September is National Recovery Month.
The focus of my blogs throughout the month of September will be on addiction and its life destroying tendencies. The writings derive from my own personal experiences of battling addiction and living a life of recovery.
These specific writings are focused on the ACT acronym.
ACT leads to sobriety…
A – Acknowledge you have a problem and you are powerless over it and you need help.
C – Connect with a power greater than you and people who have solutions that will help you conquer your problem.
T – Take positive, recovery-oriented action every day.
We’ve spent 17 days looking at the Acknowledge and Connect stages of ACT. Today we begin looking at the most important stage and that is to Take positive, recovery-oriented action every day.
Today’s post is a continuation of yesterday’s (September 17).
People have asked me what the most critical moment in my recovery was. I have two.
The first one was my 3 word prayer without any strings attached…GOD HELP ME! In this moment I Acknowledged I needed help and was Connecting to the ultimate source of help. (Notice I said ‘moment,’ as we addicts fall in and out of moments like that. One minute we admit we need help and the next minute we run from help).
The second took place around 9pm on August 9, 1987 when I climbed into the back seat of my boss’s 1985 Ford Country Squire Station Wagon. I was about to be transported by my boss, my wife and Rusty, to Greene Hall Treatment Center 45 miles away.
In that moment I was Taking my first positive, recovery-oriented action step of many. Albeit the action was taken begrudgingly.
If there is one thing I know in life, it is nothing good happens without taking action.
Just the other day I received a text from my daughter who will soon turn 30. Yes, she’s the child my wife and I were expecting when all hell was breaking loose in our lives.
She was sharing with my wife and I some great news about her job. She indicated that all of her hard work had paid off. I congratulated her and texted back, “Hard work will never fail you.”
That response to my daughter was bound by almost 30 years of meaningful thoughts, memories and moments. It was a response she was used to receiving from a dad who was very present in she and her brothers’ lives. A dad who cherished being there for his kids in victories and disappointments.
It is very sobering for me to think how close I came to never seeing my daughter, let alone exchanging texts with her into her adulthood.
So what’s the point?
As I stated earlier, nothing good in life happens without taking action.
We can Acknowledge we need help and Connect with God and others who can help us, but if we don’t take action nothing is going to change.
My willingness to Take action well beyond stepping into that 85′ Ford station wagon to keep my disease in check, is the reason I’m still alive, happy, joyous, free and writing blogs and exchanging text messages with my family today.
More to follow tomorrow.
Is there something you’ve Acknowledged that needs changed in your life?
Have you Connected with others with experience who can give you the tools to change?
If you’ve said yes, to the first two questions and still haven’t been able to change it is most likely because you’ve failed to Take positive action.
One small step in the right direction is exponentially better than doing nothing…I write from experience.
James 2:18, “But someone will say, “You have faith and I have works.” Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works.”
P.E.A.C.E.
Jay@EagleLaunch.com
