Footprints in the Sand "Christian 12 Step Recovery Group"

05/29/2025

Language of Letting Go
Powerlessness and Unmanageability
Willpower is not the key to the way of life we are seeking. Surrender is.
“I have spent much of my life trying to make people be, do, or feel something they aren’t, don’t want to do, and choose not to feel. I have made them, and myself, crazy in that process,” said one recovering woman.
“I spent my childhood trying to make an alcoholic father who didn’t love himself be a normal person who loved me. I then married an alcoholic and spent a decade trying to make him stop drinking.
“I have spent years trying to make emotionally unavailable people be emotionally present for me.
“I have spent even more years trying to make family members, who are content feeling miserable, happy. What I’m saying is this: I’ve spent much of my life desperately and vainly trying to do the impossible and feeling like a failure when I couldn’t. It’s been like planting corn and trying to make the seeds grow peas. Won’t work!
“By surrendering to powerlessness, I gain the presence of mind to stop wasting my time and energy trying to change and control that which I cannot change and control. It gives me permission to stop trying to do the impossible and focus on what is possible: being who I am, loving myself, feeling what I feel, and doing what I want to do with my life.”
In recovery, we learn to stop fighting lions, simply because we cannot win. We also learn that the more we are focused on controlling and changing others, the more unmanageable our life becomes. The more we focus on living our own life, the more we have a life to live, and the more manageable our life will become.
Today, I will accept powerlessness where I have no power to change things, and I’ll allow my life to become manageable.

04/19/2025

01/19/2025

Language of Letting Go
Owning Our Power
There is one feeling we need to pay particular attention to in recovery: feeling victimized. We do not need to become comfortable with that feeling.
How do we feel when we’ve been victimized? Helpless. Rageful. Powerless. Frustrated.
Feeling victimized is dangerous. Often, it can prompt us into addictive or other compulsive behaviors.
In recovery, we’re learning to identify when we’re feeling victimized, when we are actually being victimized, and why we’re feeling victimized. We’re learning to own our power, to take care of ourselves, and to remove ourselves as victims.
Sometimes, owning our power means we realize we are victimizing ourselves—and others are not doing anything to hurt us. They are living their lives, as they have a right to, and we are feeling victimized because we’re attempting to control their process, or we’re unreasonably expecting them to take care of us. We may feel victimized if we get stuck in a codependent belief, such as, Other people make me feel. . . . Others hold the key to my happiness and destiny. . . . or, I can’t be happy unless another behaves in a particular way, or a certain event takes place. . . .
Other times, owning our power means we realize that we are being victimized by another’s behavior. Our boundaries are being invaded. In that case, we figure out what we need to do to take care of ourselves to stop the victimization; we need to set boundaries.
Sometimes, a change of attitude is all that’s required. We are not victims.
We strive to have compassion for the person who victimized us, but understand that compassion often comes later, after we’ve removed ourselves as victims in body, mind, and spirit. We also understand that too much compassion can put us right back into the victim slot. Too much pity for a person who is victimizing us may set up a situation where the person can victimize us again.
We try not to force consequences or crises upon another person, but we also do not rescue that person from logical consequences of his or her behavior. If there is a part that is our responsibility to play in delivering those consequences, we do our part—not to control or punish, but to be responsible for ourselves and to others.
We try to figure out what we may be doing that is causing us to feel victimized, or what part we are playing in the system, and we stop doing that too. We are powerless over others and their behavior, but we can own our power to remove ourselves as victims.
Today, I will take responsibility for myself and show it to others by not allowing myself to be victimized. I cannot control outcomes, but I can control my attitude toward being victimized. I am not a victim; I do not deserve to be victimized.

01/18/2025

Language of Letting Go
Gratitude
Sometimes in life, things happen too fast. We barely solve one problem when two new problems surface. We’re feeling great in the morning, but we’re submerged in misery by nightfall.
Every day we face interruptions, delays, changes, and challenges. We face personality conflicts and disappointments. Often when we’re feeling overwhelmed, we can’t see the lessons in these experiences.
One simple concept can get us through the most stressful of times. It’s called gratitude. We learn to say, thank you, for these problems and feelings. Thank youfor the way things are. I don’t like this experience, but thank youanyway.
Force gratitude until it becomes habitual. Gratitude helps us stop trying to control outcomes. It is the key that unlocks positive energy in our life. It is the alchemy that turns problems into blessings, and the unexpected into gifts.
Today, I will be grateful. I will start the process of turning today’s pain into tomorrow’s joy.

01/06/2025

Language of Letting Go

Relationships

If we are unhappy without a relationship, we’ll probably be unhappy with one as well. A relationship doesn’t begin our life; a relationship doesn’t become our life. A relationship is a continuation of life.

— BEYOND CODEPENDENCY

Relationships are the blessing and bane of recovery. Relationships are where we take our recovery show on the road.

Each day, we are faced with the prospect of functioning in several different relationships. Sometimes, we choose these relationships; sometimes, we don’t. The one choice we usually have in our relationships concerns our own behavior. In recovery from codependency, our goal is to behave in ways that demonstrate responsibility for ourselves.

We’re learning to acknowledge our power to take care of ourselves in our relationships. We’re learning to be intimate with people when possible.

