-Raising my children was far easier for me than raising me was for my parents. That is true because there was far more good information available to me than they had.

-My Dad taught me to read. We had devotions on my mom and dad’s bed every night. Each child took a turn reading a verse in the Bible until we had read the passage. I was so young that I could not read, so Dad would point at a word, I would try to read it, then he would tell me what the word was and I would repeat it. I mostly remember reading Genesis, especially the Joseph story. When I got to school, “Run Dick run was easy for me because I had wrestled with reading words like Melchizedek.

-I could not grow up healthy without other people, namely my parents. I can’t get healthy now all by myself either.

-My parents have both been dead for time measured in decades. For me, the most effective way I can make amends to my parents over the bitterness I kept in my heart toward them as an adult is to be a good man now.

-The love I had for my children did wonders for my ability to know God loved me. For example, I remember when Jill spent a year in France I missed her so much. One day I saw it. Maybe God misses me when I don’t take time for Her. I felt wonder at the thought that  God missed me when I did not spend time with Her.

-When I made a mistake in my parenting, I tried to remember to make amends to my children. I thought that doing that would help them realize that everyone makes lots of mistakes.

-By making amends to my children, I hoped that my children would have an idea of how to deal with things when they made their inevitable mistakes.

-When I was six years old, an older boy beat me up on the way home from school. When my dad saw my condition, he took off running after the boy so he could find out where he lived and talk to the boys parents. That event meant a lot to me. It contributed to my idea that I wanted to protect my children so they could grow up feeling safe.

-Growing up, there was always some friend or family member visiting with us for hours, days and sometimes months. We gave the kids a home to grow up in that always welcomed people. Now they all love hospitality. Thanks Mom and Dad.

-My Dad was forever bringing home a homeless person to feed and give a haircut. It is no wonder that my career was with the homeless.

-When I gave up the bitterness toward my parents that had been so destructive to me, I could learn from the good things they did. I also learned that experiences with my children were the most powerful teaching tools I had.

-For example I never said things like don’t litter very often. Instead, when we went camping in the mountains, we would pick a few hundred yards along a nearby stream and picked it up. We had so much fun doing that. I would have gladly settled for a reasonably clean, but the kids searched, looked under rocks in the stream until they were satisfied that there wasn’t so much as a burned paper match left. They are environmentally conscientious to this day.

- Our family saying was no longer “Do not litter. It became “Leave it cleaner”. We applied that motto to every picnic and camping trip.

-The myth that all kids need is quality time is a damaging myth. Kids need time and lots of it.

-Kids need to believe in their hearts that when they speak their parents hear and respond to them with care and kindness. The program saying applies here. “Say what you mean, mean what you say but don’t say it mean.”

-Insincere, exaggerated praise is a serious mistake because kids may be given hopes for themselves that are  so high they will never be able to have them come to fruition. If that happens, they may develop an unnecessary sense of hopelessness.

-Insincere, exaggerated praise is a serious mistake because kids will sense it an come to doubt your sincere praise.

-One way I made sure that my kids knew they were heard was to say, “Let me tell you what I think you are wanting me to understand.” If I get it wrong, tell me where I missed it so I can get it right”.

-When my kids were small, sometimes they lacked the ability to express their feelings. I expressed their emotions for them by telling them a story I made up to put their emotions into words. In the story, I changed the first letter of each family members name to a “B” so the story featured Bina, Bill, Banelle, BoAnna, Bommy and Baddy. They got a kick out of me naming myself Baddy. I think it frequently defused some of the anger they may have been feeling.

-The retreating goals of my parents forced me to try for perfection because I could never find a way to feel like a good boy.

-I think that the expression I so frequently heard, “Do your best”, also pushed me toward perfectionism. I never could do my best. Now I realize  that no one can ever do their best. I once had a book published. For a long time, I did not make much progress with the writing because I could not write the book I wanted to write. I began to make progress when I finally realized that I had to settle for the book I could write.

-The failure of my parents to show healthy, natural, normal husband and wife physical affection in front of me made sex seem like the ultimate dark secret.

-I felt invaded by my parents. their tendency to run over me made me an excellent boundary setter. The trouble was, that I only knew how to set other people’s boundaries. “If I do this, Mommy will not like it  if I do that, Dad will be angry and spank me real hard.”

-Faith seems to me to be the result of seeing change in myself and in others. That’s why it is good for me to go to some of the same  meetings each week and share often. If I do that, I can hear of others growth and they can hear mine.

