Let's Get Started!

Whenever you visit this online journal, you are taking a positive step towards emotional and spiritual recovery. You are making an effort to progress towards your ultimate goal of freedom from addiction and other consuming issues. Bravo! The "Big Book" of Alcoholics Anonymous tells us to work towards "...spiritual progress, not spiritual perfection." What that means to me is that it is important to keep striving for recovery while accepting that we will never be finished. We will always be in the process of recovery. As you yourself recover, you will come to realize how wonderful it is to make progress towards reaching your emotional and spiritual goals. It is not necessary, nor desirable, to achieve perfect recovery. There is a famous A.A. slogan: "The best part of everything is getting better." How true! It is my hope that this journal will help you to get a bit better, one day at a time, with the help of the "Big Book." Let's get started on the path to find the courage to change the things we can and trust that the "Big Book" will guide us in attaining the wisdom to accept the things we can't. God bless you!

In service,

Barbara J.

Monday, October 18, 2010

Cunning, Baffling, Powerful...Patient

In Chapter 5 of the Big Book, alcoholism is referred to as "...cunning, baffling and powerful...". There is a wonderful speaker in A.A. named Fr. Leo Booth. He smartly added the word "patient" when describing the 'personality' of alcoholism. I think Fr. Leo is right! My disease seems to wait patiently for me to decompensate spiritually so that when my spiritual weakness meets the opportunity to act out in my addiction, I'm easily overcome. Do you feel as though your addiction is patient??? Why? 

Please read Jim's story in Chapter 3 "More About Alcoholism." I don't think the way Jim's relapse occurred was terribly cunning, baffling or powerful. But it was certainly patient. When opportunity met spiritual weakness, he drank. Are you feeling spiritually strong today?
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