Just for Today: Standing For Something

“… we could feel time, touch reality, and recognize spiritual values long lost to many of us.” -Basic Text, p.85

In our active addiction, we were prepared to compromise everything we believed in just to get our hands on more drugs. Whether we stole from our families and friends, sold ourselves, or lied to our employers, we were ignoring the values that mattered most to us. Each time we compromised another dearly held belief, another chunk of the mortar holding our characters together fell away. By the time many of us came to our first meeting, nothing was left but the ruin of our former selves. We will locate our lost values as we carry out our first honest self-examination. But in order to rebuild our characters, we’ll find it necessary to maintain those values, no matter how great the temptation to shove them aside. We will need to be honest, even when we think we could fool everyone by lying. If we ignore our values, we’ll discover that the biggest fibs we’ve told have been the ones we’ve told ourselves. We don’t want to start the demolition of our spirits again after all the work we’ve put into their restoration. It’s essential that we stand for something, or we risk falling for anything. Whatever we find important to us, we honor.

Just for today: I stand for something. My strength is the result of living my values.

The principle that we shall find no enduring strength until we first admit complete defeat is the main taproot from which our whole Society has sprung and flowered. TWELVE STEPS AND TWELVE TRADITIONS, pp. 21-22

Defeated, and knowing it, I arrived at the doors of A.A., alone and afraid of the unknown. A power outside of myself had picked me up off my bed, guided me to the phone book, then to the bus stop, and through the doors of Alcoholics Anonymous. Once inside A.A. I experienced a sense of being loved and accepted, something I had not felt since early childhood. May I never lose the sense of wonder I experienced on that first evening with A.A., the greatest event of my entire life.

These today meditations for today are like a hard hit to the head for me. Lately I have been thinking about the friends and people I had constantly surrounding me when I was using. I have forgotten that in the rooms I am accepted, I am part of something. Like both of these connect how being a part of a fellowship and standing for something that I do believe in is meaningful and brings and peace to my life that I have never had before. Today I am proud to be in recovery. It is something that I forget from time to time, and lately I find myself isolating because I feel like I don’t connect with anyone in the rooms. I forget that everyone here has been through the same feelings that I have. We all may have not been through the same situations but I sure as hell identify with the feelings. Today I remember and am grateful that I have fellowship and a place where I am part of something.