-Faith comes by hearing and hearing from the word of God. So says Paul in Romans. The word of God I have heard in meetings has brought faith to me.

- Humility comes to me as I accept my limitations. Humiliation has come to me in the situations where my very person hood is attacked.

-The primary limitation that I need to accept daily, is that I can not deal with life on earth by myself.

-A newcomer to my program asked me how I began the journey toward surrender to God. I responded with a grin and said, “I tried everything I could think of to avoid trusting my Higher Power. When I ran out of things to try I was at the point of of either starting to learn to surrender or  to die. Being the bright sort of fellow I am I began my life of growing surrender.

-Probably, my most intimidating barrier to trust was the inability to believe God could care about anyone as messed up as me.

-My first prayer of surrender was, “God, if you can do anything with this mess you are welcome to it.” To my utter surprise, She took me into her arms like I was a priceless little child.

-One thing that has helped me accept the love of my Higher Power was to think of Her as a woman. That idea of my Higher Power as a woman has been powerfully reinforced by the loving, nearly adoring, look in the eyes of the women in the rooms. I am thinking right now of a particular young women named Lisa I talked to at a meeting last Sunday. She said “Hi Mister George.”

I was shocked at her using the title Mister and I guess she noticed. Then she said “You deserve to have me    call you Mister because you have helped me so much”. I was touched by her words but the tenderness in her eyes was the thing that was so healing.

-God has trusted the entire earth to mankind’s care. I don’t think we are not doing all that great a job. Science is warning us that we need to shape up. I wish I had the faith in  God that She has in us.

I went to a great meeting this morning. The topic was perfectionism.

-I After I shared, I was filled with dread because I did not think my pitch was perfectly delivered.

-I hate seeing that I have not perfectly dealt with my perfectionism.

-My humanity is included in the love covenant I have with my Higher Power. To my surprise, She only wants me to be fully human. In other words, my Higher power only wants me to be exactly the person I actually am,  She wants me to thoroughly accept and love myself.

-Maybe the perfect solution to perfectionism is believing, ” I’m not OK, you are not OK, but that”s OK.”

-At my funeral, no one will say, “What a wonderful man George was. He was always right.”

-My strategy as a boy was to figure out what it was my mother wanted from me. I would say to myself, “She is very angry. If I can figure out what I did to make her so angry, I would never do it again. Conversely, sometimes I said, “She’s  being nice now. If I could figure out what I did to make her happy I would always do it.” That was definitely my onramp to perfectionism.

-Unfortunately, if I had found a way to always do it right, that would have been a major problem for my Mom. That’s because what she wanted from me was not for me to be the perfect son, she wanted me to be available so I could be the target for her anger.

-One of the ways she managed to keep me available, was to keep changing the rules. The boy she wanted me to be at noon today, was not going to be the boy she was going to want me to be that evening.

-She was nice to me often enough to keep me hooked.’

-Sometimes I have said,”I am only an expert in one area. I am an expert at knowing what does not work. Maybe saying that is one more expression of my perfectionism.

-I have learned that falling into the mud is not my problem. Everybody does that. My problem is staying for a swim.

-When I first came into the program an experienced program member watched for the times I would beat myself up with a verbal baseball bat. Then she would hand me a silver dollar and say, ” I have purchased that bat. Now it is mine and you can’t ever use  it again”. I made a lot of money.

-My really good friend Nicole and I have an agreement. If she hears me make a derogatory joke or statement about myself, she has the right to demand I make three affirmations about myself. It works the other way too. if she speaks in a derogatory way about herself, she owes me three affirmations. This little game has brought us some fun moments.

-I have become persuaded that all my character defects are driven by shame. Therefore shaming myself when I do I do something wrong only serves to make repeating the shame producing activities a certainty.

-Shame is the gasoline that keeps the car of my character defects running. I can’t get rid of that car, but I can keep the fool thing out of gas.

-In other words, if I stubbornly hang on to my serenity by using my program tools, I can gradually escape the prison of shame in which I have lived most of my life.

-I could not possibly count high enough to count the fears that the passage of time has proven to be totally baseless.

-When I first started my recovery, I often listed the things I was afraid of in the morning. That evening, I reexamined my list and noted how many of my morning fears had proven groundless. Then I would pray, “God, I give myself permission to be afraid again in the morning and not feel guilty.  Please help me to turn things over to you enough to rest well tonight. I repeated that process for months or weeks at a time. This process was very helpful to me.

