Centre of Hope

22/09/2025

September 22

Keeping the gift

“Life takes on a new meaning when we open ourselves to this gift.”

Basic Text, p. 107

Neglecting our recovery is like neglecting any other gift we’ve been given. Suppose someone gave you a new car. Would you let it sit in the driveway until the tires rotted? Would you just drive it, ignoring routine maintenance, until it expired on the road? Of course not! You would go to great lengths to maintain the condition of such a valuable gift.

Recovery is also a gift, and we have to care for it if we want to keep it. While our recovery doesn’t come with an extended warranty, there is a routine maintenance schedule. This maintenance includes regular meeting attendance and various forms of service. We’ll have to do some daily cleaning—our Tenth Step—and, once in a while, a major Fourth Step overhaul will be required. But if we maintain the gift of recovery, thanking the Giver each day, it will continue.

The gift of recovery is one that grows with the giving. Unless we give it away, we can’t keep it. But in sharing our recovery with others, we come to value it all the more.

Just for today: My recovery is a gift, and I want to keep it. I’ll do the required maintenance, and I’ll share my recovery with others.

Giving HOPE, Saving Lives, from the desease of addiction. There is life after Drugs and alcohol.

22/09/2025

September 21

Prayer

“Prayer takes practice, and we should remind ourselves that skilled people were not born with their skills.”

Basic Text, p. 46

Many of us came into recovery with no experience in prayer and worried about not knowing the “right words.” Some of us remembered the words we’d learned in childhood but weren’t sure we believed in those words anymore. Whatever our background, in recovery we struggled to find words that spoke truly from our hearts.

Often the first prayer we attempt is a simple request to our Higher Power asking for help in staying clean each day. We may ask for guidance and courage or simply pray for knowledge of God’s will for us and the power to carry that out. If we find ourselves stumbling in our prayers, we may ask other members to share with us about how they learned to pray. No matter whether we pray in need or pray in joy, the important thing is to keep making the effort.

Our prayers will be shaped by our experience with the Twelve Steps and our personal understanding of a Higher Power. As our relationship with that Higher Power develops, we become more comfortable with prayer. In time, prayer becomes a source of strength and comfort. We seek that source often and willingly.

Just for today: I know that prayer can be simple. I will start where I am and practice.

Giving HOPE, Saving Lives, from the desease of addiction. There is life after Drugs and alcohol.

22/09/2025

September 20

Courage to change

“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

Serenity Prayer

Recovery involves change, and change means doing things differently. The problem is, many of us resist doing things differently; what we’re doing may not be working, but at least we’re familiar with it. It takes courage to step out into the unknown. How do we find that courage?

We can look around ourselves at NA meetings. There, we see others who’ve found they needed to change what they were doing and who’ve done so successfully. Not only does that help quiet our fear that change—any change—spells disaster, it also gives us the benefit of their experience with what does work, experience we can use in changing what doesn’t.

We can also look at our own recovery experience. Even if that experience, so far, has been limited to stopping the use of drugs, still we have made many changes in our lives—changes for the good. Whatever aspects of our lives we have applied the steps to, we have always found surrender better than denial, recovery superior to addiction.

Our own experience and the experience of others in NA tells us that “changing the things I can” is a big part of what recovery is all about. The steps and the power to practice them give us the direction and courage we need to change. We have nothing to fear.

Just for today: I welcome change. With the help of my Higher Power, I will find the courage to change the things I can.

Giving HOPE, Saving Lives, from the desease of addiction. There is life after Drugs and alcohol.

19/09/2025

19/09/2025

September 19

Fellowship

“In NA, our joys are multiplied by sharing good days; our sorrows are lessened by sharing the bad. For the first time in our lives, we don’t have to experience anything alone.”
IP No. 16, For the Newcomer

When we practice using the steps and the other tools of our program to work through our hardships, we become able to take pleasure in the joys of living clean. But our joys pass all too quickly if we don’t share them with others, while hardships borne alone may be long in passing. In the Fellowship of Narcotics Anonymous, we often multiply our joys and divide our burdens by sharing them with one another.

