I, Nephi, will show unto you that the tender mercies of the Lord are over all those whom he hath chosen, because of their faith, to make them mighty even unto the power of deliverance. (1 Nephi 1:20; emphasis added) Abstinence is not a result of anything I do. It is a result of the […]
Read More abstinence, deliveryAnd thus mercy . . . encircles them in the arms of safety. (Alma 34:16) Learning how to be abstinent is like learning how to walk on a balance beam. At first, you are very, very clumsy. You gain your balance for a moment, take a couple of shuffling steps, and then fall off. But […]
Read More abstinence, conscious contact, delivery, faith, recoveryHow can the truth be both blunt and sharp at the same time? How can it be the hardest thing to hear and yet the only thing that is going to save your life? And how do you get the courage to admit that kind of two-edged truth to yourself and to others? Only from […]
Read More atonement, delivery, endurance, grace, humility, imperfection, nothingness, weaknessAnd now, if the Lord has such great power, and has wrought so many miracles among the children of men, how is it that he cannot instruct me, that I should build a ship. (1 Nephi 17:51) This verse just looks like it’s about ship-building. It’s not. It’s about how a person with absolutely no […]
Read More delivery, faith, journaling, personal revelation, scripture study, spiritual life, trust, writingI stayed up pretty late, last night—well, this morning. Only then did I remember that this morning was a Tuesday mornin—my morning to serve as facilitator for the Heart t’ Heart online meeting at 6:30 a.m. (Mountain Time). I am so grateful that I had the chance (and the excuse) to be at that meeting. […]
Read More abstinence, challenges, delivery, faith, little bit, prodigal, recovery, trustA new year is upon us and many of us are taking inventory and making plans to change. We desire to be better, to do better, so we make long lists of resolutions, detailed itemizations of things we need or want to change in our lives. I think that taking inventory and having a plan […]
Read More abstinence, challenges, delivery, ebb & flow, little bitGod wants to gift you with a degree of love that only He can give. He will not rest until He has found you, no matter how lost a lamb you think you are (or try to be.) No matter what, He is going to gift you with love and patience and long-suffering and kindness—over […]
Read More atonement, Christ, delivery, faith, grace, kindnes, long-suffering, patienceA short and common definition of codependency is fearing others more than God. We could just as easily replace the word fearing with the word believing. Codependency is believing others more than we believe God. For example, we may have troubled, angry, hurting parents who, due to their own pain, tell us negative things about […]
Read More codependency, delivery, love, peace, spiritSlips. Backsliding. Falling off the wagon. Whatever you call them, it happens to all of us. So what do we do when we find we’ve ebbed away from full recovery? We prayerfully acknowledge that we’ve slipped. It’s hard to do, but do it we must. And prayerfully is the operative and absolutely essential word here. […]
Read More abstinence, delivery, ebb & flow, imperfection, recovery| Read Part 1 | | Read Part 2 | Imagine my surprise when Christ turned my thoughts and my heart back to the Twelve-Step principles that He had led me to use several years before to overcome my compulsive need to hurt myself with food. Under the tutelage of His own Spirit, conveyed to […]
Read More atonement, challenges, Christ, delivery, humility, twelve step