FIRST THINGS FIRST-First things first and our children are first.
.-In an dysfunctional home the decision to steer clear of over volatile arguments is an important first step.
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-One reason avoiding angry arguments is a wise decision is that nobody wins Instead everyone loses.
-.If I don’t remember to take it easy I will try to take care of things with out Higher Power support. When I do that I force a solution. When I force a solution I create another problem and the resultant extra confusion. . At that point I need to try to Take It Easy about that new problem too.
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-I think that in my program all these years I have answered the same question over and over again maybe a million times. The question is “Am I going to work things out with the help of my Higher Power or am I going to complicate things by hard charging into the situation on my own”.
-” In all my years of living I have never liked what happens when I hard charge into confusing situation looking to have my own way. I always find even more confusion.
-Sometimes when I am exhausted and drained I need to Take It Easy and withdraw from the situation so I can come to some peace before I make my decision.I can’t tell you how many times I have gotten time out of the immediate situation by saying “I need to go to the bathroom”. my problem has been I think an immediate decision required of me.
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-One of the gifts of my retirement is that I have the chance to rest when I need to. Sometimes I have felt I should keep on pushing no matter how tired I was. When I did that I have run through all the energy God gave me for my day and then I have also spent all my reserve energy . That is a formula of total exhaustion. It takes much than one nights sleep to recover recover full strength again.
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-When I was working so hard at the big mission I sometimes said to myself” I feel like I am a table full of dry sponges with only one pitcher of water with which to make all of the sponges soaked and satisfied.
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-It is OK if sometimes I simply have a day when I have diminished capacity. I thin everyone has those days. When it happens to me I want to be able to accept that reality of my reduced capacity and . reduce what I expect of myself accordingly.
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-About three week s into my program I decided I would do the self inventory immediately. I didn’t even have a sponsor yet. At a meeting I told a more experienced member what I was going to do. He said “Wait to until next week to start. I will bring a crate of toilet paper in to use for writing paper. That way you can flush it down the toilet when you are finished. That’s all it will be worth” A year and a half later I wrote an inventory with the help of my wonderful sponsor. It was life changing.
George Caywood 