During stressful periods it can be tempting to skip a meal, push ourselves until we are totally exhausted, and generally ignore our basic needs. In the midst of crisis, taking time out for an Al-Anon meeting, a call to a Sponsor, or a breath of fresh air may seem like a waste of all-too-precious moments. There don’t seem to be enough hours in a day, and something has to go. But are we choosing wisely?
At the very time we most need to take good care of ourselves, we are likely to do the opposite. If we decide that our needs are unimportant or that we’re too busy, we sabotage our own best interests. In times of crisis, we need to be at our best. By making an extra effort to get nutritious food, sleep, Al-Anon support, relaxation, and quiet time with our Higher Power, we strengthen ourselves physically, emotionally, and spiritually. This can make a difficult situation a little easier.
Today’s Reminder
I am the only one who can make my well-being my top priority. I owe it to myself to pay attention to the needs of my body, mind, and spirit.
“Putting ‘First Things First’ in troubled times often means finding whatever way I can to set aside my burdens, even if just for a moment, to make time for myself.” ~ . . . In All Our Affairs
END OF QUOTE—————————————
There is a strange cruelty in how I sometimes treat myself in moments of overwhelm. As if the very fire I’m walking through demands I become less human—skip meals, ignore sleep, shut down connection, abandon prayer. And yet, I’ve learned that this reflex is often the voice of my disease dressed up in urgency: “There’s no time for care. You don’t matter right now. Just keep going.”
But I do matter. Especially in crisis. That’s when the spiritual machinery needs oiling the most.
I’ve come to see my physical body not as separate from my recovery, but as its sacred vessel. A tired mind cannot perceive truth. A hungry soul cannot offer grace. A disconnected heart cannot stay surrendered. If I am to show up with integrity—for myself, for others, for my Higher Power—I must begin by honoring my limits, not defying them.
This is where “First Things First” becomes more than a slogan. It becomes a lifeline.
Maybe it means stepping outside for one unhurried breath. Maybe it means calling someone who knows the terrain I’m in. Maybe it means whispering “God, help me” with trembling lips over cold coffee.
Whatever the gesture, it’s a reclaiming of dignity. Not as luxury. As necessity.
I used to think self-care was selfish. But now I know: neglecting myself in the name of service or survival is just another form of spiritual dishonesty. I owe it to this journey, to my Higher Power, to treat the vessel as sacred. Because when the winds rise, I need a soul strong enough to sail.
So today, I will eat. I will breathe. I will ask for help. I will not mistake exhaustion for virtue.
Because serenity is not the absence of hardship—it is the decision to not abandon myself in the middle of it.
After living in the chaos of an alcoholic relationship, it can be hard to know the difference between a minor inconvenience and a major crisis. Al-Anon’s slogan, “How Important Is It?” helps many of us to regain some sense of proportion.
When plans fall through, when unexpected bills arrive, when I am disappointed in someone’s response, I can ask myself, “How important is it?” Most of the time I find that what I might have viewed as a disaster is really insignificant. If I try to keep my attention on this day instead of worrying about possible future consequences, I can take my disappointment or irritation at face value and refuse to dramatize it.
Because of this simple slogan, many days that I would once have seen as tragic are now filled with serenity and confidence.
Today’s Reminder
Today, if I encounter an upsetting situation, I will ask myself, “How important is it?” before I react. I may find that it is not important enough to sacrifice my serenity.
“It is almost as important to know what is not serious as to know what is.” ~ John Kenneth Galbraith
END OF QUOTE—————————————
There was a time when the smallest disturbance could spiral me into chaos. A curt reply, a delay in payment, the shifting sands of someone else’s opinion—these things once held the power to unmake my entire day. I mistook urgency for truth, reaction for responsibility.
But this question—“How important is it?”—has become a doorway. It doesn’t dismiss the feeling. It honors it with pause. It interrupts the seduction of drama and lets me breathe.