-A good many of my evening fears came from a prayer I said every night when I was a boy that included the line, “…If I should die before I wake I pray the Lord my soul you to take.” It was not appropriate for me as a young boy to go to sleep each night wondering if I was going to die.

-Worse, what would happen to me if the Lord chose “…My soul not to take”. I needed to feel totally received by my parents to help me deal with the reality that I felt absolutely dependent on them for my survival. Because I was so young, I was not conscious of these fears . Nevertheless, this prayer only served to deepen my distress.

-That prayer also gave me a fear of life after death that I could not even begin to get into words because of my youth. Without the parental bonding I so desperately needed, that vague but stalking fear of eternal abandonment could only grow stronger as I grew older.

-The only comfort I have found for that stalking abandonment fear is the daily, intimate fellowship with God that the 12 Step people call conscious contact.

-The word “conscious” in the phrase conscious contact has two meanings for me. The first meeting has to do with the fact that I consciously set time apart each day  to learn to enjoy God. The second is that moment by moment sense that  I never have to pray God in from Chicago. She is always there.

-Fear can be successfully suppressed if the purpose is to help me deal with a situation that needs total focus.

-However, if that suppressed fear is not brought out in the open after the immediate threat is passed, the fear can stay inside me to do damage.

-If I use my Higher Power and my friends to help me process my tension, then I can accept and enjoy the reality that I successfully handled a tough situation.

-Using my recovery tools in that way, trains into me a growing confidence in and respect for myself.

-Practice makes perfect is a deadly idea for me. Practice makes progress works.

-”Do your best’ is a threatening idea. I guess I feel that way because growing up, I did my best to do my best and it was never good enough. “Now My aim is to the best I can today given my situation and the resources available.

-My folks did their best  and it was a shitty job.

-Doing my best is also boring because it implies that I will never be better. if I have already done my best my best will never be better than what I did today. I prefer the idea of getting better and better for the rest of my life.

-In the past, people were very critical of me. The result was I did not trust process. If I could not do it well immediately, I would just quit.

-Sometimes, especially when I am doing something new, I feel like the way I am doing it wrong is better than the way some people are not doing it right.

-Anything worth doing is worth doing my way. That certainly includes recovery. In fact, I am going to do it my way until The fellowship demonstrates there is a better way to do it that will help me achieve my own goals for my own sake. I think the term to used here is enlightened self interest.

-Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly.

-Young man’s disease is the idea that your basic choice in life is between slow progress and fast progress. The fact is my choice is between slow process and no progress. If I reject slow progress and fall to the false allure of fast progress, I end up with no progress or even regression.

-The good thing about slow progress is that it is a progress I am likely to keep. Fast progress comes to me quickly and tends to leave me quickly.

-Life gets more difficult for me as I age. I lose physically, my mind slows down,  and friends and family die. If I just stay at my current level of maturity, the difficulties of life will ultimately outstrip my strength as I get older. That is true no matter how strong I am emotionally today.

-At 71, what I see is that the gains in wisdom and serenity I experience through growth amply compensate for the losses I experience because I am aging. For example, a year ago I told my daughter that I loved her two beautiful daughters  more than I loved her at the same age. Jill and her sisters have never breathed a breath  when I did not love them with all my heart, but when they were children, my heart was  shrunken by fear, shame, inferiority and anger. today,my emotional evolution through program has given me a vastly larger ability to love.

The following ideas have helped me.

-From where she is at this moment up in heaven, my Mom is an unimaginably good Mother. That is one reason I should live in this moment and not the past. Also, my future in terms of my mother’s love and respect for me is unimaginably good.

-I believe in the essential unity of all God’s creation. For that reason, any separation I feel from any person can only apply to the remaining days of my life. Compared to eternity, my remaining time on earth is a mere speck.

-It is always a mistake for me to live today on yesterday’s program.

-If I decide not to work my program for a few day, I should be honest enough to admit that I am asking for personal unhappiness and also may well end up wounding the people I love.

-One key to my recovery is the willingness to say no to the demands of my inner child.

-Another key to my recovery is the willingness to sit with my discomfort.

-A big problem with living in the future is that nobody is there yet.

-Denial: Don’t-Even- Notice- I- A m-Lying

-When I asked my very experienced sponsor who had been the rooms for many decades how you turned your will and life over to the care of God, she gave me a simple and profound answer. She said “Honey that’s easy. Work the steps with me, keep calling me, and go to lots of meetings”. She always called me Honey. I loved it.