We addicts experience pleasures in recovery that, sometimes, only another addict can appreciate. Fellow members understand when we tell them of the pride we take today in fulfilling commitments, the warmth we feel in mending damaged relationships, the relief we experience in not having to use drugs to make it through the day. When we share these experiences with recovering addicts and they respond with similar stories, our joy is multiplied. The same principle applies to the challenges we encounter as recovering addicts. By sharing our challenges and allowing other NA members to share their strength with us, our load is lightened.

The fellowship we have in Narcotics Anonymous is precious. Sharing together, we enhance the joys and diminish the burdens of life in recovery.

Just for today: I will share my joys and my burdens with other recovering addicts. I will also share in theirs. I am grateful for the strong bonds of fellowship in Narcotics Anonymous.

Giving HOPE, Saving Lives, from the desease of addiction. There is life after Drugs and alcohol.

18/09/2025

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18/09/2025

September 18

Honest relationships

“One of the most profound changes in our lives is in the realm of personal relationships.”

Basic Text, p. 57

Recovery gives many of us relationships that are closer and more intimate than any we’ve had before. As time passes, we find ourselves gravitating toward those who eventually become our friends, our sponsor, and our partners in life. Shared laughter, tears, and struggles bring shared respect and lasting empathy.

What, then, do we do when we find that we don’t agree with our friends on everything? We may discover that we don’t share the same taste in music as our dearest friend, or that we don’t agree with our spouse about how the furniture should be arranged, or even find ourselves voting differently from our sponsor at a service committee meeting. Does conflict mean that the friendship, the marriage, or the sponsorship is over? No!

These types of conflict are not only to be expected in any long-lasting relationship but are actually an indication that both people are emotionally healthy and honest individuals. In any relationship where both people agree on absolutely everything, chances are that only one person is doing the thinking. If we sacrifice our honesty and integrity to avoid conflicts or disagreements, we give away the best of what we bring to our relationships. We experience the full measure of partnership with another human being when we are fully honest.

Just for today: I will welcome the differences that make each one of us special. Today, I will work on being myself.

Giving HOPE, Saving Lives, from the desease of addiction. There is life after Drugs and alcohol.

17/09/2025

http://www.kwadukuza-online.com/centre-of-hope

Unity in diversity brings Harmony

17/09/2025

September 17

Going beyond Step Five

“We may think that we have done enough by writing about our past. We cannot afford this mistake.” Basic Text, p. 32

Some of us aren’t too keen on writing out our Fourth Step; others take it to an obsessive extreme. To our sponsor’s growing dismay, we inventory ourselves again and again. We discover everything there is to know about why we were the way we were. We have the idea that thinking, writing, and talking about our past is enough. We hear none of our sponsor’s suggestions to become entirely ready to have our defects removed or make amends for the harm we’ve caused. We simply write more about those defects and delightedly share our fresh insights. Finally, our worn-out sponsor withdraws from us in self-defense.

Extreme as this scenario may seem, many of us have found ourselves in just such a situation. Thinking, writing, and talking about what was wrong with us made us feel like we had it all under control. Sooner or later, however, we realized we were stuck in our problems, the solutions nowhere in sight. We knew that, if we wanted to live differently, we would have to move on beyond Step Five in our program. We began to seek the willingness to have a Higher Power remove the character defects of which we’d become so intensely aware. We made amends for the destruction we had caused others in acting out on those defects. Only then did we begin to experience the freedom of an awakening spirit. Today, we’re no longer victims; we are free to move on in our recovery.

Just for today: Although necessary, Steps Four and Five alone will not bring about emotional and spiritual recovery. I will take them, and then I will act on them.

Giving HOPE, Saving Lives, from the desease of addiction. There is life after Drugs and alcohol.

16/09/2025