Pastor Mike opens by tracing self-restraint back to his old career auditing client books as a CPA, long before recovery or ministry, and how quickly you learn that your reaction to people can't be your response if you want to keep the job. What surprises him now is how naturally that discipline has carried into the rest of his life. People tell him often how calm and patient he is, and he's honest that inside his own head he isn't nearly as composed as it looks from the outside. The difference is he's learned to withhold the reaction long enough for an actual response to form.

Corey brings the practical mechanics of watching for it in real time, likening it to a stakeout: not fighting what shows up, just watching it, staying alert to selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear until something calls for real action. He circles back to Bill's train metaphor from a few weeks earlier, that once the train leaves the station you don't get off until it stops, though you still get to choose whether you sit still or make a scene while you ride it. Both admit they've done plenty of getting up and acting the fool. The episode lands on Galatians 5 and the fruit of the Spirit, self-control among them, as something worked in a person rather than manufactured through willpower alone.

The stone for today: Strength is revealed not by how quickly I react, but how wisely I choose my response.

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Choosing self-restraint | reaction versus response | riding out the train | Christian recovery | 12-step faith | fruit of the Spirit | Proverbs 29:11 | Big Book study | sobriety devotional | addiction recovery

Corey opens with a well-worn point about self-centeredness, that if trouble is everyone else's fault, he'll happily take other people down with him rather than carry the blame alone. He traces it back to a story he's told before about his father's cancer diagnosis and a girlfriend's Xanax prescription, and comes clean on a detail he'd gotten wrong in earlier tellings. It wasn't given to him. He took it from her purse without her knowing, and for years the softer version felt better because it meant he wasn't the only one responsible.

From there the two of them dig into the Fourth Step's fourth column as the real training ground for the Tenth Step's daily practice, and Corey describes watching a sponsee's whole outlook shift the moment he wrote his part down in black and white rather than hiding behind vague language like selfish or dishonest. Pastor Mike ties it to the difference between a reaction and a response, and to learning how to actually listen instead of just waiting for his turn to argue back. It closes with Psalm 51, David's prayer for a clean heart after being confronted by Nathan, and the shared conviction that neither of their hearts started out pure, but both are far purer now than they used to be.

The stone for today: Freedom begins when I stop trying to change others and instead allow God to change me.

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Letting God change me | reaction versus response | the fourth column of inventory | Christian recovery | 12-step faith | Psalm 51 | self-will run riot | Big Book study | sobriety devotional | addiction recovery

Steffani closes out the week solo with the most ordinary example yet, her company's return-to-office mandate after seven years of working from home. She's candid about how bitter and resentful she got over something she had zero control over, replaying the same grievances on a loop until she noticed what it was actually doing to her, and to everyone around her who had to hear it.

The turn comes when she realizes the only thing she could actually manage in the situation was herself, her own thinking, her own words, her own attitude, and takes it to Philippians 4:6-7's instruction to be anxious for nothing and let requests be made known to God instead. Three weeks back in the office later, what looked like pure loss turned into something she didn't expect: real conversations with people she hadn't seen in years, including one with a coworker of a different faith entirely. She closes the week on Jeremiah 29:11 and a line that ties the whole series together, that she's not a piddly human doing, carrying the world on her own shoulders, but a piddly human being who gets to hand the outcome over and actually rest in that.

The stone for today: My reactions often reveal more about the condition of my heart than about the circumstances around me.

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Looking within first | handing it over | human being not human doing | Christian recovery | 12-step faith | Philippians 4:6-7 | Jeremiah 29:11 | Big Book study | sobriety devotional | addiction recovery

Steffani continues solo and opens with a confession of her own: saying I'm sorry has never come easily to her, and her usual strategy has been trying to get things right the first time so an apology never becomes necessary. The word that stops her cold in today's devotional is promptly. Her instinct runs the other way, toward justifying, explaining, waiting out the moment until the window to make it right has quietly closed on its own.

She traces the delay back to fear, fear of looking lesser, fear of pride taking a hit, the same false evidence appearing real that shows up everywhere else in recovery. Page 59's instruction to promptly admit when we're wrong becomes the daily discipline she's practicing against her own grain, paired with Proverbs 28:13's promise that whoever hides their sin won't prosper, but whoever confesses finds mercy. The honest turn comes near the end: she isn't responsible for how anyone receives her apology, only for offering it, which means the relief of a clean conscience doesn't depend on being forgiven, it just depends on being honest.

The stone for today: Humility grows when I admit my mistakes promptly instead of defending them.

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Admitting it quickly | promptly admitted it | false evidence appearing real | Christian recovery | 12-step faith | Proverbs 28:13 | pride versus humility | Big Book study | sobriety devotional | addiction recovery

Steffani goes solo for the day and opens with real gratitude for the chance to do this whole week alongside her daughter, calling it a kind of living amends and a rare opportunity to have honest conversations with her own child in front of an audience. From there she turns to something she's still working on: a pause button that exists now but isn't nearly as strong as she'd like. The deepest spiritual growth, she's found, rarely happens in quiet reflection. It happens in the middle of real conflict, right when frustration or fear would normally take over.

