Resources
An ALANON daily reader, Courage to Change, helps you live one day at a time reminding you of the tools you have in order to regain your center. Life has been about the alcoholic/addict for a long time. The ALANON daily readers help you to keep your thinking about you so that you can once again begin to manage your own life.
While nothing supersedes reading scripture from the Bible, this collection of Psalms offered me a comfort and a quick spot to turn to when I needed to hear God’s words and a friendly ‘voice’. The author’s insights and experiences added a depth and sense of community during the times I needed to struggle quietly. This book helped me read God’s word, and to spend time with the Lord praying over the trials I was facing. The trials we face when loving someone with an addiction or going through recovery can leave you feeling very alone, isolated. This book provided me a voice in darker times.
Codependent No More radically shifted my perspective of my own self. Beattie gave me insight into my own actions, thought patterns, and beliefs. Reading this book is where my healing began. I could no longer deny my own role in my circumstances. Understanding my role and my reactions to various hurts and triggers was very freeing for me. I can not control the actions of another. In order to ensure that I did not make the same decisions within the family addiction cycle again, I needed to understand my self. This book set me on the path to freedom of a life lived through others.
My reactions count! Triggers gave me a biblical perspective of my reactions, and how my reactions landed on others. I don’t know about you, but there are times I have hated my reactions but have felt powerless to react in any other way. This is part of life becoming unmanageable (step 1). I have heard words or phrases come from me that I have been shocked to hear leave my lips. I have said things in such a way that I could not believe it was me saying them. This book helped me to dig deep, to be accountable, and to give myself the grace to learn to react in a Godly way. Sometimes that grace simply meant giving my self boundaries and allowing my self time to heal.
Although this is one of my favorite books, I was not excited to read this book at all! I was in the midst of deep suffering, and the title alone was a daily reminder. It seemed daunting because I was already carrying around so much suffering. This is a sobering account of the reality of suffering and the purpose in our lives. This book led me to seek freedom from the bondage of shame around my suffering. It helped me to see that there is purpose in every trial, and in every trial, I have a choice. May I always choose Jesus.