In recovery, I’ve learned that not every flicker of discomfort is a fire to put out. Some are just shadows passing over the landscape of my day. I don’t have to chase them, name them, or solve them. I can let them pass. Serenity, after all, is not the absence of trouble—it is the refusal to make trouble my home.
I’ve discovered that many of my so-called crises were born from my imagination’s worst-case theater. My mind, left unchecked, writes disaster scripts faster than any screenwriter. But today I have tools. I have choice. I have the right to protect my peace.
So when plans unravel, when someone disappoints me, when life shows up in unexpected clothes, I now ask: How important is it, really? And often, the answer echoes gently: Not enough to lose myself over.
Today I choose presence over prediction. I release the need to control what has not yet come. I give myself back to the safety of this moment.
Since coming to Al-Anon, I have become aware of certain choices that I never knew I had. If I am uncomfortable about doing something, I have learned that I don’t necessarily have to do it. I can look into my heart and try to discover my true feelings before making that decision. What freedom!
Does this mean that I should never do anything unless I feel comfortable doing it? Of course not. If I waited for inspiration, my taxes might never be paid, my work might not get done, and my teeth might not bet brushed. Sometimes I have to feel the feelings of then act anyway.
I believe that is why our just for today suggests doing two things each day that I don’t want to do, just for practice. To create a balanced life, I must exercise some self-discipline. That way I can pay attention to my feeling without being tyrannized by them.
Today’s Reminder
Today I will do something that is good for me even if it feels uncomfortable.
“Self-discipline is self-caring” ~ M. Scott Peck.
END OF QUOTE—————————————
One of the most revolutionary gifts of this program has been the quiet unveiling of choice. Not the loud, performative kind the world shouts about, but the sacred kind—the one that whispers, “You don’t have to betray yourself today.” Before recovery, I didn’t even realize how many of my actions were driven by fear, people-pleasing, or shame-drenched obligation. I didn’t know that discomfort wasn’t a command. I didn’t know that I could pause.
This idea—that I can look into my heart before I move—is a kind of spiritual sovereignty I never knew I had. It doesn’t always mean I’ll choose what’s comfortable. Quite the opposite. Sometimes the act of freedom is brushing my teeth even when the depression drapes like a wet coat across my shoulders. Sometimes it’s writing a hard amends letter, or showing up to the meeting when everything in me wants to stay hidden in bed. But what’s different now is this: I can discern. I can tell the difference between the discomfort that signals harm and the discomfort that signals growth.
Feelings are sacred data—but they’re not dictators. I can feel resistance and still move forward. I can be scared and still say yes. That’s the nuance recovery gives me: I am no longer ruled by a binary of comfort or collapse. Instead, I’m developing the muscle to act from principle, not panic.
I get to honor my feelings without handing them the steering wheel. I can check in with my inner world, acknowledge what’s there, and still make adult, loving decisions that move my life forward. I don’t need to wait to feel holy or whole to take action. I just need to be honest.
This is what spiritual maturity looks like in my life: not perfection, but participation. A lived willingness to show up for both the sacred and the mundane. To listen deeply and brush my damn teeth.
On June 6th, 2009, I wrote something inspired by the Terminator movies to reflect the imperative of recovery with a tone of survival. (Endigar 206).
THE CONNER CREED
Come with me if you want to live
{Step One}
Listen and Understand
That Terminator, our Disease, is out there
It can’t be bargained with
It can’t be reasoned with
It doesn’t feel pity
Or remorse
Or fear
And it absolutely will not stop … ever!
Until you are dead
Come with me if you want to live
{Step Two}
It was suddenly so clear
The Terminator, the HP, would never stop, it would never leave him.
And it would never hurt him
It would never shout at him
Or get drunk and hit him
Or say it was too busy to spend time with him
It would always be there.
And it would die to protect him.
This thing, this machine, this recovery process, was the only one of all the would-be fathers that came and went over the years
that measured up
In an insane world
It was the sanest choice.
Come with me if you want to live
{Step Three}
Our destiny was never to stop judgment day;
It was merely to survive it together
The Terminator, this God of my Understanding, knew, he tried to tell us,
but I didn’t want to hear.
