10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

Are we willing to continue to look at our motives, intentions, behaviors, actions for the rest of our lives?

Consider this: Appetites. 

We are tri-part beings. We have a spirit, a soul, and a body. Each part has an appetite. All of our parts need nourishment of the right kind.

• Our spirits need the spiritual food found in the Bible, in prayer, in anointed music, in conversations with others about God and other spiritual matters, in worship, in church.
• Our souls need different kinds of nourishment.
• Our minds need to feed on the truth found in literature, conversations, education, meetings. 
• Our emotions need to feed on stabilizing, calming influences, and people. 
• Our wills need to grow from choosing healthy actions often after consulting with wise friends. 
• Our bodies need to be nourished by healthy food, rest, recreation, and sleep. Often our bodies need the healing that is only obtained over time. 

Recovery teaches us to seek and welcome healing nourishment for our whole being. 

For those familiar with the 3-circle model of addiction, the inner circle can only remain in sobriety with a robust spiritual diet. The middle circle behaviors from our mind, emotions and will are transformed by regular feedings of recovery producing input. And the outer circle needs recovery protecting activities programmed into our schedules to bring life producing change.

What part of us needs attention? Where are we undernourished and therefore in danger of slipping back into old dangerous patterns? Seems a 10th Step inventory would be helpful to give ourselves a thorough checkup…. With gratitude to God for the opportunity.

I just realized, thanks to the prompting of Ann Voskamp, that when I worry it is because I am trying to solve a problem. I have taken God off the throne and put me on it. I am back in charge. Bill called it “self will run riot”. Arggg. 

And note our changes – look to what God is doing in us – or when did we go back to our old ways?

Having an attitude of gratitude makes us willing to keep short accounts – to own our stuff quickly and act.

We can do a “do-over” go back, apologize and do it differently. We need continual choice to trust Him as we do the work to change. 

We can only change what we know – the daily inventory offers us that opportunity. 

Keep trying, doing the footwork, asking for help.

A personla inventory is:

• A lifelong discipline. 
• A way to maintain emotional balance. 
• My personal inventory, not other’s inventory. 
• Humble.

Promptly – get it out, off, gone – move on. 

What is, not what we wish was or not want. 

Clarity – truth telling – rigorous honesty.

Getting more acquainted with ourselves and how we function. 

Believing and living in the truth that everything that happens in our lives comes to us through His filter – what are we to learn?

Spot-check inventory, daily and periodically. 

And yet again, choices: maturity is the capacity to face unpleasantness and frustration, discomfort and defeat without complaint or collapse.

Maturity is unselfishness. To respond to the needs of others, often at the expense of one’s own desires and wishes.  Again, making choices…

Maturity is perseverance, the ability to sweat out a project or situation in spite of opposition and discouraging setbacks.

“Keep coming back, it works if you work it” Choice.

“Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can.

Tomorrow is another day. . .you shall begin it well and serenely.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

As long as our hearts can receive messages of beauty, hope, cheer, and courage, . . . there is gratitude . . . serenity. . .and comfortable sobriety.

Courage to take risks. We watch our fellow travelers trudge the road of happy destiny and learn to try.

“You’ve got to go out on a limb sometimes because that is where the fruit is.” Will Rodgers

I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship.”

Louisa May Alcott

Program offers the miracle of having our hand on the wheel not our addiction.

“We tend to forget that happiness doesn’t come as a result of getting something we don’t have, but rather of recognizing and appreciating what we do have.”

Frederick Koenig

Good news, capacities increase! 

Try to be like the turtle–at ease in your own shell.

Give thanks.

Ask for God to reveal what we need to know.

What were our responses to the day’s events?

Express sorrow. 

Share your concerns with Him. 

This step is where we can keep track – to document life.

Self-analysis. 

Take a fresh inventory. 

• What has changed?
• What are the new patterns?
• What old habits have changed?
• What need to humbly ask for help about?
• Gratitude
  • Return of the ability to be grateful.
  • What can you notice that you need to say thank you for?
• What positive word to say to someone today?
• What are you struggling to understand?
• What are the confusions?
• What are you avoiding?
• What are the emotions you experienced today?
• What good/acceptable ones?
• What bad/harmful ones?
• Any resentments?

Remember, progress not perfection!

• Where do you need to practice self-restraint?
• When to stop to wait to figure out what’s going on. Talk to someone before responding. 
• Ask, what’s my part? What am I to learn?

Beware of prideful self-confidence. What part is God playing? His grace. 

Acceptance of another’s brokenness – offer forgiveness and understanding. Tolerance.

Pray for Serenity to be able to accept what you can’t change.

When did you act courageously?

When did you show kindness – do you need to practice that more?

We’re you impatient?

Do you need to extend courtesy?

Are you choosing God’s will for you? Not the world’s will for you, or your own. 

Do you have good intentions, good thoughts, good acts?

Where there is pain there is often spiritual progress. 

Are you grumpy or grateful?

A wise man, Oliver Wendell Holmes, wrote…”The greatest thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving.” In this time of people taking stands on what they believe to be important, can we in recovery live with Program principles: one step at a time; not take another’s inventory; stay open minded to our Higher Power’s directions. 

Bottom line…our sobriety is at stake. Recovery Road is where we are going…

We learn: Progress, not perfection… so then how come we work so hard to make progress in achieving perfection? Sigh, accepting limits without self-judgement is progress towards serenity.

“When my kids become wild and unruly, I use a nice, safe playpen. When they’re finished, I climb out.” Erma Bombeck

Self-care…

“People are hungry for stories. It’s part of our very being. Storytelling is a form of history, immortality too. It goes from one generation to another.” Studs Terkel

I still remember stories/shares I heard early on in the rooms. I still remember learning how to tell mine. I still remember how surprised I was at the peace and freedom it gave me. 

How about you? When was your last share?

From the Good Book:

“Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation; the spirit is indeed willing, but the flesh is weak.”

Mark 14:38

“If we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we will have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his son cleanses us from all sun.”

1 John 1:7

“I am the true vine and my Father is the gardener.  He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit, he trims clean so it will be even more fruitful. You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.  I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. If anyone does not remain in me, he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire, and burned. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you. This is my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.”

John 15:1-8