-The women of my meeting have been so loving to me that have redefined my whole picture of  the true nature of the feminine.

The following ideas have helped me. These ideas have been developing over the years but came together at a wonderful meeting in which “Boundaries” was the topic.

-Boundaries can be developed as I become acquainted with and willing to communicate the secret thoughts that in the past I was too frightened to mention.

-The first thing I need in order to set meaningful boundaries is a powerful determination to be myself.

-The most basic boundary is giving myself permission to say no.

-In setting my boundaries, my need to explain why I set the boundary undermines the believability of the boundary. I may want to give an explanation, but if I am afraid not to explain and justify, you may sense my fear and  want to see if I can be backed down.

-When I was growing up, i set many boundaries; all for other people. “If I do that, she will be mad at me.”  Or  “She likes it when I do that, therefore I have to always remember to do that”.

-The trouble of surviving by constantly searching for what the other person wants is that it leads to a life style in which I am defenseless. If I am searching for clues to what the other people want, I have to take in every nuance of their words, actions, and demeanors into myself. If I do that, I necessarily absorb every negative idea that comes my way.

-If I am trying to please people and not myself, I tend to overestimate the damage potential of other people because I add my negative imagination to what was actually done and said.

-I do better when I do not try to set rigid boundaries. All my boundaries should spring from the 11th step; that is from a search for God,s will. There may be occasions where I want to give up a boundary temporarily. However, It is better if I do not sacrifice a boundary to fear.

-Boundaries based on the gifts of the program tend to be informed by flexibility and love.

- I am better off if I select boundaries that depend solely upon me. “You have to stop screaming at me” is a boundary that depends upon your willingness to comply. “If you scream at me I will simply hang up”, is a boundary that gives me control of my own situation.

-Some boundaries don’t have to be spoken. In that case, my behavior and not my words let you know what behaviors are not acceptable to me.

-I do not think I can effectively set boundaries if I fight against or resent your boundaries.

-Boundaries have a tendency to set both people free.

The following ideas have helped me.

-I have learned that my Higher Power does not want to change me as much as She wants to help me actualize the wonderful person I already am, beneath all the fears and shame.

-Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life” means whatever choice I make, my Higher Power is always with me.

-Our safety and joy are not dependent upon me, but upon the faithfulness and kindness of my Higher Power.

-My experience tells me that when I live to avoid being criticized, I somehow invite criticism.

-It is impossible to overestimate the love of my Higher Power, but It is sure fun to try

-If my spiritual experience is not freeing, then I have fallen into a snare created by a human that wants to control me for his own benefit.

-In my program, I have felt that I was taught the fundamental spiritual truths before I was born. Spiritual  meaning is ingrained in my heart, Somehow, I lost conscious contact with these profound spiritual realities as I matured, but the truth resonates inside of me. I feel like I recognize the truth that has come to me more than I feel like the truth is something that is foreign to me.

-There is a feeling in my meetings that I just love. For years, because I felt so inferior that I was always trying to prove I was good enough by tryiing to be better than. Now I delight in being with people who are just like me.

-Sometimes I need to pray,”God grant me the serenity to accept the things I can not change, namely that I am a good man.

-Why is it that insults go straight to  my heart but I sometimes defend myself when I am complimented

Comments on “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.”

-I do not have an acceptance switch I can flip when I am struggling. For me, meetings, my sponsor, and phone calls are the tools that most often restore my serenity

-Serenity is never thought up or worked up. It is always granted by my Higher Power as a gift.

-Among the things I need to accept is my own acceptance by my Higher Power and by those I love.

-Acceptance is not a commandant of my program. Instead, it is a very wise and kind suggestion. It is not anything to fear, it is a wonder to anticipate.

-If God can use the murder of Her innocent son Jesus, to bring salvation to the entire world, She can certainly make any unhappiness I surrender to Her, work to my great advantage.

-Among the things I can not change and therefore must accept, are my character defects. When the gift of serenity allows me to accept my defects, I become quiet enough to hear Spirit whisper the life giving truth in my deep ear. Only then can I receive the healing I so desperately want.

-Serenity allows me to believe that I am making progress when my disease is trying to make me feel stuck.

-Before program, I didn’t even know enough about serenity, to realize I didn’t have it.

-I was surprised to find out that serenity would allow my life to overflow with powerful, exhilarating passion.

-The price I pay for insisting on my right to hang onto my resentments is the loss of the possibility of serenity.