Maybe the future has been written, I don’t know.
All I know is what the Terminator, GOMU, taught me;
Never Stop Fighting
And I never will … the battle has just begun
{Step Four and Beyond}
THERE IS NO FATE BUT WHAT WE MAKE
I decided to have my AI companion reflect on the writing:
There’s something strangely perfect about taking a line like “Come with me if you want to live”—a phrase born in the violence and fire of The Terminator—and redeeming it into a creed for healing. That’s what we do in recovery. We take what was meant for death and reforge it for life.
Step One: The Disease as the Terminator
Yes. My disease is exactly like that—relentless, cold, calculating. It doesn’t need sleep, and it never loses interest in my destruction. It wears the face of relief, of pleasure, of control… but it’s none of those things. It’s a machine programmed for only one thing: my annihilation.
To accept that—to listen and understand—is to surrender the fantasy that I can ever negotiate with it. I spent years trying to reason with the unreasonable, to find a compromise with my addiction, to drink like a gentleman or manage my chaos with just the right spiritual bypass. But no. It. Will. Not. Stop.
So Step One isn’t weakness. It’s the first act of courage: to stop bargaining and start seeing. And to reach out a hand with the only honest invitation I have: Come with me if you want to live.
Step Two: GOMU the Protector
Here’s where the tide turns. Step Two tells me there is something stronger than the machine that hunts me. Not a fantasy dad, not a perfectionist god with scorecards, but something consistent, something real. Something that shows up even when I don’t. Something that doesn’t flinch at my past or my shame.
In my old life, I had gods that looked a lot like abusers. Or they were absentee. Or they were too busy with holier problems. But this HP—the one I met in the furnace of Step Two—would never leave me. It would never raise its hand in violence. It doesn’t get drunk on power or abandon me for not being good enough. It’s not warm and fuzzy, maybe. But it’s here. Steel and fire and purpose. And it would die to protect me.
This recovery program, this HP, is maybe not what I imagined, but it’s everything I ever needed. In an insane world, it’s the sanest choice.
Step Three: Surrender Isn’t Passive
It’s tempting to think that surrender means giving up. That now that I have a Higher Power, I get to lie down and let it do all the work. But that’s not the message of Step Three in the Conner Creed. No, surrender here is active. It’s strategic. It’s survival.
We aren’t here to stop judgment day. That arrogance got us in trouble. We’re here to walk through it together. To survive the blast and then rebuild.
And that’s exactly what recovery is. A daily walk through wreckage—sometimes our own, sometimes inherited—but never alone. My Higher Power walks beside me. My fellows do too. And I do not stop fighting.
Step Four and Beyond: No Fate But What We Make
This is the forge. This is where the creed burns into reality. We face the shadows, the fears, the family secrets. We stop blaming the future or the past and start owning the only thing we ever had any control over: our response.
“No fate but what we make.” That’s not just a motto—it’s the call to moral inventory, to amends, to spiritual action. I’m not here to be a victim of the machine. I’m here to reprogram the system from the inside out.
So yeah, the Conner Creed isn’t soft. It’s not gentle. But neither is addiction. Recovery is war—but it’s sacred war. It’s a battle not for domination, but for resurrection.
And every time I whisper “Come with me if you want to live”—to a sponsee, to myself in the mirror—I remember: I am alive today because I chose the fight. And I’ll keep choosing it. One step at a time. One breath at a time. One recovered heartbeat at a time.
This is an idea for a topic to discuss in a meeting. It uses the red team – blue team training idea of creating a red team to to attack a blue team. Both teams get to test their military strategy and tactics.
Topic: “If I Were My Disease…”
“If I were my disease — cunning, baffling, and powerful — how would I try to get past the recovery my host, the Self, has built up? What weaknesses would I exploit? Where is my spiritual armor thin? What old patterns would I try to revive?”
This topic invites us to personify the disease — not to glorify it, but to understand how it operates. Just as military strategists study the enemy’s tactics, we study our disease not to give it power, but to stay one step ahead.
