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, p. 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. DAILY REFLECTIONS, May 6

What an accurate Daily Devotion to analogize the Floods of Nashville that happened this past weekend. It is an amazing sense of relief when you are first and truly honest with yourself. Breaking free of the secrets, the lies, the fear, the shameful regrets, the list goes on and on. It is a sense of tranquility, clarity, peacefulness and serenity that takes place when this happens. No longer do I have a "dam" holding back my emotions. I can begin to flow freely once again, with help from my Higher Power, God.