May 6

"HOLD BACK NOTHING"

The real tests of the situation are your own willingness to confide and your full confidence in the one with whom you share your first accurate self-survey. . . .Provided you hold back nothing, your sense of relief will mount from minute to minute. The dammed-up emotions of years break out of their confinement, and miraculously vanish as soon as they are exposed. As the pain subsides, a healing tranquility takes its place.
—  TWELVE STEPS AND TWELVE TRADITIONS, pp. 61-62

A tiny kernel of locked-in feelings began to unfold when I first attended A.A. meetings and self-knowledge then became a learning task for me. This new self-understanding brought about a change in my responses to life's situations. I realized I had the right to make choices in my life, and the inner dictatorship of habits slowly lost its grip.

I believe that if I seek God I can find a better way to live and I ask Him daily to assist me in living a sober life.

I ask God, when I'm in the forest, to give me the courage to call upon a member of A.A.

Copyrighted © 1990. Reprinted with permission by Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc.