other hand, when we feel compelled to tell everything, we lack the feeling of self-containment that comes from maturity. We need a sense of privacy: the freedom to choose what and when to confide in a friend. What does our intuition tell us today about our privacy and our openness?

Today, I will listen to my inner messages about what I need to discuss with others, and what I need to withhold.

Today's reading is from the book Touchstones: A Book of Daily Meditations for Men*

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April 22

The Issues Live in Our Tissues

I thought that talk therapy would heal every part of me that needed healing. I was wrong. Making sense of our past negative experiences, including our traumas, requires a sense-based healing approach. As my friend Nikki Myers, creator of Yoga 12 Step Recovery, has long said, "The issues live in our tissues." I wish this weren't true, but I do know now that stress trapped in our body is best discharged through sensorimotor (sense- and movement-based) practice. Trauma-informed yoga is one of the best modalities for healing; so, too, is breathwork (although it can be triggering if not practiced carefully).

I prefer gentle movements like stretching and walking, which are easier for this asthmatic. My friend Payton will tell you that mindful dance should be in everybody's movement practice, and I tend to agree that it works well. Of course, sports and other exercise can help move energy that needs to be displaced too. As with all things in recovery, you get to choose how to move your body into wellness.

Movement is our friend when we choose movement that feels right for us.

Today's reading is from the book She Recovers Every Day: Meditations for Women*

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April 23

Working for peace of mind

To stay clear of mood-altering substances, we must keep our thoughts close to our Higher Power. If we stay close, we will know peace but not necessarily leisure.

The work of recovery is hard, but our rewards are many and much more lasting than the immediate gratification we sought in the past.

Am I finding peace of mind?

Higher Power, help me stay close to you and remember why I must work on my recovery.

Three ways I can work for peace of mind today are…

Today's reading is from the book Day by Day: Daily Meditations for Recovering Addicts*

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April 24

I Choose Sobriety

At sixteen months dry, I relapsed, and the squadron sent me to the galley for temporary additional duty. It was there that I met my first husband. He relapsed. I relapsed. We got married. I ended up getting pregnant again.

He went out for a short thirty-day deployment. I knew that if I didn't start going back to AA before he came back home, I probably wasn't going to ever get back into it. I went to a meeting. My husband was due to get back the next morning. I picked him up from the boat, and I was like, "Look, this is what's happening. I'm back in recovery."

He was not interested in any way, shape, or form. We stayed together, technically, for maybe a year after that - but it just was not working. Today my sobriety date is still November 23, 1986.

Though my relationships may change during my recovery, my sobriety remains my priority.

~Mary H., U.S. Navy, 1984–2004

Today's reading is from the book Leave No One Behind: Daily meditations for Military Service Members and Veterans in Recovery*

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April 25

Reflection for the Day

"Vision is, I think, the ability to make good estimates," wrote Bill W., the cofounder of Alcoholics Anonymous. "Some might feel this sort of striving to be heresy against 'One day at a time.' But that valuable principle really refers to our mental and emotional lives, and means chiefly that we are not foolishly to repine over the past nor wishfully daydream about the future. "Can I believe that "A day has a hundred pockets when one has much to put in them"?
Today I Pray

I pray that the bright colors of this day may not be blurred by muted vagaries of the future or dulled by storm-gray remnants from the past. I pray that my Higher Power will help me to choose my actions and concerns out of the wealth of busyness that each day offers.
Today I Will Remember

I will not lose for today, If I choose for today.

Today's reading is from the book A Day at a Time: Daily Reflections for Recovering People*

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April 26

Asking God for help is a sign of strength, not of weakness.

Before joining the program we didn't think we could ask anyone else for help. We mistakenly thought it was a sign of weakness and we had to be strong. How scared we were on occasion, and yet how unwilling we were to ask for help.

Coming to the program was our first step in breaking through the barrier. Since then, our willingness to continue asking for help has given us hope and growth we would never have attained otherwise.

Step Seven suggests that we ask God for the help we need. For some of us, it's easier to ask God for help than a human being. But the real lesson here is simply the asking. Admitting that we need help, that we can't do anything alone, makes us aware of our connection to all of life. That makes us peaceful. We feel secure. We belong. We are like others: We need them, and they us.

