Daily Reprieve

From Courage to Change of May 5:

Humility was a tough concept for me to comprehend. Taught from childhood to place the wants and needs of others always above my own, I equated humility with taking care of others and ignoring my own feelings and needs. In Al-Anon I have learned that true humility is not degrading; it doesn’t require that I neglect my own needs. In fact, humility is not measured by how much I do for other people, but by my willingness to do my part in my relationship with the God of my understanding.

I begin to learn humility when I take the First Step. By admitting I am powerless, I make room for the possibility that a Power greater than myself can do all those things that are beyond my reach. In other words, I begin to learn about what is, and is not, my responsibility. As this becomes clear, I am better able to do my part, for myself and for others, and better able to ask God to do the rest.

Today’s Reminder

Part of learning humility is learning to contribute to my own well-being. Today I will do something loving for myself that I’d normally do for someone else.

“We cannot tell what may happen to us in the strange medley of life. But we can decide what happens in us — how we can take it, what we do with it — and that is what really counts in the end.”

~ Joseph Fort Newton

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Humility is a protective virtue. It fends off my tendency to self-delusion. It guides me along a path toward honest self-appraisal. In a home that has been corrupted by the need to endure the addictive behavior of one or more of its members, delusion is a learned skill for survival’s sake. I learned to embody an iconic role to aid my family’s hospital mission for the wounded. We never realized that a family becoming a mental health asylum locked us all in a prison fearful of recovery. Recovery of our true selves. Our purpose was linked to the perpetuation of the disease. Who are we in a healthy world? Humility tells me I am not that protective icon of my childhood. That was what I had to become. Humility allows me to come out into the open and connect with my Higher Power. Humility allows me the courage to find human connection with those who do not need me to be anything other than myself. Humility is a protective virtue.

This entry was posted on October 11, 2022 at 11:51 am and is filed under Uncategorized with tags Addiction, Alcoholism, Courage to Change, 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.