Reflection for the Day

[Ken L]

SEPTEMBER 7 Reflection for the Day

"If you’re not all right the way you are," it’s been said, "it takes a lot of effort to get better. Realize you’re all right the way you are, and you’ll get better naturally." Sometimes we find ourselves in a situation so difficult that it seems insoluble. The more we think about it, the more we get on our own backs for our imagined inadequacy to overcome the situation - and we sink into depression. That’s the moment to recall a single phrase, slogan, or bit of philosophy, saying it over and over until it replaces thoughts of the tormenting problem - which, in the final analysis will take care of itself.

Do I sometimes forget that the thorns have roses.

Today I Pray
May I see that God gives us patterns so that we can take comfort in opposites - day follows night; silence follows din; love follows loneliness; release follows suffering. If I am ineffectual, may I realize it and try to do something constructive. If I am insensitive, may my friends confront me into greater sensitivity.

Today I Will Remember
Clouds have linings. Problems have endings.

[Ken L]

SEPTEMBER 8 REFLECTION FOR THE DAY

We are told that no situation is hopeless. At first, of course, we find this hard to believe. The opposites - hope and despair - are human emotional attitudes. It is we who are hopeless, not the condition of our lives. When we give up hope and become depressed, it's because we're unable, for now, to believe in the possibility of a change for the better.

Can I accept this: "Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed unless it's faced"?

Today I Pray
May I remember that, because I am human and can make choices, I am never "hopeless." Only the situation I find myself in may seem hopeless, which may reduce me to a state of helpless depression as I see my choices being blocked off. May I remember, too, that even when I see no solution, I can choose to ask God's help.

Today I Will Remember
I can choose not to be hopeless.

[Ken L]

September 9 Reflection for the Day

The longer I'm in the Gamblers Anonymous Program and the longer I try to practice its principles in all my affairs, the less frequently I become morose and depressed. Perhaps, too, there's something to that cynical old saying,"Blessed is he that expecteth nothing, for he shall not be disappointed, but instead will be delighted daily by new and fresh evidence of the love of God and the friendliness of men and women."

Does someone, somewhere, need me today? Will I look for that person and try to share what I've been given in the GA program?

Today I Pray
May I be utterly grateful to God for lifting my depression. May I know that my depression will always lighten if I do not expect too much. May I know that the warmth of friends can fill the cold hollow of despair. May I give my warmth to someone else.

Today I Will Remember
To look for someone to share with.

[Ken L]

September 10 Reflection for the Day

Years ago, Dr. Albert Alder prescribed this remedy for depression to a patient: "You can be healed if every day you begin the first thing in the morning to consider how you can bring a real joy to someone else. If you can stick to this for two weeks, you will no longer need therapy." Adler's "prescription," of course is not much different from the suggestion that we work more intensively the Twelfth Step to rid ourselves of depression.

When I am depressed, do I keep my feelings to myself? Or do I do what friends in Gamblers Anonymous have suggested I do?

Today I Pray
May I turn myself inside out, air out the depression that has been closeted inside me, replace it with the comfortable feeling that I am cared about by real friends, then pass along that comfort to others caught in the same despair.

Today I Will Remember
The only real despair is loneliness - and loneliness is treatable.

[Ken L]

September 11 Reflection for the Day

one thing, more than anything else, that can relieve my occasional feeling of depression is love. I have to keep myself "lovable" in the sense of being able to love others, rather than being concerned with whether others love me. In somehow losing myself in others, emotionally or spiritually, I usually find myself. Today I understand what they meant at my first blurry meetings of Gamblers Anonymous when they told me that I was the most important person in the room.

Do I say the same thing to other new members today, and mean it?

Today I Pray
May I know that if I can love others, without expecting to be loved back, chances are that I will receive a share of love in return. It is only my expectation of approval that cancels out the value of my love.

Today I Will Remember
Love is not an investment, but a charitable contribution.

September 12 Reflection for the Day

"At certain moments," wrote Coleridge, "a single almost insignificant sorrow may, by association, bring together all the little relics of pain and discomfort, bodily and mental, that we have endured even from infancy." The Gamblers Anonymous Program doesn't teach us to pretend that hardships and sorrow are meaningless. Grief really hurts and so do others kinds of pain. But now that we're free of our compulsive gambling, we have much greater control over our thinking. And the thoughts we choose to spend time on during any given day can strongly influence the complexion of our feelings for that day.

Am I finding different and better ways of using my mind?

Today I Pray
May I thank God for the pain that magnetizes my succession of old hurts into one large one that I can take out and look at, and then discard to make room for new present concerns. May I thank God for restoring my sensitivity to pain after the reckless numbness of my gambling days.

Today I Will Remember
I can thank God for restoring my feelings.