I will know that all is well today if I turn to God for whatever help I need. I don't need to do anything all alone.

Today's reading is from the book A Life of My Own: Meditations on Hope and Acceptance*

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April 27

I seem to have an awful lot of people inside me.

~Edith Evans

We all know the experience of indecision. When we're torn between two alternatives, we may sometimes feel as if we don't have the right to have such conflict within ourselves. We may force ourselves to make a decision before we're ready.

One way to deal with a dilemma is to embrace it. Rather than pressure ourselves to come to a premature conclusion, we can acknowledge our conflict. We can say simply, "This is a dilemma for me right now. I can't make a decision until I'm clear about what's right for me."

Whether a dilemma concerns work or relationships, conflicting pleasures or responsibilities, we need not create the drama of an instant positive or negative reaction. Once we are able to acknowledge our dilemma, it begins to become clear which action is most appropriate for us to take.

Today, I can allow myself ambivalent feelings. I can take my time with a decision.

Today's reading is from the book Glad Day

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April 28

I still have bad days. But that's okay. I used to have bad years.

~Anonymous

Sometimes, the old feelings creep back in. We may feel fearful, ashamed, and hopeless. We may feel not good enough, unlovable, victimized, helpless, and resentful about it all. This is codependency, a condition some describe as "soul-sickness."

Many of us felt this way when we began recovery. Sometimes, we slip back into these feelings after we've begun recovery. Sometimes there's a reason. An event may trigger these reactions, such as ending a relationship, stress, problems on the job, at home, or in friendships. Times of change can trigger these reactions. So can physical illness.

Sometimes, these feelings return for no reason. A return to the old feelings doesn't mean we're back to square one in our recovery. They do not mean we've failed at recovery. They do not mean we're in for a long, painful session of feeling badly. They just are there.

The solution is the same: practicing the basics. Some of the basics are loving and trusting our self, detachment, dealing with feelings, giving and receiving support in the recovery community, using our affirmations, and having fun.

Another basic is working the Steps. Often, working the Steps is how we become enabled and empowered to practice the other basics, such as detachment and self-love. If the old feelings come back, know for certain there is a way out that will work.

Today, if I find myself in the dark pit of codependency, I will work a Step to help myself climb out.

Today's reading is from the book The Language of Letting Go: Daily Meditations on Codependency*

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April 29

Speak of one that loved not wisely but too well.

~William Shakespeare

Smother love springs from the belief that the beloved must be catered to, controlled, or even physically clutched to be kept from leaving us. Smother love is not successful and may encourage the loved one to leave.

Many adult children have felt lonely and abandoned. They are petrified that love will abandon them again. The desperate intensity that translates as smothering is characterized more by feelings of fear than of love. It is best for us to understand our real motive and recognize obsession for the trap that it is.

Genuine love doesn't entrap - it lifts up and sets free. No matter how much we force, push, or contain, we cannot expect to be loved by those we would imprison.

I am increasingly less compelled to control the lives of my loved ones. I am relieved to put down a tool that has never worked.

Today's reading is from the book Days of Healing, Days of Joy: Daily Meditations for Adult Children*

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April 30

I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it.

~Nelson Mandela

There comes a time when we must turn and face our addiction. Running away will only bring terrible loneliness and isolation, and intensify our pain. We must, instead, find the courage to face ourselves as addicts. We may believe we need our addiction to cover the feelings we don't want to face. Somehow, to admit that we have feelings and don't know what to do with them seems too shameful to bear. But to take the risk and discover that we can handle what comes our way gives us immediate strength.

It isn't easy to let ourselves experience our compulsion without surrendering to it. It takes a great deal of courage - courage we're never sure we have. The courage will be there, but often only as we're willing to reach out to our brothers and sisters in recovery in our moments of desperation. Courage doesn't mean doing it all alone. Meetings and phone calls are the lifeline connecting us; we need never suffer in isolation again.

If I am struggling with my addiction today, I will not run away. The addiction loses its power when met with the honesty and strength of the fellowship.

Today's reading is from the book Answers in the Heart: