Please see below for the Recovery Thought of the Day. Also, make sure you check out the announcements at the end of this E-mail for the Sign-Up links for Friday's Open Share Group Meetings.
Personal Boundaries
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.
What are the things we can change in our lives and what are those things we cannot change?
Here’s an exercise that helped teach and correct my misunderstanding of personal boundaries. Get a blank piece of paper and on it draw two distinct medium size circles with space between them and plenty of space to write within each circle.
Place your name over one circle and on the other circle put your friend/significant other's name. These circles represent: your personal boundaries and the personal boundaries of someone close to you.
Within your circle write all the aspects of your life that you own, have responsibility for and control over. Go ahead, I am not going to give you the answers. What do you have control over?
After you're done writing in your circle, can you see that your loved one/friend has similar things that they are responsible for themselves? Their thoughts, beliefs, dreams, desires, how they spend their time, money, their emotions, diet, exercise, work, attitudes and who they love, it all belongs solely to them.
Now outside the circles write down everything that you cannot control: the weather, a pilot of an airplane, your age, height, your family of origin, politics (mostly), Covid-19, your spouse and friends just to mention a few.
Before recovery as a codependent my two circles were enmeshed. My boundaries were not distinct or intact. Getting clear about what we have control over is critical in recovery, if we are to accept those things we cannot change and change the things we can. So much pain can be avoided if before we react, we ask, is this within my personal boundary to fix, control or change or does it belong to someone else? If it belongs to someone else, then all we have control over is how we choose to respond to their words and behaviors.
Today, go ahead and share something you thought you had control over and once in recovery found out you didn’t.
Note: The thought of the days along with other key updates will also be posted on our facebook page (Celebrate Recovery at Crossroads Church Facebook Page) and for those without facebook, they will also be posted on the following blog site: https://crossroadscr.blogspot.com
UPDATES/REMINDERS:
- Fridays at 6:30pm, We are hosting "CR Friday Night Live." To subscribe to our youtube channel please click on the following link and select the subscribe button. CR Youtube Channel Link . There will be a song or two of worship and then a short recovery based dialog between a couple of CR members. This will be streamed on youtube.
- Fridays we will be hosting on-line open share group meetings at 7:30pm. There will be one mixed issues group for men and one mixed issues group for women. Sign Up Here: Men's Open Share Sign-up / Women's Open Share Sign-Up. These meetings will take place using the Zoom App. In order to participate you will need a tablet, smart-phone or computer with camera. In order to ensure confidentiality of these meetings everyone who participates will need to find a private room to set up, have their camera on, so others can see that there is no one else in the room and they will also need to wear a pair of headphones so that they are the only ones that can hear. This is a free app and you can download it on google play, apple app store or through your web-browser on your computer. For help on how to join a Zoom meeting please click on the the following link, which will take you to their support web-site Zoom Set-Up Help
James U.
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