 Prayer Beads And Recovery Jewelry Made Exclusively For The Twelve Step Community SHOPS {PRAYER BEADS {JEWELRY |
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{ ABOUT PRAYER BEADS { ADDICTIONS { CONTACT { HELP { LINKS { PRAYERS { STORIES { USE OF PRAYER BEADS TWELVEBEADS PROUDLY SUPPORTS { SoberMusicians { SoberSources { TheSoberVillage { SoberTeensOnline { MillionDollarRecovery ©GwenR2008 TwelveBeads is not affiliated with any twelve step program TwelveBeads Birth Date 9-24-2005 |
BACK What is “doing the next right thing”? I am fortunate to have recently celebrated 25 years of sobriety in our fellowship. My sobriety date is 12.29.81 I guess I’m considered an old timer, but being 53 I don’t feel or act as such …frankly I “feel” like I’m in my twenties emotionally. Since that time many worldly and materials things have changed, for example, when I came in there were no cell phones, mobile phones were for the elite…cable tv was in its infancy …and the internet was a mysterious process that allowed schools to exchange information with each other at the click of a button. AA had numerous slogans many of which are still around today (HALT, easy does it, One day at a time…etc.) However, we didn’t hold hands, extend verses to existing prayers nor tell new comers to “do the next right thing”. What is the “next right thing anyway?” to us who have managed to land in one of the last stops on the train to a addicts death? If we knew what the right thing was in the first place we wouldn’t have taken that first drink! Using myself as an example, I crash and burned before I was ready to “admit defeat” I certainly wasn’t ready to enter a “We” organization, and I remember being very happy to report to my group that my new girlfriend didn’t drink!...of course she did smoke tons of weed, but to my way of thinking…I was doing the next right thing by having a relationship with a girl that didn’t drink! Needless to say, not only didn’t I stop drinking ,but on occasion smoked with my “sober” girlfriend. No fellow Soberteers, I wouldn’t have known the next right thing from the left right thing! Today however, after all these years and meetings I have a very good track record of “things that I have done well” that I can pass on to those I sponsor and when I share at meetings. Oh yes… there is “ one right thing to do” that I think alludes many of us who have had slips….. so I will pass this on. Have you ever noticed that almost every time somebody goes out the first thing they say is “ I slowed down on meetings, or I stopped sharing or I stopped going to meetings.” My friends the thing that eludes most of us is written in black and white in the last few paragraphs of the first step…. To paraphrase “…. Who wants to be rigorously honest,…. To help another alcoholic… nobody…unless we have to do this in order to save ourselves. This my friends, is the answer to why people go out and Bill and Bob stayed sober… they stayed sober because they went to meetings AND help and sponsored fellow alcoholics …. I am eternally grateful that I was born in the time of the fellowship of AA. John L. Newtown, Pa S.B. 12.29.81 |
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