COURAGE MONTH: DAY 20: “Somehow the killing of the giant spider, all alone by himself in the dark without the help of the wizard or the dwarves or of anyone else, made a great difference to Mr. Baggins. He felt a different person, and much fiercer and bolder in spite of an empty stomach, as he wiped his sword on the grass and put it back into its sheath.”― J.R.R. Tolkien
I love this quote…big fan of the books and the movies all my life. I believe addicts are like the hobbits. They are quite lazy in many ways and really don’t want to leave the comfort of their hidey-holes to go out into the world for much. That is why we love drugs and alcohol. Total escape from life.
Then we get into this recovery thing and life has to be dealt with, every day, all day long. And that takes a lot of courage. Most of the time, we are courageous in ways that other people do not understand. To go out on the first couple of job interviews, to learn to cook on our own, to learn how to pay bills and become responsible citizens on our own; these things are amazing when we are new to them and new to recovery as a way of life.
I don’t remember exactly what I had done, but there was a day in my early time when I suddenly looked around and asked the sky, “Wow! Did you see that?” It was one of those moments like the one spoken about above. We just don’t know how brave we will feel when we do something with more courage and more integrity than we ever knew we had before.
I wish all of you to have many of those moments in your lives. Many times when you become someone bigger than you were when you got out of bed that morning. Many moments when you achieve things that take time and investment in yourself, building that kind of self-worth we did not get here with. When you step out into extraordinary honesty and kindness for another, not realizing it is a brand new way to walk in the world. I look forward to hearing those stories.
Dolphin Hug 