I watched a man I know help his wife take care of their babies.

“How did you learn to be such a good dad?” I asked. He explained that his father had been a great dad. His mother had died when he was three, leaving his father on his own to care for him and his baby sister.

“So he just stepped up to the plate?” I asked.

“Like Babe Ruth,” he said.

Inventory Focus:

What–or who–is challenging you? Are you creating healthy challenges or unnecessary chaos? Do you want it just because you can’t have it, or do you really want it? Are you stepping up to the plate and accepting the real challenges in your life?

Today’s Meditation from:

52 Weeks of Conscious Contact: Meditations for Connecting with God, Self & Others by Melody Beattie

I have been a member of CoDA for two years. The journey has been eventful, the road uneven, but I have not traveled alone.

I enjoyed the support, confidence, and love of my group at first, combined later with trust and guidance in a Higher Power of my choice.

I was so sick with resentment and self-pity I was slow to learn how to detach and not judge. I divorced the alcoholic in my life and found life still unmanageable. I could not divorce my children. I have learned to let them go, one at a time, and the rewards have been tremendous. As a result I experienced relationships with honesty, dignity, tolerance, and love–a first for me. CoDA gave me the tools: my meetings, the slogans, Steps, and Traditions.

The relationship I am working on today is with myself. Participation in the Program gives me confidence and courage. I am beginning to know myself and continually focus on Steps Three and Eleven. I still operate with resistance, which I find almost as tiring as resentment. I found Step Seven and it helps.

I have trust in my Higher Power and try to be tolerant toward myself, keep enthusiastic, and go slow. To get in tune with that Power I turned to nature. Once in touch with the natural rhythm and beauty of life I am able, once again, to focus on what I can do instead of what I cannot. I know there is a solution for every problem, a way through.

Today I have made progress with gentleness, courage, gratitude, hope, and forgiveness.

Today’s Meditation from:

Stepping Stones to Recovery From Codependency from Hazelden Meditations

We may have learned as children that saying our prayers demonstrates our devotion to God–and if He is convinced of our sincerity, our requests of Him might be granted.

In spite of all our adult sophistication, when we think now about praying, we may do so with the same underlying attitude still in place.

But prayer isn’t a way of placating God, staying in His good graces in order to get what we want. Our Higher Power doesn’t need us to pray, isn’t angry or disappointed if we don’t. We are under no compunction to pray. The choice is entirely ours.

When we pray, we attune ourselves to a depth of love, wisdom, understanding, and guidance far greater than our personalities can generate.

When we pray, we avail ourselves of help from a Power that can do for us what we, on our own, cannot.

When we pray, if we align our wills with our Higher Power’s will for us, our lives automatically become more manageable and we know greater freedom, greater serenity, and greater peace.

Today’s Meditation from:

Women Who Love Too Much by Robin Norwood

Trust and act on the guidance you have now.

Some parts of our lives appear like a long, paved highway. We can see exactly where to go; we have a panoramic view. Other times, it may feel like we’re driving in the dark with only one headlight on a winding road through the fog. We can only see a few feet in front of the car.

Don’t worry if you can’t see that far ahead, if you only have a glimmer of light to guide your path. Slow down. Listen to your heart. Guidance will come. Trust what you hear. Do the small thing. Take that one step. Go as far as you can see.

Then go back to your heart, and you’ll hear the next step. It may be a step of immediate action, or deliberate inaction. Sometimes you may have to quiet down, wait, and prepare yourself to hear what you’re to do next.

Trust and act on the guidance
you have now, and more will come.

Today’s Meditation from:

Journey to the Heart: Daily Meditations on The Path To Freeing Your Soul by Melody Beattie

Strive for clear thinking. Many of us have had our thinking clouded by denial. Some of us have even lost faith in ourselves because we’ve spent a degree of time in denial. But losing faith in our thinking isn’t going to help us. What we need to lose faith is in denial.

We didn’t resort to denial–either of someone else’s problem or our own–because we were deficient. Denial, the shock-absorber for the soul, protects us until we are equipped to cope with reality.

Clear thinking and recovery don’t mean we will never resort to denial. Denial is the first step toward acceptance, and for most of our life, we will be striving to accept something.

Clear thinking means we don’t allow ourselves to become immersed in negativity or unrealistic expectations. We stay connected to other recovering people. We go to our meetings, where peace of mind and realistic support are available. We work the Steps, pray, and meditate.

We keep our thinking on track by asking our Higher Power to help us think clearly–not by expecting Him, or someone else, to do our thinking for us.

Today, I will strive for balanced, clear thought in all areas of my life.

Today’s Meditation from:

The Language of Letting Go by Melody Beattie
Hazelden Meditation Series

Commitment

Have you ever made a commitment and immediately realized you’d made a mistake? It was more than just cold feet. You had promised to do something you knew you couldn’t do.

One of the challenges with commitments is human error. We change our mind. It could be that we didn’t think things through. Or maybe one commitment we made interfered with another important pledge. For instance, if we’re married to someone who is on a destructive path, our commitment to that person might interfere with the commitment we’ve made to our children and to ourselves.

The idea of committing is often easier than fulfilling the commitment itself. Many of the things we commit to, such as raising children, require hard work.

CHALLENGE: The hard thing about commitments isn’t making them. It’s following through. Commitments require consideration–which ones to make, which ones to break, which ones to complete. It’s serious business, this commitment thing.

52 Weeks of Conscious Contact: Meditations for connecting with God, Self, and Others by Melodie Beattie