I think becoming grateful is something that just happens. For me it happened March 15th 2007.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Before that there was good but I could not name it. The things that I thought were special were mostly materialistic. I loved my son\u2014he was and still is a precious part of my life\u2014but at the time I did not know how great that was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I came to be grateful when I finally admitted defeat. I could not go on deceiving everyone and myself. I placed myself in the care of my Higher Power and was ready for whatever that meant, including the consequences and the possibility of losing my family and my home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This process happened over time. It was mixture of meetings, sponsorship, and Tamarack. I am thankful for Tamarack. I had to be removed from my old life so I could learn to live a new one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I maintain gratitude by knowing I am still growing. 7 \u00bd years later I am grateful for who I am and not what I have. I don\u2019t have to be that man who controls everything and everyone. I am grateful that I don\u2019t have the answer. That just means that I will experience learning something soon, patience perhaps. More importantly, I know that if the answer isn\u2019t what I want, I can still have a good day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There are times when feeling gratitude can be more of a challenge but that is when I know something is going on. I make it challenging for myself with selfishness, when I go to the \u201cpity party\u201d or when I want to take back my power and my definition of a good or bad day. At times like that I ask for the power to change my thinking and enjoy the day instead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Being grateful is no longer difficult. It feels more normal to be grateful now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If you would have asked me ten years ago what I was grateful for I would have said it was all the things I accomplished on my own. Now I see that everything that is special has come from my higher power and not my doing. Today I am grateful for my God-given sobriety and everything that falls from that. And everything does fall from that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I think becoming grateful is something that just happens. For me it happened March 15th […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.tamarackrecovery.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1094"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.tamarackrecovery.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.tamarackrecovery.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.tamarackrecovery.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.tamarackrecovery.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1094"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/old.tamarackrecovery.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1094\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1438,"href":"https:\/\/old.tamarackrecovery.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1094\/revisions\/1438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.tamarackrecovery.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.tamarackrecovery.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.tamarackrecovery.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}