Endigar 1045
From Courage to Change of Sep 26:
When I first came to Al-Anon, I thought that anger, resentment, jealousy, and fear were “bad” feelings. The program has helped me to learn that feelings are neither good nor bad — they are simply a part of who I am.
I have come to realize that good has sometimes come as a result of those feelings. Anger has prompted some constructive changes in my life. Resentment has made me so uncomfortable that I’ve had to learn to combat it — as a result, I have learned to pray for other people. Jealousy has taught me to keep my mouth shut when I know I will say only irrational, destructive things. And fear has been perhaps my greatest gift, because it forces me to make conscious contact with my Higher Power.
Now that the negative has become the positive, I am better able to accept the whole picture. There is no more need to judge or hate myself just because I experience a human feeling.
Today’s Reminder
Feelings may not be comfortable, but that doesn’t make them bad. With a change of attitude, I have choices about what to do with my feelings. Anything can be used for my good if I allow it. Recognizing this opportunity may take every ounce of imagination I have, but maybe that’s why God gave me imagination to begin with.
“My feelings are neither right nor wrong but are important by virtue of being mine.” ~ In All Our Affairs
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Emotions are not intruders to be evicted, but landmarks on the inner map of recovery. They belong to me, and I will not surrender them to the enforced stupidity of a culture that insists I amputate half my soul to stay palatable. Anger, jealousy, and fear are not above me, and I am not above them. They march beside me, and when I dare to tell the truth about their presence, I invite God to forge them into constructs for the writing of My Story.
What if every unwelcome emotion was a disguised angel? Or a disguised threat map revealing enforced silence? What if these unwelcome visitors are the hammer that cracks open complacency? Processed resentment reveals the threat of endless begging, and thus becomes the goad that drives me into prayer and surrender to a Higher Power that does not colonize Me. What if the appearance of jealousy is the illumination of the threat of romantic override? What if fear evades the threat of contamination, and also the one force that hurls me into conscious contact with a Higher Power? The thorns of My inner garden are not weeds—they are barbed wire that guards the perimeter of My God given sovereignty.
The paradox is clear: My feelings may not be right or wrong, but they are still significant because they are mine. They are entrusted to me as sacred signals. In claiming them, I break the tyranny of self-judgment. I do not have to punish myself for being human. I choose instead to stand in Intelligent Self-Patriotism: to pause, reflect, and act without apology. Recovery does not demand erasure of anger or fear; it demands that I braid them into My fabric with the personal mythology of my faith.
When I embrace my emotions without condemnation, I become a man who does not outsource his soul. I extend grace to others not as a surrender but as a chosen act of containment. I admit jealousy, rage, fear—not as confession of weakness but as courage to be seen. Recovery gave me imagination; My Story activates it. Imagination paints possibility onto the canvas of fear, but My personal ethos presses that canvas into a banner: My life is about writing My story. Let the Patriots bleed. Let every feeling become a landmark, a teacher, a threat revealed, a scar turned into scripture.
Emotions are horrible masters, but excellent servants to those that own the story of their lives.
Daily Reprieve 
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