Patience

Days of Healing, Days of Joy.....................................................Dec 7th

"Let us run with patience the race that is set before us".............Hebrews 12:1

We often find newcomers to groups exhibiting impatience with their growth. The comments are similar to "Why is this taking so long?" "I must be doing it wrong because I don't seem to be making any progress," or "Why are they improving more than I am?"

There is no competition in recovery. The wise response to such comments is "Tell me, how long have you been practicing the habits and patterns that got you here? The answer of course is "All my life." The obvious response to that is "Then why do you think a few weeks or months is sufficient to turn that lifetime of habit around? Be patient."

We must learn to be much more patient with life and, most of all, patient with ourselves.
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I am learning to be satisfied with progress rather than perfection.

I remember being very impatient early in recovery. I wanted what the old-timers had, and that was serenity. They all had peace of mind and I had been looking for that all my life! Never had I had one moment's peace of mind, and I craved it. The longer I spent in recovery, the more impatient I grew - and my sponsor kept telling me just what the reading said - be patient. She also said "Fake it til you make it." I thought that would be hard to do, but I continued to try.

Because I entered the program as agnostic, I had to be patient about coming to believe. I don't think I was a true agnostic as that came quite early on, but peace of mind was harder to achieve. That took longer than I had hoped, but once achieved it was worth everything I did, worked for, hoped for. I was semi-patient and faked it til I made it.