While assembling my 4th step resentment list I found that the best way to cope with the resentments was to first pray for and forgive those that were on my list. In the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous in the chapter "How It Works" it states, "...we realize that the people who had wronged us were perhaps spiritually sick. Though we did not like their symptoms and the way they disturbed us they, like ourselves, were sick too. We ask God to help us grant them the same tolerance, pity and patience we would grant a sick friend. When a person offended we said to ourselves, 'Perhaps this is a sick person, how can I be helpful to them? God save me from being angry, Thy will be done.' God will show us how to take a kind and tolerant view of each and everyone." As I drew closer to God this began to happen naturally, as it can as well for you.
As an alcoholic I do find that resentment is the number one malfeasance to a serene and peaceful life. If we are to have a clear state of consciousness that is free of conflict; if we are to lead an addiction-free life - a life in which resentment doesn't cause such conflict in our mind then manifest in our behavior - then we must let go of all of our human resentments. There is often no way possible to do this without the aid of the Highest Power. "That One is God may you find Him now."
Written by Armand
Written by Armand
How free do I want to be? Free enough to search for and to find the man I was born to be?? I hope so, in fact, I know so. It is not your fault that you have inhabited me to the point of loss of myself. My resentments are allowed, enabled and enforced by me. As you point out, I am un-freely giving that space within me to someone who may have been equally spiritually sick. Serenity, as you've also repeatedly pointed out, is the absence of conflict in my thoughts, not necessarily in the circumstances of my life. But I must be free of resentments, big and small, if I am going to live a life of serenity. For me, that means integrating all Twelve Steps into my life in "such a way" that they become and remain my life. A life of trust in the miraculous process of recovery. There was nowhere else to turn.
ReplyDeleteMichael Resentment is defined as "bitter indignation. A feeling of anger for being mistreated. Our choice is a state of bitter indignation or a state of forgiveness. God makes forgiveness possible in this moment...Thank you...Armand
ReplyDeleteArmand,
ReplyDeleteIn AA we close the meetings in a very special way. Lets continue to contemplate the "The Lords Prayer," specifically, how many times our hearts have stumbled over those words “ Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive others" and the glorious freedom contained deep within for all of us still living in the bondage of self. The Author of this prayer has called each of us to the awesome opportunity of intercessory prayer. And so I pray, Dear Lord God, today I want to pray for all those You have placed on my heart who have harmed me and are still in the icy claws of guilt and shame over unforgiven sin in their lives. I know from my own life the pain and anguish my sins have caused me and those around me and now out of gratitude and praise for Your forgiveness I want to pray for those people whom have harmed me and that I need to learn to love and forgive just as You have loved and forgiven me.
Lord, I desire that I become a willing instrument of Your love and yet I confess it's difficult to love others as You have loved me. Lord, please heal those memories that act as a barrier to Your grace. As I continue my prayer my mind is flooded by people I have used for my own purposes with little or no thought of what was best for them yet I am eternally comforted that You have completely forgiven me. Please, help me to make amends to them and forgive them for any imagined slight I may have used to justify my former selfish attitudes and actions . Lord, open their hearts to Your love through me. Show me how I can be a partaker of your pursuit of them. Enable me to fully apprehend that to truly love my enemies is to will the ultimate good of another by my every thought act and deed so that I may be able to "comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; And to know the love of Christ, which passes all understanding and be filled with the fullness of God."
A Gratefully Recovering Alcoholic.
A Gratefully Recovering Alcoholic Beautiful Prayer...Thank you....Armand
DeleteThe resentment prayer is a very effective way of channeling God's grace to clear away the anger that is shutting me off from the sunlight of the spirit. Another way is for me to be clear on where my resentments come from in the first place. My anger and my indignation always spring from a deep-seated sense that I have been treated unfairly. In other words, my expectations have not been met, and my "rights" have been violated. Were they ever really my "rights?" Or were they my demands-- demands and obligations I ceaselessly place on others, to get the things I believe I want and need from them, in order to be happy. The less I expect of others, the more I realize that my happiness is not dependent on other people, the better off I am.
ReplyDeleteDan love when you wrote "the less I expect of others." A life in the present is devoid of regret or expectation...Thank you...Armand
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