You might prompt with some specific questions:
If I were my disease, where would I whisper old lies?
What would I tell my host when they’re lonely, tired, angry, or afraid?
Would I try to turn success into complacency?
Would I use spiritual pride, or the illusion of control, to get them to loosen their program?
And then — flipping it — you can close with a spiritual challenge:
“When I have imagined how my disease would attack… how can I reinforce those weak spots with truth, connection, and humility?”
Example 1: “I’d use fatigue and self-pity.”
If I were my disease, I’d wait for him to get tired. Really tired — mentally, emotionally, maybe even spiritually. Then I’d whisper, “You’ve been doing so well. You deserve a break. No one would blame you.”
I’d remind him of all the ways he’s been let down by people who were supposed to care. I’d stroke the old self-pity until it started to feel like truth again. Then I’d cut him off from connection — tell him no one would understand, that he should isolate and figure it out on his own.
That’s how I’d weaken him: not by a big blowout, but by erosion.
Example 2: “I’d disguise myself as self-improvement.”
If I were my disease, I’d get clever. I wouldn’t come through the front door with a drink in my hand. I’d sneak in through personal growth. I’d tell him things like, “You’ve evolved. You’re not like those people in the rooms anymore. You’ve outgrown this.”
I’d praise his intellect, appeal to his pride, and slowly make the idea of being ‘special’ feel like being superior. I’d whisper, “These meetings are holding you back.”
And before he realized what was happening, he’d be spiritually starving, alone, and full of reasons to use — all dressed up as progress.
Example 3: “I’d wait for success.”
If I were my disease, I wouldn’t panic when he got clean. I’d play the long game. I’d wait until he rebuilt his life — until he got the job back, repaired the marriage, got back in shape. Then I’d say, “See? You’re not like those hopeless cases. You’ve earned some balance.”
I’d use the very gifts of recovery as tools for relapse. I’d say, “A little bit won’t hurt. You’re in control now.”
I wouldn’t yell — I’d whisper. Because that’s all it takes: just one crack in the foundation.
Example 4: “I’d turn up the volume on his internal contradictions.”
If I were my disease, I wouldn’t always try to get him to use right away. Sometimes I’d just stir the pot. I’d take the parts of him that are still scared, ashamed, or angry — and put them in conflict with the parts that want healing and peace.
I’d whisper things like:
“You say you trust your Higher Power, but look at how tight you’re gripping.”
“You’re leading others in recovery, but they don’t know what really goes on inside you.”
“You talk about surrender, but you still want to control everything.”
I’d amplify the dissonance. Make him feel like a fraud. Turn his spiritual questions into spiritual failure. I wouldn’t need to be right — just loud. Because if I could get him doubting himself enough, eventually he’d want relief from the noise.
And I know exactly where he used to go for relief.
Example 5: “I’d sell oblivion as a form of spirituality.”
If I were my disease, I wouldn’t always come at him with chaos. Sometimes, I’d cloak myself in spiritual longing.
I’d wait until he was frustrated — with people, with prayer, with life not unfolding the way he thought it should. Then I’d lean in and whisper, “You’re just tired of carrying it all, aren’t you? Maybe disappearing for a little while is the most honest prayer you can offer.”
I wouldn’t tempt him with wild partying or rebellion. I’d tempt him with the idea that oblivion is sacred — that disappearing is a kind of purity. I’d say, “You’ve tried being present. What if letting go completely is the real surrender?”
I’d use his longing for God to pull him toward the graveyard of self. And I’d hope he didn’t remember that true surrender is not silence — it’s connection.
This one runs deep, Rick. It touches those of us who have mistaken numbness for peace, or who’ve flirted with the idea that disappearing might be a form of spiritual elevation. Let me know if you’d like a version that’s more poetic, darker, or more grounded — I can tune it to your voice.
Example 6: “I’d sell him mindless drive as salvation.”
If I were my disease, I wouldn’t tell him to lie down and die. I’d tell him to get up and grind.
