Al-Anon daily reflection ·

Active Waiting

Accepting God’s will and God’s time can mean saying a prayer and letting go.

I often mistake 'letting go' for giving up or failing. When I pray and the situation doesn't change, my old thinking tells me that either God isn't listening or I'm doing it wrong. The truth is much harder to accept: God's time is rarely my time. I want the resolution now because the tension of the unknown feels physically painful to me, like a tight knot in my stomach. I want the check to clear, the argument to end, the diagnosis to change—immediately.

Accepting God's time is an act of defiance against my obsession with immediacy. Yesterday, I wanted to force a conversation that I knew wasn't ready to happen. I felt the urgency bubbling up—the need to 'fix it' right now. Instead, I said a prayer and physically walked away. That wasn't passivity; that was active restraint. It cost me the temporary relief of venting, but it bought me the dignity of not creating a crisis. Letting go often feels like doing nothing, but it is actually the heavy lifting of trust.

Practice

I will stop looking for a "burning bush" miracle. I will trust that the slow, quiet change in my reactions is the true spiritual awakening, and thank God for the sanity that returns one day at a time.

Today’s Reminder

Patience is trust in action.

More on patience

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Written by people with lived experience of someone else’s drinking who practice the Twelve Step program of recovery. Published by Daily Growth, LLC.

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