Blog for November 24th, 2025
Foundation
This last week has been pretty much status quo around here, once I got back from Texas that is. It took me a couple of days to rest up, but the week was pretty much back to normal for me. Back to cleaning and organizing. I even had a friend come to help me with the floors. That was great. My ole back is just about done for.
So, the work will continue until Thanksgiving is over, and meanwhile I keep on my path of recovery. I continue with my daily, usual routines of reading meditations, Bible, journaling and sharing with my husband. Talking, texting and sharing with sponsees. Praying for all of them and my family, friends and the world.
In our daily readings this week, we read about foundations. I would have to say we have indeed established our foundation in our recovery, foundations that we continue to this day. You know when I say “we” it’s me and my husband, we’re in this together. Cool huh
What I know about building a foundation is that first, you have to clean away the debris and clean it up first. Like the old ’29 Model A he’s working on, first he has to strip off the old paint, pull out the dents, cover the bruises and put on a primer. The Primer becomes the foundation. It is necessary to have a clean slate to build on.
When I first got clean, I had to stop using drugs, brush off the dirt and be primed to get a sponsor and work the steps. You don’t just waltz in here all brimming and shining ready to do this recovery thing. There is a step before the first step: First comes surrender and willingness. Without those, it’s just not gonna happen.
After I surrendered and went to meetings, I started looking for a sponsor, someone I could connect with. And honestly, it took a couple of tries before I ended up with the one I have now. I’ve been with her for over twenty-five years. I got started on my steps by the time I had three months clean and have been through them many times, I lost count. I still work my steps, especially the tenth step. It will alert me to when I need to work on another step, like the ninth, to make amends, or the third, to give it all to God again when I’ve been trying to take it all back and control things, or maybe I need to take fourth step inventory, take an inventory of myself in whatever situation I am in.
So, surrender, willingness, meetings, sponsor, steps and then, become of service while finding a good support group. Some people call it a tight five. Often, you will find those people in your sponsorship families. But to be sure, you need to have a couple of people you can depend on that will be there for you in your recovery journey. No matter what, no matter when, no matter why. A couple of people you can trust.
It’s like any good contractor will tell you, you must have a solid foundation to build a house on, a building, whatever. Like the car, the land must first be prepped before even laying the cement foundation that you will be building the house on. It is said in the program that steps one, two and three lay that solid foundation, we then like to say this about the first three steps: “I can’t, He can, I think I’ll let Him”.
After that, we start building the structure, which is our new life, our solid recovery and life with a much better future than we could have ever thought of while using.
And because I worked on a foundation of recovery from the start, I have been able to stay clean no matter the storms and heartaches of life that has come my way. My foundation has sustained me when I wanted to use again, give up and cash it all in. Face it folks, life is not easy and without something to fall back on or something to stand firm on, we are liable to slip and fall into the muddy depths of life. As the old saying goes, “if you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything”, So build on that solid foundation to stand on!
Question of the Week: Are you or have you already laid a solid foundation in which to build your recovery/life on?
