Respect Makes Harmony

spent an entire Saturday afternoon in the garage, sweating and swearing over a lawnmower that wouldn't start. I was trying to loosen a stubborn bolt with a pair of pliers, gripping as hard as I could, but the metal just kept slipping. I was working incredibly hard, yet I was only stripping the bolt and making the repair impossible. I realized then that my approach to my marriage had been identical. I was using the "pliers" of nagging, anger, and silent treatments to fix a situation that required a completely different instrument. I thought if I just applied more pressure, I’d get the result I wanted, but I was only damaging the very thing I was trying to save.

Al-Anon gave me a new set of tools, and Step Four is the most precise among them. It isn't a weapon for self-punishment; it’s an instrument of discovery that helps me take my life apart to see how the pieces actually fit. Instead of trying to force a change in someone else, I’m using these tools to adjust my own mechanics. I’m learning that using the right tool doesn’t make the difficulty of life vanish, but it finally makes a real change possible.

When you find myself using my old patterns of behavior, try one new tool you've learned in Al-Anon.