Belief

2026-05-03

Dianne’s Missives May 1, 2026

Thought to Consider…

Faith isn’t belief without proof; it’s trust without reservation.
I am responsible for carrying the message. I am not responsible for anyone receiving the message.
Seven days without an A.A. meeting makes one weak.
Admission of powerlessness is the first step in liberation.

AACRONYMS

A B C = Acceptance, Belief, Change
F A I T H = Finding Answers In The Heart

“Self-Pity”

“When we catch self-pity starting, we also can take action against it with instant bookkeeping. For every entry of misery on the debit side, we find a blessing we can mark on the credit side. What health we have, what illnesses we don’t have, the sunny weather, a good meal a-coming, limbs intact, kindnesses shown and received, a sober 24 hours, a good hour’s work, a good book to read, and many other items can be totaled up to outbalance the debit entries that cause self-pity.”

In A.A. we slowly learned that something had to be done about our vengeful resentments, self-pity, and unwarranted pride. We had to see that every time we played the big shot, we turned people against us. We had to see that when we harbored grudges and planned revenge for such defeats, we were really beating ourselves with the club of anger we had intended to use on others. We learned that if we were seriously disturbed, our first need was to quiet that disturbance, regardless of who or what we thought caused it.”

Sanity

“When I first came to this Fellowship, I had lost my health and sanity, my friends, much of my family, myself-respect, and my God. In the years since, all of these have been restored to me. I no longer have the sense of impending doom. I no longer wish for death or stare at myself in the mirror with loathing. I have come to terms with my Higher Power”

“Being powerless over alcohol is no big deal.” I’m free and I’m a very grateful recovering alcoholic!”

The A.A. program is one of submission, release, and action. When we’re drinking, we’re submitting to a power greater than ourselves, liquor. Our own wills are no use against the power of liquor. One drink and we’re sunk. In A.A. we stop submitting to the power of liquor. Instead, we submit to a Power, also greater than ourselves, which we call God.

“It is easy to let up on the spiritual program of action and rest on our laurels. We are headed for trouble if we do, for alcohol is a subtle foe. We are not cured of alcoholism. What we really have is a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual condition.”

Every time we go to an A.A. meeting, every time we say the Lord’s Prayer, every time we have a quiet time before breakfast, we’re paying a premium on our insurance against taking that first drink. And every time we help another alcoholic, we’re making a large payment on our drink insurance. We’re making sure that our policy doesn’t lapse.

Essence of Growth

“Let us never fear needed change. Certainly we have to discriminate between changes for worse and changes for better. But once a need becomes clearly apparent in an individual, in a group, or in A.A. as a whole, it has long since been found out that we cannot stand still and look the other way. The essence of all growth is a willingness to change for the better and then an unremitting willingness to shoulder whatever responsibility this entails.”

“There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments, and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance that principle is contempt prior to investigation.”

Dianne

2026-02-27

Dianne’s Missives February 27, 2026

Thought to Consider…

Feed your faith and starve your doubts.
God seldom becomes a reality until God becomes a necessity.
When a person tries to control their drinking, they have already lost control.
My serenity is directly proportional to my level of acceptance.

AACRONYMS

A B C = Acceptance, Belief, Change
G I F T = God Is Forever There

“..with the alcoholic, whose hope is the maintenance and growth of a spiritual experience, this business of resentment is infinitely grave. We found that it is fatal. For when harboring such feelings we shut ourselves off from the sunlight of the Spirit. The insanity of alcohol returns and we drink again. And with us, to drink is to die.”

“We are like men who have lost their legs; they never grow new ones. Neither does there appear to be any kind of treatment which will make alcoholics of our kind like other men. We have tried every imaginable remedy. In some instances there has been brief recovery, followed always by a still worse relapse. Physicians who are familiar with alcoholism agree there is no such thing as making a normal drinker out of an alcoholic. Science may one day accomplish this, but it hasn’t done so yet.”

After that first drink, we had a single-track mind. It was like a railroad train. The first drink started it off and it kept going on the single track until it got to the end of the line, drunkenness. We alcoholics knew this was the inevitable result when we took the first drink, but still we couldn’t keep away from liquor. Our willpower was gone. We had become helpless and hopeless before the power of alcohol. It’s not the second drink or the tenth drink that does the damage. It’s the first drink.

“There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance, that principle is contempt prior to investigation.”

“Experience taught us that to take away any alcoholic’s full chance for sobriety in A.A. was sometimes to pronounce his death sentence, and often to condemn him to endless misery. Who dared to be judge, jury, and executioner of his own sick brother?”

