Spirit of Recovery

If you want what we have, you have to do what we did. 12-step addiction recovery is a program of action based on spiritual principles. The ideas are nice, and anyone can read the steps and see that perhaps they “make sense,” but nothing happens if we don’t take action. Join Rev. Dan and Rev. Michelle as they share their experience, strength, and hope on putting spiritual principles to work through...

“Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path.” Thus opens the chapter in the Big Book titled “How It Works.” Although the book goes on to describe the 12 steps in some detail, what might it all look like if we zoom out a bit and talk about “how it works” in a broad sense? Join Rev. Dan and Rev. Michelle as they share their experience, strength, and hope on working a succ...

For some of us new to recovery, the whole “God thing” can be a real barrier. We may be carrying old ideas of God that don’t make sense to us. We may not realize that we don’t need to accept someone else’s understanding of God—we can find our own. In fact, we don’t even have to use the word “God” if we don’t want to! Join Rev. Dan and Rev. Michelle as they share their experience, strength, and hope...

Many of us in active addiction were not looking for a way out of our way of living. But then things got really bad, and we became willing to find a new path forward. We moved from complacently accepting our addiction to actively seeking to move beyond it. Join Rev. Dan and Rev. Michelle as they share their experience, strength, and hope on forging a new path forward with hope, commitment, and focu...

In addiction, many of us became down, even perhaps deeply depressed. Now that we’re in recovery, how can we create a new life of vitality and purpose? A life that repairs body and soul and becomes truly satisfying? Join Rev. Dan and Rev. Michelle as they share their experience, strength, and hope on creating a new life in recovery, a life worth living! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megap...

Many of us in addiction recovery are all too familiar with the feeling of fear. Fear of the future, fear of change, fear of pain—you can probably add to the list. The good news is that in recovery, we can learn to manage and transform our fear, moving instead into a life rooted in faith. Join Rev. Dan and Rev. Michelle as they share their experience, strength, and hope on moving from fear to faith...

Many of us enter addiction recovery with an excess of energy, not always knowing what to do with it. We can exhaust ourselves overcommitting, trying to make up for lost time, or just generally running ourselves ragged. This has been called “frantic sobriety.” Join Rev. Dan and Rev. Michelle as they share their experience, strength, and hope on using our recovery energy to create a life of purpose,...

When we first get clean and sober, it is not unusual to feel like the whole world has been turned upside down. It can feel like chaos has taken over our lives! Fortunately, if we are willing to do the work, the recovery journey includes the gift of balance and peace. Join Rev. Dan and Rev. Michelle as they share their experience, strength, and hope on moving from chaos to peace using the power of...

When we were in active addiction, sometimes we made bad decisions. Our minds were fogged, but we didn't know it. Our thinking was warped, but it made perfect sense to us! Once we had been on a recovery journey for a while, we began to get our minds back, and our ability to make sound decisions improved. Join Rev. Dan and Rev. Michelle as they share their experience, strength, and hope on moving fr...

Murphy’s Law seems operable in the life of many addicts—whatever can go wrong will go wrong. Beaten into submission by the school of hard knocks, we wonder, Do we have to learn everything the hard way? I don't understand why this always happens! Join Rev. Dan and Rev. Michelle as they share their experience, strength, and hope on learning to unlock a new way of experiencing life through the spirit...

When we first get into addiction recovery, it can be hard to imagine a life without a drink or a drug. It may seem like our life is over and we'll never have fun again. But nothing could be further from the truth! We soon begin to learn that there is a new way of being in the world that is far better than our old habits. Join Rev. Dan and Rev. Michelle as they share their experience, strength, and...

Twelve-step wisdom teaches that we are powerless—powerless over our addiction. But does that mean we are powerless over everything? Certainly over the behavior or substance that brought us into recovery, but what about the rest of life? Join Rev. Dan and Rev. Michelle as they share their experience, strength, and hope on practical ways you can move from powerlessness to balanced living through the...

The "Serenity Prayer" tells us to be open to wisdom so we can discern what is ours to do—and what is not. Many of us in recovery have experienced the results of questionable decisions we have made, sometimes even made repeatedly! Fortunately, we grew tired of living that way. But how do we move away from bad decisions, bad relationships, and bad situations? Join Rev. Dan and Rev. Michelle as they...

