[nandm]

Day 3

The history of the pickle

"As long as we feel victimized, we have lost the power to change."

The pickle was once a nice, fat cucumber. When it was left in the brine for a prescribed length of time, it emerged as a pickle. But once it had become a pickle, there was absolutely no way in the world it could ever become a cucumber again.

"What's that got to do with the subject at hand!" you may ask.

Everything. Once we've been caught up in, or addicted to our drug of choice, or compulsive behavior or an aberrant lifestyle, we can never go back to teh way we were before it began. No matter how recovered we are, we will never be able to do in moderation what began by serving us, but in time became our maste.

The bad news is that it's extremely hard to watch others doing with impunity the things that are forbidden to us.

But the good news is that we've become something new---a pickly instead of a cucumber. And this new form allows us to be better, more productive and happier than we've been in our entire lifetime. Extravagant as this promise seems, it has been proven true, time after time, by those who have goen before us.

As we celebrate the new form, it becomes easier to let go of the old. And in that celebration, we become willing to let God remove these defects of charaacter.

Today's Step: I rejoice in the new form my life is taking.

Step by Step. Muriel Zink