PRA Portage Recovery Association

Congratulations to November's Member of the Month, PRA Portage Recovery Association .
PRA is a nonprofit recovery association that provides a safe and affordable place for 12-step groups to meet. They have also more recently opened the PRA’s Next Chapter Café to offer a supportive location for their members and community members that share their vision of hope, faith, and recovery. All are welcome during business hours.

Difficult people
NA Just For Today
August 13

Page 235

"By giving unconditional love...we become more loving, and by sharing spiritual growth we become more spiritual."

Basic Text, p. 103

Most of us have one or two exceptionally difficult people in our lives. How do we deal with such a person in our recovery?

First, we take our own inventory. Have we wronged this person? Has some action or attitude of ours served as an invitation for the kind of treatment they have given us? If so, we will want to clear the air, admit we have been wrong, and ask our Higher Power to remove whatever defects may prevent us from being helpful and constructive.

Next, as people seeking to live spiritually oriented lives, we approach the problem from the other person's point of view. They may be faced with any number of challenges we either fail to consider or know nothing about, challenges that cause them to be unpleasant. As it's said, we seek in recovery "to forgive rather than be forgiven; to understand rather than be understood."

Finally, if it is within our power, we seek ways to help others overcome their challenges without injuring their dignity. We pray for their well-being and spiritual growth and for the ability to offer them the unconditional love that has meant so much to us in our recovery.

We cannot change the difficult people in our lives, nor can we please everyone. But by applying the spiritual principles we've learned in NA, we can learn to love them.

Just for Today: Higher Power, help me serve other people, not demand that they serve me.

A CLEAN SWEEP
AA Daily Reflection
August 13
. . and third, having thus cleaned away the debris of the past, we consider how, with our newfound knowledge of ourselves, we may develop the best possible relations with every human being we know.
TWELVE STEPS AND TWELVE TRADITIONS, p. 77

As I faced the Eighth Step, everything that was required for successful completion of the previous seven Steps came together: courage, honesty, sincerity, willingness and thoroughness, I could not muster the strength required for this task at the beginning, which is why this Step reads "Became willing. . . . "

I needed to develop the courage to begin, the honesty to see where I was wrong, a sincere desire to set things right, thoroughness in making a list, and willingness to take the risks required for true humility. With the help of my Higher Power in developing these virtues, I completed this Step and continued to move forward in my quest for spiritual growth.

From the book Daily Reflections.
Copyright © 1990 by Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc. All rights reserved.