Daily Reprieve

From the Daily Reflections of November 16;

What we really have is a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual condition.   (Alcoholics Anonymous, page 85)

Maintaining my spiritual condition is like working out every day, planning for the marathon, swimming laps, jogging. It’s staying in good shape spiritually, and that requires prayer and meditation. The single most important way for me to improve my conscious contact with a Higher Power is to pray and meditate. I am as powerless over alcohol as I am to turn back the waves of the sea; no human force had the power to overcome my alcoholism. Now I am able to breathe the air of joy, happiness and wisdom. I have the power to love and react to events around me with the eyes of a faith in things that are not readily apparent. My daily reprieve means that, no matter how difficult or painful things appear today, I can draw on the power of the program to stay liberated from my cunning, baffling and powerful illness.

END OF QUOTE

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There is something clarifying and liberating when you know that you are dead or destroyed except for the reliance on some greater force or protective discipline.  I was assigned near the DMZ in Korea back in the 80’s to a facility whose one job was to notify military personal that the North was crossing over.  We knew that if that occurred, we probably had about ten minutes before we were destroyed.  So we trained to do what are lives had become about in that moment, and we would get the message south before we died.  Every day I wake up, I am grateful for my sobriety.  I must find a way to make it count.  I have to get the message south with every sober breath I draw.  My daily reprieve is not my personal property, but a gift to reinforce a mission, which is the primary purpose of Alcoholics Anonymous.  That primary purpose is to stay sober and help other alcoholics find sobriety.

This entry was posted on December 21, 2014 at 12:42 am and is filed under Uncategorized with tags Addiction, Alcoholism, Journal, Life, Personal, Recovery, Spirituality. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.