How many times have we found ourselves doing the same things repeatedly and expecting different results? We enter recovery and learn a new way of thinking and being in the world—and yet the same old thought habits can still drive us crazy. What’s going on? How do we change this? Join Rev. Dan and Rev. Michelle as they share their experience, strength, and hope on breaking old patterns of thought a...

"Go confidently in the direction of your dreams!" This sounds like great advice though many of us begin the recovery journey feeling quite the opposite: stuck and limited. Sometimes even after years of being clean and sober, we can find ourselves feeling aimless. Join Rev. Dan and Rev. Michelle as they share their experience, strength, and hope on practical ways you can find your true purpose in l...

When we take action in our lives, powerful and positive changes begin to happen. In fact, action is essential to addiction recovery and spiritual growth. In Scripture, we read, "Faith without works is dead," and many of us have experienced apathy and detachment when we don't move our feet on the recovery path. Join Rev. Dan and Rev. Michelle as they share their experience, strength, and hope on le...

Am I alone in the universe? I'm supposed to pray, but how, for what, and to whom? I prayed as a child with seemingly no results—what's different now? Join Rev. Dan and Rev. Michelle as they share their experience, strength, and hope on finding effective ways to understand and make conscious contact with God, and seeing concrete, positive results in your life. Learn more about your ad choices. Visi...

It has been said that if we change our thoughts, we change our lives. And if we direct our thoughts with integrity, our lives come together beautifully. We can move from negativity to hope and joy by making just such a shift. Join Rev. Dan and Rev. Michelle as they share their experience, strength, and hope on learning how the power of our thoughts can lead us to hope and a new experience of joy i...

When we first get clean and sober, we may be overwhelmed by a sense of lost identity. Who am I if I don't drink, use, or fix others? The recovery journey offers an opportunity to heal this dismay and grow into an entirely new sense of ourselves. Join Rev. Dan and Rev. Michelle as they share their experience, strength, and hope on finding out who we really are, and how our new identity can bring de...

Does God exist or not? Many of us denied the existence of God—after all, how could my life be like this if there were a God? But then again, perhaps we've had a nagging feeling that there’s more to life than just flesh and circumstances. Join Rev. Dan and Rev. Michelle as they share their experience, strength, and hope on finding an understanding of a power greater than ourselves that can help us...

Anonymity is a central tenet of 12-step recovery. Many who are new don't want people to know they are in recovery, which is totally understandable. But as we grow in spirit, anonymity becomes far more than a simple desire not to be known. We realize that anonymity is, in fact, humility at work in our lives. With it we can move from fear to serenity. Join Rev. Dan and Rev. Michelle as they share th...

When we first get clean and sober, we may be tempted to broadcast our newfound life to everyone around us, to shout it from the mountaintops. But as we persist on our recovery path, we learn that a quiet approach is often better. We learn to let our example be the message rather than trying to promote our new way of living to others. Join Rev. Dan and Rev. Michelle as they share their experience,...

Nothing will rob us of our sobriety faster than getting wrapped up in what someone else is or isn't doing, what other people should or should not be doing. Just as our recovery groups avoid public controversy, we as individuals need to keep our eyes on our own yoga mats, so to speak. Join Rev. Dan and Rev. Michelle as they share their experience, strength, and hope in avoiding outside entanglement...

When we answer the call to assist another alcoholic or addict on their recovery path, we do so with generosity and gratitude. We do not pay our sponsors or expect payment from our sponsees. Recovery must be free from commerce if we are to be successful. Yes, there may be medical professionals involved in our recovery at first, and we certainly "render unto Caesar" as appropriate at that time. But...

Nobody else is responsible for our sobriety. We are the ones who direct, live, and own our sober experience. In this sense, we are "fully self-supporting" just as the seventh tradition guides our recovery groups to be. But in active addiction, we often tried to put our responsibilities onto others. "If work weren't so stressful, I wouldn't drink so much." Excuses like this will never keep us sober...