AMEN! Welcome All Recovery Friends & Hello New Visitors,
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Many of us in recovery, and especially in early recovery, we get to thinking that once we stop our addiction, and finally surrender all to our higher power that he just isn’t listening to us. We feel we are doing our part to not gamble, so why isn’t he doing his part by bringing me the blessings in recovery?
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Well I’m here to tell you that it just doesn’t work that way. We need to learn patients, it sure is what I have learned about this topic in my own 8 year and 6 month recovery journey. We are always looking for a quick fix, or we WANT things right now! But our higher power has his own time clock, and spreads those blessings out while you’re doing the appropriate recovery work that will make you live a better life in your recovery. And my journey is an example of that.
I remember being on my knees begging my HP to just PLEASE help with taking the Urges and Triggers away so I could at least get a foothold in my early recovery. It took a while, but prayer answered! I can not tell you all the wonderful things that has happened to me in recovery, and being blessed by my HP, who I call God and his son Jesus Christ. My current book was ALL GODS intervention! I wasn’t actually writing a book when I wrote 5 hand written notebooks of all I had been through with my gambling addiction. And toward the end of my addiction I was drinking alcohol to excess.
I start my book, “Addicted To Dimes, Confessions of a Liar and a Cheat” due to an article I read about a woman who shot herself while on a bad gambling relapse at a casino hotel. Another loss of precious life due to addicted gambling! It made me want to see all that I had been through, and all that was taken from me by my own addiction on paper. It was time for me to really SEE IT!
That was late 2010, and most of 2011 I was writing what gambling had done to my life. It was about 3 1/2 years into my recovery. The rest was all Gods Intervention from there. And on 50th birthday in 2012 I became a first time author. BIG Blessing #1.
And then? The flood gates opened to so many blessings from that point, I really honestly can not count all the blessings I have received. But I can tell you this much? I have a heart of gratitude each day. And I still can not believe the Miracles God has performed in life. Because 8 1/2 years ago I was a so broken and damaged laying in a hospital bed, then back over to an addiction/mental health crisis center for the second time from another failed suicide attempt.
Then I look at my life today? Wow!, is about all I can say. Now not to get off topic or anything, but I was watching a CNN 2 hour Special last night about Jim Jones and the story about Jonestown and the tragedy that took place there with 900 people poisoned due to the following of a man who turned out to think he was doing GODS work. So CNN talked with some who survived this awful event. When asked if they were still involved in a Church, or believed in God. Many all had similar answers to those questions. Many said they believe in God, and Jesus Christ, but they felt they didn’t need to belong to a church or be a part of any one organized religion. That they all were ‘spiritual’ people, and they have a personal relationship with God.
And you know what? I got it! I understood what they meant. I believe somewhere in the gospel it says, “when one or two come together in his name, that is a church.” You can be at home, in a coffee shop, or anywhere and talk about God, and all the wonderful blessings he gives in our lives. That to me is also spreading the word of the ‘gospel.’ That’s just my own personal opinions. But it is one of the areas in recovery that comes back alive when “you believe in a power greater than ourselves.”
Recovery from addicted compulsive gambling can be done! You just have to believe in yourself, and in your HP. We have to always keep those feelings on hopelessness, feeling empty, lost, escaping, and so much more we used gambling addiction to numb out all feelings from what ever your personal underlying issues are for using gambling for. Yes we can recover to without knowing why we turned to addicted gambling, but many of us learn some of the WHY’S in treatment and therapy. And that’s ok too. We come into recovery so broken and spiritually drained, because we have no self-worth within ourselves. Gambling stripped us naked of that during the worst of our addiction.
But with the many blessings you will receive in your recovery journey? It will out weigh all of that! So just keep hold of your recovery, and let GOD do the rest with the many blessings coming your way! Just be patient . . . .
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God Bless All!
Catherine Townsend-Lyon, Author & Recovery Advocate
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