The Belief Will Come

“I don’t recall any immediate, dramatic change in my life. I began rereading the Big Book and the Twelve Steps, and now I found in these much that I had never found before. I didn’t reject any of it. I accepted it just as it was written. Nor did I read into it anything that wasn’t there. Again, nothing changed overnight. But, as time has passed, I have acquired a blind and, yes, childlike faith that, by accepting a God I don’t understand and the program of A.A. just as it is written, I can maintain my sobriety one day at a time.”

Cheerfulness

But we aren’t a glum lot . . . We absolutely insist on enjoying life . . . So we think cheerfulness and laughter make for usefulness. Outsiders are sometimes shocked when we burst into merriment over a seemingly tragic experience out of the past. But why shouldn’t we laugh? We have recovered, and have been given the power to help others.

GUIDANCE

As I began to understand my own powerlessness and my dependence on God, as I understand Him, I began to see that there was a life which, if I could have it, I would have chosen for myself from the beginning. It is through the continuing work of the Steps and the life in the Fellowship that I’ve learned to see that there is truly a better way into which I am being guided. As I come to know more about God, I am able to trust His ways and His plans for the development of His character in me. Quickly or not so quickly, I grow toward His own image and likeness. A God who intends for me a purpose, a meaning, and a destiny to grow, however… haltingly, toward His own likeness and image.

Dianne

2026-01-30

Dianne’s Missives January 30, 2026

Thought to Consider…

Listening feeds the spirit.
The two most dangerous words in a recovering alcoholic’s vocabulary are, “I’m different.”
Adversity introduces us to ourselves
Newcomers are the lifeblood of the program. But our old-timers are the arteries.

AACRONYMS

D E A D = Drinking Ends All Dreams
Y A N A = You Are Not Alone

Illusion

No person likes to think he is bodily and mentally different from his fellows. Therefore, it is not surprising that our drinking careers have been characterized by countless vain attempts to prove we could drink like other people. The idea that somehow, someday he will control And enjoy his drinking is the great obsession of every abnormal drinker. The persistence of this illusion is astonishing. Many pursue it into the gates of insanity or death.

The fact is that most alcoholics, for reasons yet obscure, have lost the power of choice in drink. Our so-called will power becomes practically nonexistent. We are unable, at certain times, to bring into our consciousness with sufficient force the memory of the suffering and humiliation of even a week or a month ago. We are without defense against the first drink.

“For the type of alcoholic who is able and willing to get well, little charity, in the ordinary sense of the word, is needed or wanted. The men who cry for money and shelter before conquering alcohol, are on the wrong track.”

“In the beginning, it was four whole years before A.A. brought permanent sobriety to even one alcoholic woman. Like the ‘high bottoms,’ the women said they were different; A.A. couldn’t be for them. But as the communication was perfected, mostly by the women themselves, the picture changed. This process of identification and transmission has gone on and on. The Skid-Rower said he was different. Even more loudly, the socialite said the same – so did the artists and the professional people, the rich, the poor, the religious, the agnostic, the Indians and the Eskimos, the veterans, and the prisoners. But nowadays all of these, and legions more, soberly talk about how very much alike all of us alcoholics are when we admit that the chips are finally down.”

Step Two: Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
“Why all this insistence that every A.A. must hit bottom first? The answer is that few people will sincerely try to practice the A.A. program unless they have hit bottom. For practicing A.A.’s remaining eleven Steps means the adoption of attitudes and actions that almost no alcoholic who is still drinking can dream of taking. Who wishes to be rigorously honest and tolerant? Who wants to confess his faults to another and make restitution for harm done? Who cares anything about a Higher Power, let alone meditation and prayer?”

Here are thousands of men and women, worldly indeed. They flatly declare that since they have come to believe in a Power greater than themselves, to take a certain attitude toward that Power, and to do certain simple things, there has been a revolutionary change in their way of living and thinking. In the face of collapse and despair, in the face of the total failure of their human resources, they found that a new power, peace, happiness, and sense of direction flowed into them.

On the foundation of sobriety, we can build a life of honesty, unselfishness, faith in God, and love of our fellow human beings. We’ll never fully reach these goals, but the adventure of building that kind of a life is so much better than the merry-go-round of our old drinking life that there’s no comparison. We come into A.A. to get sober, but if we stay long enough, we learn a new way of living. We become honest with ourselves and with other people. We learn to think more about others and less about ourselves. And we learn to rely on the constant help of a Higher Power.

Prayer

“In A.A. we have found that the actual good results of prayer are beyond question. They are matters of knowledge and experience. All those who have persisted have found strength not ordinarily their own. They have found wisdom beyond their usual capability. And they have increasingly found a peace of mind which can stand firm in the face of difficult circumstances.”

Dianne