Today's thought from Hazelden is:

Stopping, calming, and resting are preconditions for healing. When animals in the forest are wounded they find a place to lie down and rest completely for many days . . . They just rest and get the healing they need.
--Thich Nhat Hanh

We hurt. We suffer. We wrong our loved ones and they do wrong by us. Reaching desperately for an answer will not help us. Pretending we're not hurt doesn't help either. When we are wounded, the wound needs rest in order to heal. So it is with our souls. If we poke at our hurt, pick at the sore, rub it in the dirt of others' opinions, we do not allow it time to heal.

If you've been hurt, accept that. Feel the hurt. Be aware of it. Let it heal. Maybe it would be better if you didn't talk to that person for a while. Maybe you need to let go of the relationship. Maybe you just need some quiet time. Whatever the answer is, find a safe place and allow yourself to heal.

If you're feeling pain, be aware of it. Feel the pain, and then quit picking at the wound, Lie low. Quit fighting. Relax. Give your wounds time and enough rest to heal.

God, help me relax enough to stop, calm down, and heal.
From The Language of Letting Go.

I've borrowed the book Emotional Sobriety from an AA friend. It's funny because he's the friend I miss the most. I can't explain why I miss him nor why I became attached to him in the first place except to say that I saw and still do see a great deal of myself in him. I've attempted to make amends only to be told that it's not me, it's him. I don't understand that. I'm terribly confused. But I've deleted his e-mail address from my address book. What was the point of keeping it? He didn't return any of my e-mails. I was practicing insanity.

I was looking at the book a little while ago and because I was getting sleepy I thumbed through it to a section on love. Just as I had about decided that my friend had really not claimed this book as his own because it has no writing or underlining in it I found something underlined in the love section. It says, " I am willing to love you, to accept you as you are." I don't understand how in a book without a mark of any kind, not even his name written in the front, only that one sentence would come to be underlined. I don't want to analyze it. I can't. But it's the kind of thing he's done for the entire year I've known him. It would be so self-centered of me to believe he deliberately underlined it and then gave it over to his mother for me to borrow. But I don't really know how to explain it.

Love is fleeting at times. We go through our whole life looking for it and then when we think we've found it we do everything in our power to change the other person or we spend our time trying to change to suit them. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could simply be ourselves and accept each other as we are? The Celestial Prophesy speaks of that. Wow! What a concept!

I don't know what to think about love any more. I believe I am lovable, capable of loving and loved but sometimes I get so bogged down in the problems I have that I can't see or feel it. I feel like at those times I need to be held and told, "I love you because you are you." So often I don't hear it. My mother tells me this sometimes when she knows I'm sick and tired of being me. At times it irritates me because I feel she's saying it to force me to feel better. Sometimes I have to wallow in my "bad" feelings before I become willing to experience the love again. I can't explain it. But I know it's a part of recovery.

I guess I'm at the place that the song "I Want to Know What Love Is" speaks about. I want to know what it is and experience it to its height and depth. Sometimes I think I have and at other times I feel deprived of it.