Do we need to detach from someone who we’ve been trying to control? Is there someone we need to talk to, even though what we have to say may be uncomfortable? Is there someone we’ve been avoiding because we’re afraid to take care of ourselves with that person? Do we need to make an amend? Is there someone we need to reach out to, or show love?

Recovery is not done apart from our relationships. Recovery is done by learning to own our power and to take care of ourselves in relationships.

Today, I will participate in my relationships to the best of my ability. I will make myself available for closeness and sharing with people I trust. I will ask for what I need and give what feels right.

11/03/2024

Language of Letting Go
Denial
Denial is fertile breeding ground for the behaviors we call codependent: controlling, focusing on others, and neglecting ourselves. Illness and compulsive or addictive behaviors can also emerge during denial.
Denial can be confusing because it resembles sleeping. We’re not really aware we’re doing it until we’re done doing it. Forcingourselves—or anyone else—to face the truth usually doesn’t help. We won’t face the facts until we are ready. Neither, it seems, will anyone else. We may admit to the truth for a moment, but we won’t let ourselves know what we know until we feel safe, secure, and prepared enough to deal and cope with it.
Talking to friends who know, love, support, encourage, and affirm us helps.
Being gentle, loving, and affirming with ourselves helps. Asking ourselves, and our Higher Power, to guide us into and through change helps.
The first step toward acceptance is denial. The first step toward moving through denial is accepting that we may be in denial, and then gently allowing ourselves to move through.
God, help me feel safe and secure enough today to accept what I need to accept.

10/28/2024

Language of Letting Go
Meditation and Prayer
The Eleventh Step asks us to meditate as a route to improving our conscious contact with God.
Meditation is different than obsessing or worrying. Obsession and worrying are fear connections. Meditation means opening our mind and our spiritual energy to the God connection.
To connect with God, we need to relax as best we can and open our conscious and subconscious mind to a Higher Consciousness—one that is available to each of us.
In the busyness of our day and life, it may seem like a waste of time to slow down, to stop what we’re doing, and take this kind of break. It is no more a waste of time than stopping to put gas in our car when the tank is almost empty. It is necessary, it is beneficial, and it saves time. In fact, meditation can create more time and energy than the moments we take to do it.
Meditation and prayer are powerful recovery behaviors that work. We need to be patient. It is not reasonable to expect immediate answers, insight, or inspiration.
But solutions are coming. They are already on the way, if we have done our part—meditate and pray—and then let the rest go.
Whether we pray and meditate first thing in the morning, during a coffee break, or in the evening is our choice.
When our conscious contact with God improves, our subconscious contact will too. We will find ourselves increasingly tuned in to God’s harmony and will for us. We will find and maintain that soul connection, the God connection.
Today, I will take a moment for meditation and prayer. I will decide when and how long to do it. I am a child and creation of God—a Higher Power who loves to listen and talk to me. God, help me let go of my fears about whether or not You hear and care. Help me know that You are there and that I am able to tap into the spiritual consciousness.

10/17/2024

Language of Letting Go
Feelings and Surrender
Surrendering is a highly personal and spiritual experience.
Surrender is not something we can do in our heads. It is not something we can force or control by willpower. It is something we experience.
Acceptance, or surrender, is not a tidy package. Often, it is a package full of hard feelings—anger, rage, and sadness, followed by release and relief. As we surrender, we experience our frustration and anger at God, at other people, at ourselves, and at life. Then we come to the core of the pain and sadness, the heavy emotional burden inside that must come out before we can feel good. Often, these emotions are connected to healing and release at a deep level.
Surrender sets the wheels in motion. Our fear and anxiety about the future are released when we surrender.
We are protected. We are guided. Good things have been planned. The next step is now being taken. Surrender is the process that allows us to move forward. It is how our Higher Power moves us forward.
Trust in the rightness of timing, and the freedom at the other end, as you struggle humanly through this spiritual experience.
I will be open to the process of surrender in my life. I will allow myself all the awkward and potent emotions that must be released.

10/15/2024

Language of Letting Go
Letting Go of Chaos
No good work comes from unrest.
Unrest, fear, anger, or sadness may motivate us. These feelings are sometimes intended to compel action. But our best work emerges after these feelings have been replaced by peace.
We will not accomplish our task any sooner, or any better, by performing it out of a sense of urgency, fear, anger, or sadness.
Let go of unrest. Let peace fill the void. We do not have to forfeit our power, our God-given personal power—or our peace—to do the work as we are called upon to do today. We will be given all the power we need to do what we are meant to do, when it is time.
Let peace come first. Then proceed. The task will get done, naturally and on time.
Today, I will get peaceful first, and let my work and life emerge from that base

10/14/2024

10.14.2024. Anxiety hidden in the recesses of your heart give birth to fear of fear. Bring your anxieties into the Light of My Presence, where we can deal with them together. THERE IS A SOLUTION: So many want to stop but cannot. Almost none of us liked the self-searching, the leveling of our pride, the confession of shortcomings which the process requires for its successful consummation. But we saw that it really worked in others, and we had come to believe in the hopelessness and futility of life as we had been living it. We have found much of heaven and we have been rocketed into a fourth dimension of existence of which we had not even dreamed. BB p.25. “I will trust, and will not be afraid; for God is my strength and my song, and he has become my strength and friend….