Monday, June 20, 2011
Speaking
I was asked recently if I could share my experince strength and hope at a treatment facility. I have spoke at this facility a number of times, and it is my favorite place to share. Brand new faces, brand new souls on the road of recovery.
The first few times I shared, I did as I was told. I pre-planned almost nothing, prayed to God to use me as an instrument of hope for somebody, and just shared in an honest way.
A friend came up to thank me one time and said: "Kid, you do a fine job of speaking. Fine job! But you need to work on your close!"
I knew what he was talking about.
While at the podium, I would allow the words to just flow freely. When I felt the inspiration dry up...I would just say "I think Im done now" and go sit down.
Not such a good close.
Since then I have been closing in the same way everytime I speak. I thank everyone for allowing me to share and then I read this.
Our Time Bank
Imagine there is a bank which credits your account each morning
with $86,400, carries over no balance from day to day, allows you to
keep no cash balance, and every evening cancels whatever part of the
amount you had failed to use during the day.
What would you do?
Draw out every cent, of course! Well, everyone has such a bank.
Its name is TIME and the banker is GOD. Every morning, He credits you
with 86,400 seconds. Every night He writes off, as lost, whatever of
this you have failed to invest to good purpose.
It carries over no balance. It allows no overdraft.
Each day He opens a new account for you. Each night He burns the
records of the day. If you fail to use the day's deposits, the loss is
yours. There is no going back. There is no drawing against the "tomorrow".
You must live in the present on today's deposits.
Invest it so as to get from it the utmost profit for His glory!
The clock is running. Make the most of today.
I stole that poem off a bulletin board at work.
Progress not perfection.
The first few times I shared, I did as I was told. I pre-planned almost nothing, prayed to God to use me as an instrument of hope for somebody, and just shared in an honest way.
A friend came up to thank me one time and said: "Kid, you do a fine job of speaking. Fine job! But you need to work on your close!"
I knew what he was talking about.
While at the podium, I would allow the words to just flow freely. When I felt the inspiration dry up...I would just say "I think Im done now" and go sit down.
Not such a good close.
Since then I have been closing in the same way everytime I speak. I thank everyone for allowing me to share and then I read this.
Our Time Bank
Imagine there is a bank which credits your account each morning
with $86,400, carries over no balance from day to day, allows you to
keep no cash balance, and every evening cancels whatever part of the
amount you had failed to use during the day.
What would you do?
Draw out every cent, of course! Well, everyone has such a bank.
Its name is TIME and the banker is GOD. Every morning, He credits you
with 86,400 seconds. Every night He writes off, as lost, whatever of
this you have failed to invest to good purpose.
It carries over no balance. It allows no overdraft.
Each day He opens a new account for you. Each night He burns the
records of the day. If you fail to use the day's deposits, the loss is
yours. There is no going back. There is no drawing against the "tomorrow".
You must live in the present on today's deposits.
Invest it so as to get from it the utmost profit for His glory!
The clock is running. Make the most of today.
I stole that poem off a bulletin board at work.
Progress not perfection.
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
Sponsorship
Early in my budding relationship with my sponsor, she handed me a piece of paper that had a sort of outline as to how we were going to do things.
The 12 Steps Of Sponsorship
1.I will not help you to stay and wallow in limbo.
2.I will help you to grow, to become more productive, by your definition.
3.I will help you become more autonomous, more loving of yourself, more excited, less sensitive, more free to become the authority for your own living.
4.I cannot give you dreams or “fix you up” simply because I cannot.
5.I cannot give you growth, or grow for you. You must grow for yourself by facing reality, grim as it may be at times.
6.I cannot take away your loneliness or your pain.
7.I cannot sense your world for you, evaluate your goals for you, tell you what is best for your world; because you have your own world in which you must live.
8.I cannot convince you of the necessity to make the vital decision of choosing the frightening uncertainty of growing over the safe misery of remaining static.
9.I want to be with you and know you as a rich and growing friend; yet I cannot get close to you when you choose not to grow.
10.When I begin to care for you out of pity or when I begin to lose faith in you, then I am inhibiting both for you and for me.
11.You must know and understand my help is conditional. I will be with you and “hang in there” with you so long as I continue to get even the slightest hint that you are still trying to grow.
12.If you can accept this, then perhaps we can help each other to become what God meant us to be, mature adults, leaving childishness forever to the little children of the world.
She instructed me to go home, hang it on my fridge and refer to it often.
When I got sponsee's of my own I photocopied it and passed it on to them. I keep it handy, read it often....mostly to remind me of what my role is as a sponsor.
I walk a very thin line between healthy sponsorship and co-dependancy. I have to guard against that little dastardly trait on a daily basis. I dont always know or see the difference between loving people and holding their hand through this recovery process and loving people right back onto their sickness.
Thank God sponsorship is just another one of the jobs that I dont have to do alone.
The 12 Steps Of Sponsorship
1.I will not help you to stay and wallow in limbo.
2.I will help you to grow, to become more productive, by your definition.
3.I will help you become more autonomous, more loving of yourself, more excited, less sensitive, more free to become the authority for your own living.
4.I cannot give you dreams or “fix you up” simply because I cannot.
5.I cannot give you growth, or grow for you. You must grow for yourself by facing reality, grim as it may be at times.
6.I cannot take away your loneliness or your pain.
7.I cannot sense your world for you, evaluate your goals for you, tell you what is best for your world; because you have your own world in which you must live.
8.I cannot convince you of the necessity to make the vital decision of choosing the frightening uncertainty of growing over the safe misery of remaining static.