She leans on pages 86 through 88 of the Big Book, the instructions for pausing when agitated and asking for the right thought or action before reacting, and admits that tenacious, quick judgment has defined a lot of her life, for better and worse. Matthew 7's plank and speck becomes the anchor for the back half, the uncomfortable realization that whatever irritates her most in someone else is usually pointing at something in herself she hasn't dealt with yet. It closes on a simple reframe worth carrying: most disturbances aren't really about the other person at all, they're information about where she still needs to grow.

The stone for today: My disturbance usually says more about me than about the person who caused it.

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My best teacher | pausing when agitated | the plank and the speck | Christian recovery | 12-step faith | Matthew 7:3-5 | disturbance as information | Big Book study | sobriety devotional | addiction recovery

MacKenzie opens with Isaiah 41:10 and traces it directly into the stories people tell themselves to avoid a hard conversation, using her own recent engagement as the live example, a conversation she'd been putting off out of fear of how it might land. She names something sharper underneath the avoidance: sometimes prayer itself gets avoided for the same reason, because bringing a thing to God means having to face it again, and there's a part of all of us that would rather just not think about it at all.

Steffani ties it to Step Four's searching and fearless moral inventory, and to the Twelve and Twelve's description of fear as a boogeyman, something that only holds power as long as it stays unexamined. She's honest about how often fear disguises itself as something else entirely, anxiety about the future, a story about what might happen that almost never turns out to be true. MacKenzie closes with a distinction worth sitting with: courage was never the absence of fear, it's doing the thing anyway, and love is often what pushes fear out of the driver's seat in the first place.

The stone for today: Fear loses its power the moment I choose to face the truth instead of running from it.

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Looking honestly within | facing fear with courage | the fearless moral inventory | Christian recovery | 12-step faith | Isaiah 41:10 | fear as a boogeyman | Big Book study | sobriety devotional | addiction recovery

Corey picks up right where last week stopped, on page 52, and lingers there on purpose, reading back through the bedevilments one more time because, as he puts it, he doesn't have to be drunk for them to still show up in his life. Trouble with personal relationships, inability to control his emotional nature, prey to misery and depression. He points out that every one of these was already true of him before he ever took a drink.

The heart of the episode is the line that either God is everything or He is nothing, and what Corey calls the bridge of reason that gets a person most of the way there but never quite lets them step ashore onto faith. He works through the book's case that reason itself rests on a kind of faith nobody questions, faith in a paycheck, faith in a person, faith that the bed will be as comfortable tonight as it was last night, and uses that to dismantle the idea that logic and belief are opposites. It lands on the chapter's close, the story of a minister's son who hit bottom in a hospital bed and tumbled to his knees asking who he was to say there was no God, and Corey's own hard-won version of the same insanity, that the crazy one isn't the man drunk, it's the man stone sober who picks up anyway, knowing exactly what it's cost him before.

A study offered in the spirit of one alcoholic sharing experience, strength, and hope with another. Next week: pages 58 through 60.

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Big Book study | We Agnostics | God is everything or nothing | the bridge of reason | the great reality deep down within | Fitz Mayo's story | 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.

MacKenzie opens with a Minecraft comparison that lands better than it sounds, a character's inventory only holds so much before something has to be set down to make room for what's needed next. Daily self-examination works the same way, clearing out yesterday's leftover words and reactions so they don't pile up into something unmanageable. She pairs it with Second Corinthians 13:5 and the instruction to examine yourselves, breaking the word examine down to what it actually asks: inspect, test, look closely at your own condition rather than everyone else's.

Steffani takes it to the Twelve and Twelve's idea of the emotional hangover, the version that shows up whether or not you've had a drink the night before, built instead from unresolved anger, fear, or jealousy carried over from the day before. She's honest that she drank for years specifically to avoid feeling these things, and that self-examination now means actually sitting in the discomfort rather than numbing past it. MacKenzie adds a story about a friend cycling in and out of an unhealthy relationship, and a personal threshold she uses for judging when someone's worst behavior has started to outweigh their best. It closes on Lamentations 3's promise that God's mercies are new every morning, which both women land on as permission to fail at the self-examination today and simply try again tomorrow.

The stone for today: Honest self-examination keeps yesterday's mistakes from becoming tomorrow's burdens.

Read today's full Daily Ripple at www.dailyripples.com. Reach out any time at wave@dailyripples.com.

Traveling light | the emotional hangover | daily self-examination | Christian recovery | 12-step faith | 2 Corinthians 13:5 | mercies new every morning | Big Book study | sobriety devotional | addiction recovery