Why can’t you just sponsor yourself? Let’s think about driving a car. You could teach yourself to drive. It is possible, people have done it; but it took time and lots of hard work. Plus, there are blind spots. Most cars are designed to give us the maximum view of our surroundings based on the…
Christians with Addictions
Humility: How Do You Practice It?
Humility does not rob us of our hard-won self-esteem, or remove our need to further accept ourselves as we are– defects and assets alike. In Reinhold Niebuhr’s full version of what is now known as the Serenity Prayer, the theme of humbleness runs through it. Taking, as Jesus did, This sinful world as it is, Not as…
Searching and Fearless: Step 4 The Work Begins
“Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of myself.” Lots of folks stop here. This means work–lots of work. It is not all bad. Stopping to look over your life will bring up all of it, the good, bad and the ugly. Courage, my friend, this is where a lot of folks get caught in the…
How I Came To Believe- Step 2
Came to believe a power greater than myself could restore me to sanity. By far my favorite Step, Step 2 bounces around in my brain on a daily bases. The promise I yearned to accept! Sanity! Sanity! I wanted sanity and serenity. A blogger friend of mine later created the term Serantity. Serenity and sanity together Seranity. I…
How to Decide to Leave An Addict?
I remember standing in the sunny kitchen of our big, big house. My toddler and infant playing on the floor in the sunlight. I asked my Al-Anon buddy on the phone; “is it time to leave him?’ When do you leave an addict? The woman I spoke with that morning knew the question well. Two children of…
Can Forgiveness Make You Stronger?
“Addiction robs us of the things (and people) we care about the most.” Bill W, Founder Of Alcoholics Anonymous. “Family was foremost to Dad.” (Dewberry, p.18) Three Weeks to Forgiveness Three Weeks to Forgiveness: God’s Redemption in the Dark Places of Addiction delves lovingly into the confusing messages and home life children of alcoholics. This book…
Children of Addicts: Who Is Parenting the Children?
I remember kneeling to pray between the doors to my two boys rooms. Who is parenting the children I thought. Children of addicts struggle with the long-term effects of family trauma. Lord, I cried out, “I don’t know what to do. I am an angry exhausted parent. I say things I don’t mean, get frustrated…
12 Step APPs Work the AA Twelve Steps on Your Smart Phone, Read This!
The last thing I want, after I hop into my cozy bed at night to do my daily 10th step work, is to have to get up and look for my pen and my journal. Uggh, it is cold here at night in Colorado 9 months out of the year. These 12 step apps simplify…
Calling An Addiction Intervention Specialist
I just did it one day. I called the Addiction Intervention Specialist. lAfter reading Why Don’t They Just Quit: Hope for Families Struggling with Addiction, I just picked up the phone and called Joe Herzanek. I sat on that ordinary day with no big crisis looming and listened to Joe talk truth to me. Joe introduced me in his…
The Year Addiction Stole Christmas
It all feels like an upside-down fairy tale as I share with you about the year addiction stole Christmas. In a book for children,Beamer’s World, addiction is personified as a “joker” style villain. Not super scary, he is a creepy and sinister looking man that seems to appear everywhere. Addiction feels like this, lurking in…