Pastor Mike opens with something he was carrying this time last year — a season of real depression rooted in unresolved family relationships he'd decided he was powerless to change. He'd been praying the Serenity Prayer daily and getting nowhere, until he saw why: he had the relationship filed under "things I cannot change" when it belonged under "courage to change the things I can." Wrong category, and no amount of praying was going to sort that out for him. He ties it to Jesus' instruction in Matthew 5 to be reconciled to your brother before you bring your gift to the altar, and notes that everything he was offering (to a congregation, to people in recovery) kept falling flat until he did the scary work of reaching out. Corey brings Romans 12 and the renewing of the mind, then walks through the amends instructions on pages 77 and 78, landing on the hardest part: setting aside everything you believe the other person did and looking only at your own faults. His example is his birth mother, two unanswered letters at eighteen, and the peace he found making amends in a hospital parking lot after she was gone. Paris closes it out with a good-natured disagreement about whether faith can be borrowed, and where the job of carrying the message ends.

The stone for today: I cannot move fully into peace until I am willing to face the parts of my past that still stand in the way.

Read today's full Daily Ripple at www.dailyripples.com — and we'd love to hear from you. Reach out any time at wave@dailyripples.com.

Looking back to move forward | reconciliation before the altar | the Serenity Prayer | Christian recovery | 12-step faith | sweeping my side of the street | amends and peace | Big Book study | sobriety devotional | addiction recovery

Daily Ripples is a daily devotional reflection connecting recovery principles with the life of faith. New episodes every day at dailyripples.com.

Corey brings a question a friend put to him about recovery as a spiral (always circling, always moving) and the thing that troubled him about the picture: there was no way out of it. He points instead to the free man in the Big Book, the one who can go anywhere other free people go so long as he keeps a certain simple attitude, and lands on what actually changed for him. It was rarely the circumstances; it was the point of view he brought into them. Pastor Mike picks it up with his own first Fourth Step, when he told his sponsor he had no resentments at all; he loved everybody, got along with everyone; and then found everything buried so deep he couldn't see it until he started writing. He pairs it with the promise in Psalm 147 that God heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds, and notes that the breaking open has to come before the binding up. Paris turns the conversation back to the foundation underneath all of it, the utter defeat that came before any of the steps, and the sacred date nobody can take from you. It closes with a Third Tradition pop quiz, some laughter, and an unexpected bit of affirmation about counting the right day.

The stone for today: God often uses the pain I face honestly to heal the pain I've carried for years.

Read today's full Daily Ripple at www.dailyripples.com — and we'd love to hear from you. Reach out any time at wave@dailyripples.com.

Healing what still hurts | facing buried resentments | freedom and point of view | Christian recovery | 12-step faith | Fourth Step inventory | Psalm 147 | Big Book study | sobriety devotional | addiction recovery

Daily Ripples is a daily devotional reflection connecting recovery principles with the life of faith. New episodes every day at dailyripples.com.

Corey picks up where the forewords left off and moves into the chapter that sets the whole book in motion. He opens with the man behind it — Dr. William Silkworth, a neurologist who by some counts worked with tens of thousands of alcoholics in the years before the book was written, and who describes a patient in late 1934 he'd come to regard as hopeless. That patient was Bill Wilson. From there Corey walks the letters line by line, marking the words worth circling: must, only, essential, necessary. He lands on the three facts stacked in the first letter, the phrase "manifestation of an allergy" that separated these people from everyone else, and the plain conclusion that something more than human power would be needed. Along the way he pushes back honestly on HALT and offers his own counter-evidence — he drank full, happy, surrounded by people, and wide awake — before arriving at what settles it for him: feelings are subjective and always shifting, while this work is objective, real, and has worked for millions. It closes on Silkworth's own invitation, that a man may come to scoff and remain to pray.

A study offered in the spirit of one alcoholic sharing experience, strength, and hope with another. Next week: Bill's Story.

Read along at home — and if this series speaks to you, we'd love to hear from you. Reach out any time at wave@dailyripples.com.

Big Book study | the Doctor's Opinion | Dr. Silkworth | phenomenon of craving | allergy of the body | psychic change | entire abstinence | recovery literature | experience strength and hope | addiction recovery

Disclaimer: This Wave Book Study is an independent recovery study offered free of charge as a teaching aid. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or approved by Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc. (A.A.W.S.). Passages read and discussed are drawn from the book Alcoholics Anonymous ("The Big Book"), © A.A.W.S., Inc., and are used here for educational and discussion purposes with attribution. This study is not a substitute for the Big Book itself — we'd encourage you to get your own copy and read it. A.A.W.S. has not reviewed or approved this content, and the views expressed are those of the host alone.