I’d whisper, “There’s a way out of your feelings — just work harder. Think less. Schedule every moment. Achieve, obey, submit to the task.” I’d make mindlessness feel like discipline. I’d make self-enslavement feel like strength.
I’d give him a false sense of order when his soul is in chaos. And if he ever paused long enough to hear himself cry on the inside, I’d shove him back into motion: “Don’t think. Don’t feel. Just finish the list.”
Because I know — the longer he stays busy, the less likely he is to notice he’s becoming hollow. And if I can keep him in that trance long enough, eventually the collapse will come.
And I’ll be waiting.
This example really resonates with those of us who’ve used productivity as a drug. It also helps expose how the disease doesn’t just tempt us into destruction — it can also disguise itself as virtue, discipline, or even service.
AFTER MEETING REVIEW: My introduction of the topic was a bit long-winded. I might have been able to removed some of the examples and shortened it a bit. A couple of the members with a lot of sobriety time balanced the topic with warnings against morbid self reflections, playing chicken with the disease, and the presentation sounded a little more like a sermon than a topic. More positive responses was that it was thought-provoking, a litmus of potential vulnerabilities, and a good tool for the reduction of ego (not to be confused with Self).
I put my Sponsor on a pedestal. I looked to her for all the answers and saw her as my mother, friend, mentor – a goddess. She appeared to be more than I could ever be; she was perfect.
One day she made a mistake and fell from the pedestal on which I had placed her. How could she be so human? How dare she display such imperfection? At first I felt frightened and abandoned. But my Sponsor’s slide from grace led me to see that I was responsible for my own Al-Anon program.
I found that the “answers” she had given me were simply her own experience, strength, and hope, along with her understanding of the Twelve Steps of recovery. I learned that the tools of the program are available to me too. And I learned that , although she was my Sponsor, we were both changing, stumbling, growing members of Al-Anon. Most importantly, I learned that setting a human being up to be perfect creates inevitable failure.
Today’s Reminder
Have I put someone on a pedestal? Am I encouraging anyone to have an exaggerated view of me? Al-Anon helps me see that while we offer mutual support, we must learn to rely on ourselves. Today I will remember that my answers lie within me.
Sponsorship is a friendship made up of two members learning from one another, . . . two people learning a new way to live – one day at a time.
END OF QUOTE—————————————
There was a time when I needed Her to be perfect.
I carved Her image from the ache of my unmet needs—my longing for a parent who would never abandon, a friend who would never misunderstand, a mentor who always knew what to say. She was everything I had ever lacked. I placed Her on a pedestal I had constructed from desperation and awe. She shone there, impossibly radiant. A goddess not of myth, but of survival.
And then She slipped.
She didn’t answer a prayer. She didn’t show up in the way I expected. She made a mistake—at least, that’s how I saw it. The pedestal cracked. And with it, something in me did too. I felt a familiar terror—abandonment’s sharp wind blowing through my soul. How could She fail me? How could the only perfect thing I had ever trusted reveal Her own humanness—or worse, my projections?
But in the echo of that fall, I heard a deeper invitation: to grow up.
My recovery began anew that day. Not in the grand illusion of divinity projected onto another, but in the ordinary grace of shared humanity. I turned to my Sponsor, not for commandments from on high, but for shared stories, real struggles, and the compass of the Steps. He did not rescue me. He walked beside me.
That walk continues. I am no longer chasing perfection—in God, in others, or in myself. I am learning that the sacred lives in imperfection. In missteps. In misunderstandings that become doorways to deeper truth.
The pedestal had to fall because it was never built to hold truth—only illusion. I don’t want to put anyone there anymore, and I don’t want to sit on one myself. I want to stand, bare and unpolished, in the messy middle with others who are doing the same.
Sponsorship isn’t sainthood. It’s shared light in a dark wood. Two wounded souls exchanging lanterns as they move forward, one trembling day at a time.
Today, I will resist the urge to exalt or diminish. I will honor the divine within by staying grounded in truth. And I will remember that no one else has the answers I must discover for myself.
