Healing
Onions and Birch Trees
30/May/
The process of recovery can be likened to peeling an onion. One removes a layer at a time, often shedding a few tears in the process.
The process is also a bit like the growth of a birch tree. A tree needs its bark for protection, but as a birch grows, its bark peels away to be replaced with a fresh surface. If it loses its bark prematurely to, for example, a beaver, the injured tree is exposed to infections, fungus, or insects. The tree may die.
Like a birch, I am wounded and vulnerable if I am stripped of my defenses prematurely, but God does not leave me unprotected. As I grow and change in recovery, I lose poor behaviors that have been my "defenses," and God replaces them with something new. And so my healing will progress.
—Anonymous
Working the Program
21/May/
When I started on the path to recovery, I thought of meetings as only places to unburden myself of my troubles. I've since learned that complaining only magnifies my worries; my problems seem to become larger and more disturbing.
I'm in recovery to get rid of self-pity and resentment and not to increase their power over me. I go to meetings to hear others share their experience, strength, and hope. I go to learn how they have dealt with their problems. I go to find wisdom that I can apply to my life.
God, keep me from magnifying my troubles by dwelling on them continually.
—Anonymous
Just As I Am
29/April/
Just as I am! poor, wretched, blind—
Sight, riches, healing of the mind,
Yea, all I need in Thee to find—
O Lamb of God, I come! I come!
—Charlotte Elliot