Into Action

If the thought for the day is "into action," then I have to check with myself, am I? Am I doing what I need to do each day to put my faith into action?

"Faith without works is dead" has stuck with me since day one of my sobriety. At first it meant, emptying ashtrays, stacking chairs, making coffee. Those things made me feel so selfless. Which for me, is a good thing, because left to my own devices, I am all about self. And that is the crux of my problem. I cannot be left to my own devices. Not if I don't want to pick up a drink and end up back in the insanity that was my alcoholism.

As I have grown in my sobriety, I've had to take it further. At first, it was forcing myself to share at meetings. Then, it was giving out my phone number, leading meetings, and even going on panels (something that terrified me!). But I pushed outside of my comfort zone because I could see that people all around me were getting results. These days it is about sharing at meetings in a way that God might use me to reach someone who is suffering. Or sponsoring women when I secretly wonder how I am going to find time for them, and taking their frantic, late night calls.

I do these things because, as always, I want more. But this time I want more of something that is truly good for me. More serenity, more joy, more quiet intuition on the decisions I face each day. And the only way I have found to get more of these things is to make a deposit each day. Call it the Karmic Bank, or chalk it up to "what goes around comes around." It doesn't really matter why it works. Only that it does.

Each day, thousands of us are living proof that practicing faith through action is one of the most important tools we carry with us "as we trudge the road of happy destiny."

Welcome

Dear Readers,

I am creating this blog in order to help people with answers to staying sane in sobriety. I cannot promise I can help, but I will give it my best effort.

My sobriety date is March 23, 1989. Before that, I was a hopeless human being, who thought that life without alcohol, was life not worth living. The idea of functioning without my best friends whiskey, beer, wine, vodka, tequila (you name it, I drank it!), was unthinkable. Were these not the only things that could (at least temporarily!)drown out the insanity that daily passed as my mind? I couldn't imagine it.

Yet when I came to sobriety, I came to see that the very thing I thought was comforting me, was causing my life to feel so insecure, dysfunctional, and scary. And I came to understand that people just like me were living peaceful, productive, serene lives, and that I could do it too.

So here I am, twenty years later, still doing the things people do to stay sober and sane. I am active in recovery, with many girls who call me for help and/or advice, and people who I turn to for the same in my life.

Feel free to send in questions, advice-column style, I guess, and I will offer the best advice I can, guided mostly by God, common sense, and proven ideas of how to stay sane in sobriety. If no questions come, I'll pick a topic each day that I am able, and write a bit about my own experience.