Narcotics Anonymous

Just For Today - Daily Email Service

   September 15                                         Filling the emptiness

   "...we think that if we can just get enough food, enough sex, or enough
         money, we'll be satisfied and everything will be alright."

                                                            Basic Text, p. 77

                           ----=----

   In our addiction, we could never get enough drugs, or money, or sex, or
   anything else.  Even too much was never enough!   There was a spiritual
   emptiness inside us.   Though we tried as hard as we could to fill that
   emptiness ourselves, we never succeeded.  In the end, we realized that we
   lacked the power to fill it; it would take a Power greater than ourselves
   to do that.

   So we stopped using, and we stopped trying to fill the emptiness in our
   gut with things.   We turned to our Higher Power, asking for its care,
   strength, and direction.   We surrendered and made way for that Power to
   begin the process of filling our inner void.  We stopped grabbing things
   and started receiving the free gift of love our Higher Power had for us.
   Slowly, our inner emptiness was being filled.

   Now that we've been given our Higher Power's gift of love, what do we
   do with it?  If we clasp that gift tightly to ourselves, we will smother
   it.  We must remember that love grows only when it is shared.  We can only
   keep this gift by freely giving it away.   The world of addiction is a
   world of taking and being taken; the world of recovery is a world of
   giving and being given.  In which world do we choose to live?

                           ----=----

   Just for today:   I choose to live in the fullness of recovery.  I  will
   celebrate my conscious contact with the God of my understanding by freely
   sharing with others that which has been freely shared with me.