My How Far We've Come - Looking Back

June 30. Well it's the end of June & this time last year my journey into Sobriety was truly beginning. A few failed attempts at doing it my way had broken me down in desperate weeks to finally realize I had to do it somebody esle's way. That I in fact only knew how to go through life on a survival basis, lacking spirituality & full of numbed emotions. When I passed through this spiritual experience, the change that miraculously occured in my psyche causing the craving for a new life, I was finally capable of the honesty & humility required of me participate in the program ahead. Some time after I began to do as suggestion, attending meetings twice a day for nearly 180 days straight. I was in fact the several times a day, every day, drug addict & alcoholic & for that sort of beginning was necessary. Its not the same journey for everyone, but its for all the same reasons & results, to find a new way of life. For me, from early on, it was clear that this was about so much more than staying sober it was about growing my life in spiritual steps, leaps, & bounds. For some not yet ready to dig deep within themselves, there is a surface to it all that just helps one stay sober one day at a time, but when they awaken ready the spiritual path is laid out in those same lines. Its almost like an encrypted code within the steps & the fellowship, you see it however as your higher power reveals it to you, not as someone else teaches you like in the sobriety part of it all.

Today was a great day to end the month, I ended it with furthering new beginnings & solidifying some footholds in a few relationships in my life. After a morning of appointments I met a new friend for the 2nd time with her children for a walk around Lake Scranton again. My cousin & his wife & family also came, it was a good fun & phsycially fit time for us all. My relatives left early & it was just my friend & her children left behind to enjoy the next hour or so. In that I talked & walked, swapping stories & interests which is a form of socializing I never was capable of before sobriety. In the past someone else's interests were not important to me unless they matched my own at that given time, that is the selfishness of the disease of alcoholism at its finest. Her son later caught two water mocasin's & the mood was brightened for all, finally everyone who came had a fun time & my spirits raised higher in knowing that joy was brought not just to me, but to others I am beginning to care for. I came home after that & tinkered at my house, later leaving for my evening meeting. The meeting ended up being cancelled without my knowledge & some men were at the church drinking beer & setting up for a church carnival picnic. Any other time in my life if I showed up where people were cracking open beers, I would ask where there was another one, but this is what sobriety has done for my life.

I don't have control over drugs or alcohol, nor myself once I take or drink them, but I do have control today over that first drink. I have the power to keep from taking that first dose or sip, granted to me by the 12 Steps in my life, the fellowship & friends, my attempts at spiritual growth, and my new life filled with belief in a higher power thanks to all of the above miracles. I called a few people to try & find the location of the meeting if it was at an alternate location, and one actually called back, but with no information on it. We talked a few minutes & I was already driving home, I had survived another brush with drugs & alcohol without giving in, thanks to my higher power & the things I've been taught to do. When I started this journey last year, I could only survive moments, hours, and one day at a time without drugs. I still live only one day at a time, because we all only have today after all. The one thing that the Spirit shines its light on so brightly in my life today though, that is HOW FAR I HAVE COME in all aspects of my life. It is my wishes that my higher power give me the strength & resources to continue to grow all these areas & even new healthy & helpful ones to people around me, I hope that it is my higher power's same wish. To find out I must continue on the path of spirituality & see what comes next, but it is promised that MORE WILL BE REVEALED as I go, and that good things will materialize IF I WORK FOR THEM. Good Night.. GOod Morning.. <3 Jimmy