Hazelton Today's Gift

[Fluttering]

Today's thought from Hazelden is:

All our loves are first loves.
--Susan Fromberg Schaeffer

When we fall in love with someone, it is a unique thing that comes from deep within us. Any relationship is the creation of two people who open themselves to each other and share themselves beyond the usual boundaries. That is the excitement of true love. Two people give each other the keys to their private world, just as we might share the key to our home, trusting that it will be used with care and respect. This intimacy isn't usually instantaneous. It builds on experience together.

In an intimate relationship, we have the responsibility to be good stewards of the trust given us. Looking at our partner's role is always so much easier than looking at our own, but we need to resist that easy temptation. Our first questions should always be - Do I make it safe for my partner to be open with me? Do I take my partner's vulnerability as a trust that I do not abuse? Am I gentle and respectful with the key my partner gave me?

Today I will be a good partner; honoring and guarding the trust I have been given.

[Ann]

Good words there, Fluttering. Thanks for bringing it here.

[Rusty Zipper]

nan... come'ere!

[Fluttering]

Today's thought from Hazelden is:

The purpose of learning is growth, and our minds, unlike our bodies, can continue growing as we continue to live.
--Mortimer Adler

In some areas of our lives we are right on target. Our level of maturity is exactly as it should be, and we are going through the stages that people of our age ought to be going through. In other areas, this is not so. We are complex people, irregular, uneven. In all of us there are areas fixated in some emotional ice age, areas that have not felt the freeing warmth of the sun.

We cannot expect ourselves to move forward all at once. Not only is it okay to move slowly - it's often the only way it can be. Confusion, conflict, or pain may have caused us to let our memories or feelings be frozen safely away. This has been a long process, and we can allow ourselves more time to heal. The task now is not to deny or hide from these changes, but to have confidence that the healing warmth of the program will reflect on all areas of our lives and help make us whole.

I am thankful I am given both time and patience in which to continue my growth.

[Fluttering]

Today's thought from Hazelden is:

Separateness

Moving into wise and spiritual adulthood...

At our worst we may be alert to what we want from our partner but blind to what our own role requires. No doubt we can always find accurate criticisms of our mate. In all lasting relationships we will find the weaknesses and the unattractive sides of even the finest people. Finding them in our partner means little when our hope is for a good and successful partnership.

We each walk an individual path. No one else can take our footsteps. No one but us can live our unique life stories. That is the hard truth that adults have to face and children do not. The joys and pleasures of adult intimacy grow when we know our separateness. We will always yearn for a past childhood or for an unfulfilled dream enveloped in the generous care of loving parents with no stress and no demands. But as adults we live in an insecure world, and no partner can ever create that security for us. We move into wise and spiritual adulthood when we expect imperfection around us and develop a core of inner peace.

Describe a dream of peace and security that you keep in your memory or in your imagination.

You are reading from the book:

[indigo]

Thank you dear Flutter for sharing these thoughts here, I appreciate you.

[Fluttering]

Because I must make sonme changes in my ISp for interenet servivce it will be a few days before I can get back to posting on this thread..
I like what hazelton shares...so I will get back to it.
Just wanted to let you know

hugs to all of you

[CatsPajamas]

Today's thought from Hazelden is:

More important than learning how to recall things is finding ways to forget things that are cluttering the mind. Before going to sleep at night, empty your consciousness of unwanted things, even as you empty your pockets.
--Eric Butterworth

Many of us may make lists of things we need to do. We may refer to a calendar for our scribbled notations of places to go and people to see. We may look over our course syllabus for chapters to read or papers to write. Or we may keep it all in our heads, mentally checking off each item as it's done.

But tonight we can put away the lists, close the calendar book, put away the course syllabus, and empty our minds of obligations, tasks, and duties. Unless we want to keep our heads spinning during a sleepless night, we must learn to turn off the achieving and doing sides of our minds and give room to the relaxing and spiritual sides. We can take away the items cluttering our minds, one at a time. Tomorrow will arrive in its own time; tonight is the time for us to relax.

Tonight I can close my eyes and visualize putting aside each item. I will achieve total relaxation and peace.

You are reading from the book: Night Light by Amy E. Dean

Night Light by Amy E. Dean. Copyright 1986, 1992 by Hazelden Foundation. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No portion of this publication may be reproduced in any manner without the written permission of Hazelden.

[Fluttering]

Thank You so much Cats

[Fluttering]

In her book Recovering from the Loss of a Child, author Katherine Fair Donnelly writes of a man whose infant daughter, Robyn, dies from SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome). The child had died in the stroller, while the mother was out walking her. The father had stopped to get a haircut that day and was given a number for his turn.

"It was something he never did again in future years," Donnelly wrote. "He would never take a number at the barber's and always came home first to make sure everything was all right. Then he would go and get a haircut. It became one of the ways he found of coping."

I hate coping. It's not living. It's not being free. It reeks of surviving.

But sometimes it's the best we can do, for a while.

Eight years after my son dies, I was signing the papers to purchase a home. It was the first home I had bought since his death. The night before he dies, I had also signed papers to buy a new home. I didn't know that I had begun to associate buying a home with his death, until I noticed my hand trembling and my heart pounding as I finished signing the purchase agreement. For eight years, I had simply avoiding buying a home, renting one less-than-desirable place after another and complaining about the travails of being a renter. I only knew then that I was "never going to buy another house again." I didn't understand that I was coping.

Many of us find ways of coping. As children, we may have become very angry with our parents. Having no recourse, we may have said to ourselves, "I'll show the, I'm never going to do well at music, or sports, or studies again." As adults, we may deal with a loss, or death, by saying, "I'm always going to be nice to people and make them happy. Then they won't go away." Or we may deal with a betrayal by saying, "I'm never going to open my heart to a woman, or man, again."

Coping often includes making an incorrect connection between an event and our behavior. It may help us survive., but at some point our coping behaviors usually get in our way. They become habits and take on a life of their own. And although we think we're protecting ourselves or someone we love, we aren't.

Robyn didn't die because her father took a number and waited to get his hair cut.

My son didn't die because I brought a new house.

Are you keeping yourself from dong something that you really want to do as a means of coping with something that happened to you a long time ago? Cope if you must, if it helps save your life. But maybe today is the day you could set yourself free.

God, show me if I'm limiting myself and my life in some way by using an outdated coping behavior. Help me know that I'm safe and strong enough now to let that survival behavior go.

[indigo]

A really thought provoking thread thank you dear sweet M.A.

[Fluttering]

Today's thought from Hazelden is:

A.A. Thought for the Day

Sometimes we can't help thinking, Why can't we ever drink again? The answer is that at some time in our drinking careers, we passed what is called our "tolerance point." We passed from a condition in which we could tolerate alcohol to a condition in which we could not tolerate it at all. After that, if we took one drink, we would sooner or later end up drunk. When I think of liquor now, do I think of it as something that I can never tolerate again?

Meditation for the Day

The goal of the spiritual life is in sight. All I need is the final effort. The saddest records are made by people who ran well, with brave, stout hearts, until the sight of the goal, and then some weakness or self-indulgence held them back. They never knew how near they were to victory.

Prayer for the Day

I pray that I may press on until the goal is reached. I pray that I will not give up in the final stretch.