February 29
Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow. ∼Melody Beattie
Getting clean and sober is no picnic. Initially, there doesn’t appear to be much to appreciate. Everything we do is laborious and very, very challenging. We soon realize, however, that challenges are opportunities in disguise. And for that we feel grateful. We are able to show our gratitude for such challenges:
•Each new twenty-four hours
•Each of our successes or failures
•Adversity through which we garner strength
•Dependence that brings us independence
•Our past that brought us this present
Let us remain grateful in the midst of all our challenges, for it is because of life’s challenges that we continue to grow.
When I am grate-full, I am grace-filled.
I want to convey this message to everyone reading this book: There is much in your life to be grateful for, just as there has been in mine.
∼Chemically Dependent Anonymous P 223
March 1
You must go within or you go without. ~Friendship with God
Most people want a lot of “things” in the material world such as a beautiful home, a hot car, the perfect partner, and so on. Material well-being, we come to realize in C.D.A., always follows spiritual progress, never precedes it. The principles teach us that when our priorities lay with our spirituality and our integrity, all else falls into place. Many of us have thought that if we had abundance in material possessions, we would naturally be spiritual. But if we are not spiritual without them, what makes us think that gaining material possessions will add one wit to our spiritual progress? It is spiritual substance not material wealth that will cause the increase. Acquiring spiritual substance is cultivated by going within. The manner in which we cultivate our inner garden will ripen on the outside. We reap, as a by-product of the inner cultivation, all that we ever desired without.
When I seek inner spirituality over materiality,
material gain usually follows.
We have found it absolutely necessary to separate the material from the spiritual, allowing nothing to divert us from our spiritual goal.
∼Chemically Dependent Anonymous P 91
March 2
Problems call forth our courage and our wisdom; indeed they create our courage and our wisdom. It is only because of problems that we grow mentally and spiritually. ~M. Scott Peck
At one time, we didn't want to feel the pain or deal with the problems of our life, so we just simply didn't. We were irresponsible and selfish. We went about our business ignoring the serious issues, expecting others to fix things. Or, better yet, we blamed the problem entirely on another person which, of course, we believed absolved us from handling it. In 12-step recovery, we learn it's not only okay to face our problems, but necessary if we want to live a happy, joyous, and free life. Whether we are sober or not, life has problems. We face our issues and our problems by working through them using the tools of the Program. What we find is the courage and wisdom to do what we have to do. Our newfound wisdom will continually grow as we courageously confront new problems as they arise.
I will never have a problem that is worse
than the old solution I found for it.
I'm dealing with my problems, and I'm walking through them. I'm also dealing with the good times and walking through those.
~Chemically Dependent Anonymous P 246-247
March 3
Our hearts were made for God and they will not rest until they rest with God. ~St. Augustine
When we were using, we traveled through life like a ship without a rudder. If we went to one party, we spent the night thinking about what was happening at another party. We might have made plans to do something positive, but then our addiction called to us and we made a change of plans. We usually had no clear path in work, love, or friendship. It was an exhausting existence to constantly be seeking something—something that we may not have even been able to name. In recovery we cannot say this. Our path is clearly laid out in Chemically Dependent Anonymous’ First Edition. It is a twenty-four hour plan based on a connection with our Higher Power. That something that we once sought after was God—the God of our understanding.
I rest, secure in the knowledge that my Higher Power has a plan for me and that path is
clearly covered in the First Edition.
The Twelve Steps are what Father Al G. once described as: "A master plan for living—more accurately, the Master's plan for living.”
∼Chemically Dependent Anonymous P 28
March 4
And each heart is whispering, “Home, home at last!” ~Thomas Hood
Finding the similarities with the addict in the chair next to us was not usually our first choice upon entering the rooms of recovery. We wanted to be different, not like “them.” Maybe we snorted coke, and they did pain pills. Perhaps we drank every day, and they smoked pot. If we think we are unique then we think we don’t belong, and sadly, the disease wins. The inner addict tries to divide and conquer by pointing out any differences it can find so that we will go back out and use. Yet, even if our minds don’t listen, our hearts do. Our hearts listen to a fellow addict in a way that our minds cannot understand. When we are seated in a C.D.A. meeting, listening with our hearts, we realize that we now are around people who “get us.” We finally feel like we “fit in.” We are home. We are home.
It is my heart that hears the message of recovery.
Today, I choose to listen to my heart and
not the addict in my head.
Our minds are warped into denial and sick thinking that support our continued use.
∼Chemically Dependent Anonymous P 38
March 5
Happiness can only be felt if you don't set conditions. ~Arthur Rubinstein
There will always be some group members who want to set their conditions on others—so that everyone works the Steps and traditions, runs the meetings, and practices sponsorship as per their interpretation of recovery. It gets messy when one member gets stuck on rules of what can and can’t be said in meetings, read in meetings,