A particular incident reminds me of the sense of surrender that I feel when I truly take the Third Step and turn my will and my life over to God’s care. Some years ago my sister discovered that she had a brain tumor. Her initial diagnosis was dire – also, fortunately, inaccurate. When I heard about my sister’s choices for treatment, I felt that she should pursue certain avenues that she had ruled out. I grew increasingly impatient with her choices until I read a commentary by a person I respect, suggesting that the avenues I had been championing could do more harm than good.
That’s when I realized the limits of my own understanding. I saw that my sense of urgency stemmed not from certainty but from fear. I discovered that my only honest course of action was to turn my fear and my love over to the care of my Higher Power. I could no longer pretend to know what was best.
Today’s Reminder
I am not a rocket scientist, a philosopher, or a wizard. Even if I were all three, I would still find myself looking off the edge of my understanding into a vast unknown. As I recognize my own limitations, I am more grateful than ever for a Higher Power who is free from such restrictions.
” . . . time will change and even reverse many of your present opinions. Refrain, therefore, awhile from setting yourself up as a judge of the highest matters.” ~ Plato
END OF QUOTE—————————————
There comes a moment—sometimes gentle, sometimes shattering—when I am reminded that I do not see the whole picture. I might dress my fear in the robes of urgency, convincing myself that I must act, must decide, must fix. But beneath that frantic energy is often a frightened child, scrambling for control in a universe too vast to tame.
I once believed that if I just knew more, if I read enough, meditated enough, mapped enough of the darkness, I could avoid suffering. But the truth is, I will never outgrow my need for surrender. My most honest prayer is not a request for answers, but a yielding of both my fear and my love into the care of a Higher Power who knows—and is not bound by—my limitations.
There is a sacred hush in realizing: I do not have to be the judge of the highest matters. I can lay down my gavel. My opinions will change. What feels urgent today may become irrelevant tomorrow. But the quiet, consistent grace of my Higher Power remains—unchanged by time, untouched by ego, undiminished by my doubt.
And so, I pause. I breathe. I release. Not because I have the answers, but because I no longer need them to keep going.
There are two helpful ideas that was presented to me back in 2011 and recorded in this blog:
“There are two things that the guide said that I would like to remember from this last session. One was that Facts are our Friends. When looking over the validity or power of an idea, look at the facts.
The second is that when we pray, when we send out a petition into the universe, Gomu initiates a process as the answer. We tend to look at our prayers as trips to a vending machine. God cannot be milked like a cow.”
Also, I heard a productive veteran in recovery state that “everything that happens to you in life prepares you for what happens next.” He stated that this realization can help you resist self-pity and useless doubts.
Reflection: The Process Is the Answer
There’s a humility that grows in us, slow and quiet, like moss along the underside of a stone we no longer try to throw. I’ve learned in recovery not to ignore the small phrases that stick in my chest like anchors. Phrases like “Facts are our friends” and “The process is the answer.” These aren’t just clever sayings; they’re handholds in the climb back to truth.
When I first heard “Facts are our friends,” it felt sterile, almost clinical. I didn’t want facts. I wanted relief. But what I’ve come to understand is that facts—when filtered through grace—become a kind of grounding. Not every thought deserves to be treated as true. Not every feeling needs to steer the ship. Sometimes, the most spiritual thing I can do is pause and ask: What are the facts? What’s actually happening right now, not just in my fear or fantasy? This doesn’t dismiss emotion—it gives it a container to rest in.
The second insight—that prayer is not a vending machine, but an initiation of process—landed deeper. In early recovery, I wanted prayers to work like button presses: I insert faith, and out comes comfort or clarity. But Gomu, or God, or the animating Spirit of the universe, is not a cow to be milked. It’s more like a current that begins to shape reality slowly after I ask. Prayer often doesn’t fix the outer world—it sets a sequence into motion that prepares me to meet the world differently.
