bheintz8517

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Day 4291 (I always had a head knowledge of Jesus, now it’s about gaining a heart knowledge of Him)

When I was baptized in 2017, it was something that I chose to do because my Faith has become such an important part of my life, and it was something I knew I needed to continue to grow into. A head knowledge of Jesus was something I always had, and that came from going to Church with family as a kid, and hearing things about The Lord along the way. What was absent was a heart knowledge of both…

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Day 4290 (Free Will)

We can do whatever we want. It’s about what we choose to do. Choosing to do what wasn’t good for me brought me to a place where I felt like I was in control, and I was where I wanted to be. It can be so easy to blame our circumstances, even though we ourselves bring those circumstances to our front door. By ignoring any and all blame we can find ourselves spiraling in so many different areas of…

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Day 4289 (It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us)

A lot of talk about not wanting to fail. In my experiences failure is the easy way out. There is going to be times when we do everything in our power and still don’t accomplish something and I view that as different. I remember active addiction and thinking about how easy it was to just keep doing what I was doing opposed to taking a stand and making the necessary changes in my life. I remember…

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Day 4288 (When you let go of your bitterness, inadequacy, & incompleteness, the more you tap into your true creative genius)

Bitterness, inadequacy and incompleteness are three things that I carried with me each day of active addiction. When I made the decision to walk away from alcohol and drugs there was part of me that hoped and actually believed that I’d be leaving those feelings behind. This plays into the part of my journey where I finally had to deal with feelings opposed to thinking I could just ignore them. My…

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Day 4287 (Deficits are defeated by the strength that we gain in fighting them)

Based on my words and actions in active addiction I built up a world of reasons to feel both unworthy and inadequate. Those were things I did, and did a great job burying those things in my thoughts so they would eventually go away, but they had a way of always making their way back into my present thoughts. The trigger for those feelings often comes with success and making significant changes in…

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Day 4286 (Addiction denied is recovery delayed)

Admitting I was powerless to alcohol was something I thought about throughout my active addiction, but I made it a point to simply remind myself that I was having fun, and at my age, it was what I was supposed to be doing. By justifying my actions I found myself reflecting a lot on the chaos that always seemed to find me. Even though it came easy to find that reason, I refused to admit that my…

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Day 4285 (Recovery is not a race)

For the longest time I treated walking away from alcohol and drugs as the top of the mountain as far as accomplishment went. By doing that I tried my best to survive living the same way without the presence of alcohol and drugs. I soon found out that it was going to be a lot more difficult than I had ever imagined. This fact didn’t stop me from going into survival mode, and I chose to survive as…

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Day 4284 (Sobriety really is a gift for those who are willing to receive it)

One thing that was consistent in my active addiction was me looking at my current situation and telling myself “nothing good comes from drinking” but for the nine years I was in it, I really didn’t care if that was the case. Even during the breaks I would take and things would get so much better in my life and around me it still was never enough. I remember thinking to myself “what is it going to…

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Day 4283 (Next time, next time)

Whenever I would get wasted and do something stupid it was “next time” when it came to not saying or doing something that I would instantly regret. It was always me waiting for that time to come, and I would make sure I drank too much, and use that as a crutch for an excuse as to why nothing was ever changing in my life. Early in my active addiction is different because I was just out having fun,…

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Day 4282 (Tamed by no time)

There was always so much “I have to do this” and “I have to do that” which followed me in my life for quite awhile. It goes back to how we perceive time. It’s I have this many hours or this many days, weeks, months and even years. For me, by placing those things on every moment, I was taking away from truly enjoying life. We are told by society that we should be on a timeline. By this time we…

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Day 4281 (You get points just for showing up and most of life is all about showing up)

Simply being present seems like such an easy skill to obtain. Through the years I’ve learned a lot about being present and one thing that stands out is how often we say but don’t do. Everything we do has a day one, and if we look around our lives we see what we continue to show up for and what we simply leave behind. When I look at my recovery, and see 4,281 days I think about showing up each day…

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Day 4280 (To be great is to be misunderstood)

Falling in line was the easy way out. I remember I built this idea in my head during High School that I was missing out on all the most important things in life at the time. Those things being drinking and partying. By doing that it really took away from those years of my life because I continued to view my life as a failure time and time again. With that perspective, it was clear that when I…

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Day 4279 (Lord grant us gracious courage to face the uncertainty of life)

The only certainty we will face in our day to day life is the uncertainty. There was a time when I refused to believe this, and I expected things to happen my way if I did enough (in my mind) that I deserved them. Let’s just say I was disappointed a lot because that’s not at all how it works. Recovery continues to teach me a lot, but one of the things I look at quite a bit in my times of…

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Day 4278 (Generational Sin)

My favorite excuse for my actions during active addiction was that my Dad was an alcoholic/addict so it shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that I was on the same path and living the same exact life. I remember looking at my life, and trying to find the easiest way through. I took the biology route because I knew it would work, and I ran with it. As often as I tried to blame that, the story…

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Day 4277 (Be who you want to be remembered as)

We often get off track by being so worried about what other people are going to think about us opposed to doing what is in our best interest and what will lead to us becoming the best version of ourselves. This is a trap, this is something that is a societal pressure, and one that is very easy to fall a victim to. I’ve talked a lot about the ages 15-27 in my life and all the shit that went on.…

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Day 4276 (Remember to look at your positive traits)

It is easy to immediately focus on what we struggle with and where we struggle in our lives. Those things will always outweigh the positive traits because we spend so much time focusing on them. For me, I struggle with hyper-focusing on those things because I had done a great job in my active addiction training my brain to do so, and by doing that, it always kept them front and center. For…

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Day 4275 (If we don’t believe in ourselves, why is anyone else going to believe in us)

I’ve said this a lot, and it will always ring true. It will never matter what anyone else thinks or says, until we want to make a change in our lives — nothing changes if nothing changes. Another expression that plays into this is “actions speak louder than words” because we can literally say anything. I remember throughout active addiction I made so many empty promises knowing I wasn’t going to…