9.I want to be with you and know you as a rich and growing friend; yet I cannot get close to you when you choose not to grow.
10.When I begin to care for you out of pity or when I begin to lose faith in you, then I am inhibiting both for you and for me.
11.You must know and understand my help is conditional. I will be with you and “hang in there” with you so long as I continue to get even the slightest hint that you are still trying to grow.
12.If you can accept this, then perhaps we can help each other to become what God meant us to be, mature adults, leaving childishness forever to the little children of the world.
She instructed me to go home, hang it on my fridge and refer to it often.
When I got sponsee's of my own I photocopied it and passed it on to them. I keep it handy, read it often....mostly to remind me of what my role is as a sponsor.
I walk a very thin line between healthy sponsorship and co-dependancy. I have to guard against that little dastardly trait on a daily basis. I dont always know or see the difference between loving people and holding their hand through this recovery process and loving people right back onto their sickness.
Thank God sponsorship is just another one of the jobs that I dont have to do alone.
The House God Gave Me
The way he treats his body, you’d think he was renting. ~Robert Brault
Summer time (aka-bathing suit season) is pretty much here, and as a result, Ive had some interesting conversations with my friends. Mostly girlfriends because from my persepective men just dont seem to worry about how they look in a swim suit. I could be wrong (I very often am) but it seems to me that when its 32 degrees out, men just strip it off, put on a pair of swim shorts and hop in the water or attach themselves by a rope to the back of a boat to get yanked all over a lake with a board strapped to their feet.
No worries of looking too fat, ohmygosh is this suit see through when it gets wet, do I have an ass cheek hanging out?
I had a conversation recently with a sponsee in regards to our bodies.
Its beginning to feel that anytime I look in the mirror and pick apart what I see, it seems a little like thumbing my nose at God and telling Him he should have done better work.
This is not to say that I take no personal responsibility for body troubles that I have created.
These days Im enjoying the idea that God gave me a house to live in, my body, but I need to be responsible for the maitenance of that house. I need to treat with care and kindness the house he provided. I need to show my gratitude by eating well, exersizing, getting proper sleep.
Making the decision to not polute my house with drugs and alcohol anymore was just the beginning.
Sometimes when I light up a cigarette, I become all too aware that I am damaging the house God gave me. When I eat a bag of chips in place of lunch, I know I could and should do better.
Its another one of those things that I am going to need to ask for God's help with. (I havent asked yet because frankly Im a little fearful of what that help will look like when it arrives. And Im well aware that it will require a whole lot of effort and discipline on my part)
Viewing my body as a gift from God, the house He gave me to live in, has helped me to be able to look in the mirror and appreciate and even come to love and accept myself. There was a time when I would have happily trudged off to visit a plastic surgeon to get a smaller nose, perkier boobs and the little lines erased from around my eyes.
I have a deeper understanding of inner beauty and the importance of working all of the spiritual principles into my daily living. I am grateful and blessed that the house I was given is in fine working order (even though I treated it as a party house for a long while)and that I have a responsibility to not simply 'feel' grateful but to show my gratitude by taking care of my house. I still spend too much time working on my home's curb appeal and too little time doing the hard to see spring cleaning.
But as it has been with everything else in recovery....first comes awareness, then comes the willingness to change.
Home Sweet Home
Summer time (aka-bathing suit season) is pretty much here, and as a result, Ive had some interesting conversations with my friends. Mostly girlfriends because from my persepective men just dont seem to worry about how they look in a swim suit. I could be wrong (I very often am) but it seems to me that when its 32 degrees out, men just strip it off, put on a pair of swim shorts and hop in the water or attach themselves by a rope to the back of a boat to get yanked all over a lake with a board strapped to their feet.
No worries of looking too fat, ohmygosh is this suit see through when it gets wet, do I have an ass cheek hanging out?
I had a conversation recently with a sponsee in regards to our bodies.
Its beginning to feel that anytime I look in the mirror and pick apart what I see, it seems a little like thumbing my nose at God and telling Him he should have done better work.
This is not to say that I take no personal responsibility for body troubles that I have created.
These days Im enjoying the idea that God gave me a house to live in, my body, but I need to be responsible for the maitenance of that house. I need to treat with care and kindness the house he provided. I need to show my gratitude by eating well, exersizing, getting proper sleep.
Making the decision to not polute my house with drugs and alcohol anymore was just the beginning.
Sometimes when I light up a cigarette, I become all too aware that I am damaging the house God gave me. When I eat a bag of chips in place of lunch, I know I could and should do better.
Its another one of those things that I am going to need to ask for God's help with. (I havent asked yet because frankly Im a little fearful of what that help will look like when it arrives. And Im well aware that it will require a whole lot of effort and discipline on my part)
Viewing my body as a gift from God, the house He gave me to live in, has helped me to be able to look in the mirror and appreciate and even come to love and accept myself. There was a time when I would have happily trudged off to visit a plastic surgeon to get a smaller nose, perkier boobs and the little lines erased from around my eyes.
I have a deeper understanding of inner beauty and the importance of working all of the spiritual principles into my daily living. I am grateful and blessed that the house I was given is in fine working order (even though I treated it as a party house for a long while)and that I have a responsibility to not simply 'feel' grateful but to show my gratitude by taking care of my house. I still spend too much time working on my home's curb appeal and too little time doing the hard to see spring cleaning.
But as it has been with everything else in recovery....first comes awareness, then comes the willingness to change.
Home Sweet Home
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