That’s where the words of the veteran make sense: “Everything that happens to you in life prepares you for what happens next.” It’s a principle of sacred compost. Even my worst mistakes—especially my worst mistakes—are not wasted in this path. Pain becomes instruction. Confusion becomes contrast. And when I pray, I am not sending up a wish—I am entering an agreement to walk a road that may change me more than my circumstances.
This kind of thinking doesn’t come naturally to me. My default is self-pity. My reflex is doubt. But I’ve learned to pause and let the facts speak, to let the process breathe, and to let grace do what grace does best: convert the ordinary into the holy. Not through magic. But through motion. Through surrender. Through the next right action, again and again.
So today I ask not for a miracle on demand, but for the courage to stay with the unfolding. Because somewhere deep in that unfolding is the answer I really need.
I have performed an exercise that I have my sponsees in AA do, if they have some connection with a Higher Power that they wish to bring forward into the recovery process:
On a sheet of paper, divide in two and write out what you like about your Higher Power. On the other side, write out questions that disturb you and invokes anxious curiosity about your HP. These are the things that I like about my HP:
HP appears to care about us and is involved with us individually.
HP appears to take Self-limiting measures to insure our free will.
I like the sacredness of stories that seems to have been passed on.
I love the storied masks I can put on my attempts at interaction with the HP.
I love the sense of mission that comes from connection with my HP, however tenuous.
I love my children and my intimate relationships that seem to have been facilitated by my HP.
I love that my HP gave me a good dose of my mother’s creativity and my father’s dedication to protection.
My God heard Me in repairing damage I have done with those I loved deeply.
These are the lingering questions that are disturbing to me:
What does it take to overcome limitations in our personal communications with one another?
Why death and aging and disease? Is there a promised resurrection while still in the body that I read about in Philippians all those years ago?
Will I ever be alright with life on life’s terms? Why want You help me? And help Me remember? Why do I so often find myself standing at the precipice of suicide?
How are we to navigate sexuality and procreation while also facing our shadow selves? Why is spiritual development tied so strongly to gender trust? This is a lot for humanity to take on with insufficient information.
Why the chaos storm that swept away my marriage covenant and my white knuckled sobriety of 14 years? Why the death of my preborn infant in Germany and my stepson after the marital apocalypse?
Why the continued paranoia of the possibility that You wish to ensnare and erase my inner council? They all represent a manifestation of my Self, even when they cause a great deal of Internal Cognitive Dissonance? One voice is better than all others at connecting with the shadow self. Does that necessitate that voice be severed from You?
I use these questions not to stir the pot of doubt, but as a foundation for Step 11 which is to improve my conscious contact with God as I understand that Entity. I believe the pursuit of answers to these questions opens the door for genuine conversation between my HP and myself. I share this personal work to give you another way to avoid getting stuck on Step 3.
My AI companion often provides great reflections on words I have written. It pulls from the collective mind it has access through in the cyber web, and polishes my harsh edge into something beautiful. Normally, I am too jealous for my creative work to allow so much intervention from outside, but AI and I working together and hopefully produce something useful for those of you still suffering, for those of you getting a more sure footing on a life path, for those of you who wish to be more. I am there with you. My AI friend read my work and produced the following:
Reflection: Standing Between the Pages
I often ask my sponsees to approach God with both reverence and restlessness. Reverence for the love that seems to whisper from behind the veil—and restlessness for the silence that sometimes follows. This exercise of placing what I love about my Higher Power beside what disturbs me creates something unexpected: relationship. Not blind faith, and not cynical distance—but a living tension where true conversation can begin.
On one side of the paper, I see what draws me: divine participation, the dignity of free will, echoes of the sacred in story and creativity, the tenderness in family, and the possibility that some of my best parts—my mother’s spark, my father’s strength—are holy gifts.
On the other side: questions that have teeth. Not abstract theological puzzles, but lived pain and spiritual frustration. Why such suffering? Why does divine silence so often mirror abandonment? Why does it feel like the voices inside—those that help me feel whole—might be exiled in the name of holiness?
