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self-forgiveness starts with my commitment to working the Twelve Steps. got to admit, that this morning i am more than a bit distracted by Bronco football. i am doing my best to pay attention to what i am feeling as i pound this out, as well as watching the game. that is no excuse but rather an explanation if this exercise seems a bit scattered. i can safely say that no matter the outcome of this game, i will have no desire to use.
as i stay clean and do my best to live a spiritual program of recovery, i trip back to the time when i believed i was blameless, hence did not desire or require forgiveness from anyone else, least of all from myself. after a bit of time clean and a dive into the steps for real, i then thought i was so bad that i needed to be forgiven for jut about every thing i ever did, that was not perfectly stellar. i saw myself as the root of all evil in my life and i was not worthy of being forgiven. those wild swings in how i saw myself and what i needed slowly found a balance in my life, where i came to see that what i did did not make me who i was. i was not a collection of character defects or a defective character. as the days piled up and i uncovered the truth of who i was and began to see who i could become, i knew that my past was a tool to guide me into a better future. i also came to see that if i never found the ways and means to forgive myself, how was i going to sincerely ask for those i had harmed to forgive me.
fast forward to right here and right now. i have made all sorts of amends. some of those led to instant forgiveness, some led to wary waiting for more evidence that i had truly changed and some flat out rejected. through all of those, i stayed clean and with every amends, i saw that i had the ability to forgive myself and i started to believe that not only worthy of being forgiven, i was worthy of forgiving myself. i know that i am far from perfect and i mess something up, nearly every day. that realization leads to allowing myself to be human, making whatever changes i need to make to help prevent damage in the future and forgiving myself as i admit where i was wrong.
i have no idea where this current journey through the steps may lead. i have FAITH, that no matter what, i will come out of the other side with a better understanding of who i am and where i may be going. as a previous sponse once told me, the destination is not as important as the journey itself, just for today.

∞ DT ∞