One Day at a Time in Al-Anon:
All of us know the maddening frustration of trying to reach the drinker when he or she is in the grip of an alcoholic fog. Neither reason nor tears nor scoldings can penetrate it.
It is witless to greet the sodden, guilt-ridden homecomer with a barrage of angry words. The alcoholic’s reaction will be no more sane than ours at a time like that.
Would I go to a foreign country and expect people to understand my language? We make just as little sense to the drinker in the acute phase. We can’t speak his language; the alcoholic can’t understand ours.
Today’s Reminder:
To improve my seemingly hopeless situation, I will begin when things are most difficult. That’s the big moment—NOT for action and headlong speech, but for inaction, and silence unclouded by sullenness and self-pity. That, indeed, is the moment to Let go and let God.
“Many things must thou pass by with a deaf ear, and think rather of the things that are for thy peace. It is more profitable to turn away thine eyes from such things as displease thee than to be a slave to contention.”
—Thomas A’Kempis