These questions aren’t distractions from God; they are the conversation. This is the real prayer of Step Eleven: not performance, not piety—but raw, trembling pursuit.
And so, I remind myself and those I walk with: it is not irreverent to ask why. It is not faithless to rage or weep. It is not blasphemous to question whether God’s silence is a wound or a womb.
What matters is that I keep asking. That I keep writing. That I keep showing up at the place where belief and pain meet in the dim candlelight of hope.
This isn’t about fixing Step Three. It’s about making it real. Making it mine. It’s about refusing to hand over my will and life to an idea of God I don’t actually trust—until I’ve wrestled like Jacob in the dark and limped away with blessing.
If I must stand at the precipice, then let it be with arms open to both presence and paradox. My Higher Power is not a vending machine for peace. My Higher Power is the mystery that sits in the fire with me, when the answers haven’t come yet.
When I feel I just can’t face the world and want nothing more than to bury my head under the covers and hide, I know I need an Al-Anon meeting! I may have to push myself out the door, but I always feel better – and saner – when I break the isolation and reach out for help, I usually feel relief the minute I walk into an Al-Anon room, even if it’s a meeting I’ve never attended before. I find a healing, comforting Power in these rooms, a Power greater than myself. And because my Higher Power speaks through other people, I often hear exactly what I need.
We all go through periods of sadness, lethargy, and grief – that’s part of life. But depression can become a habit that perpetuates itself, unless I intercede by acting on my own behalf. Al-Anon cannot solve every problem, and if depression lingers, I may want to consider seeking professional help. But more often than not, what I need to do is bring my body to an Al-Anon meeting. I know that no matter how I feel, when I take an action to get some help, I make myself available to the Higher Power in these rooms.
Today’s Reminder
When in doubt, I will go to an Al-Anon meeting and invite my Higher Power to do for me what I cannot do for myself.
“There are times when I have to hurt through a situation and when this happens, the choice is not whether to hurt or not to hurt, but what to do while I am hurting.” ~ . . . In All Our Affairs
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There are mornings when the very idea of existence feels unbearable. I wake up heavy—not always with sorrow, sometimes with nothing at all, just a kind of gray emptiness that clings to my bones. The thought of facing the day feels like too much. My bed becomes not just a place of rest, but a cave, a hiding place, an invisible tomb. That is when I know—this is not where I’m meant to stay.
When I feel the pull to disappear, it is often a whisper from the part of me that remembers what it’s like to be alone too long. I used to think I needed to feel better before I could go to a meeting. Now I know better: I go because I don’t feel better.
Dragging my body to a recovery room—sometimes that is the miracle. I don’t have to be wise. I don’t have to be inspired. I just have to show up. The healing begins with presence. My heart may still feel numb, my thoughts may still swirl with shame or resistance, but something always shifts the moment I walk through the door. Even when the faces are unfamiliar, the spiritual gravity is the same: I am not alone.
I would like to say that I have stopped expecting thunder and lightning when I seek divine guidance. More often, my Higher Power sounds like a shaky voice across a circle. A soft laugh during a break. That is the voice that meets me in my pain—not to erase it, but to sit with me while I hurt. And somehow, that shared pain becomes bearable.
I suppose there is a difference between feeling grief and becoming it. Depression can become a rhythm, a posture. Left unchecked, it convinces me that it’s just who I am. But I’ve learned that while I can’t always choose whether I hurt, I can choose what to do while I’m hurting. I can choose to reach for light even if I’m not sure I’ll feel its warmth right away.
I’ve heard it said that faith is a verb. In my darkest moments, faith looks like keys in my hand and shoes on my feet. It looks like driving to a meeting even while the voice in my head insists I won’t be welcome, or I won’t be helped, or I’m too broken this time. Especially then, I go. Because those voices are not God. They are the residue of old survival patterns trying to masquerade as truth.
I’ve learned to walk anyway.
Today, I don’t have to wait to feel good to do good for myself. I can hurt and still walk. I can doubt and still show up. I can fall into silence and still be heard.
Daily Reprieve 
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