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Self-Respect!

Thomas3.20.2010
0 2 4

Self-respect is the root of discipline: The sense of dignity grows

with  the ability to say no to  oneself.               Abraham Joshua

Heschel 1907-1972

 

If you had asked me if I respect myself back in those days when I was smoking, I would have said "Sure! I am a self-confident positive fellow!" Yet, at the same time, I continued to light up those death sticks several times a day! Committing the little suicide! Thinking in some screwball junkie thinking that by "being a rebel" that I was "standing up for myself - for my "right to choose' - for my individuality"! What a bunch of Balogna!!! But I believed it! That's what ADDICTION can do to your thinking! It can turn it into a pretzel! Anything to get my next FIX! Junkie Thinking is incredibly insidious because it's a part of me! It knows me like nobody else on the planet and it uses that knowledge against the God-given part of me that wished every single day to break out of the addiction and find my TRUE SELF! ADDICTION! It changes not just your brain, it changes your whole body and how it works, and by doing so it can completely take over your thought processes and make the most logical, rational person on the planet twist their self esteem and self-respect into this sick individual who craves with all their body and mind that next FIX! Here's the good part! Our Creator, who truly LOVES us even when we don't know how to love and respect ourselves will use any means possible to urge us to come back to our TRUE GOD GIVEN SELVES! He nudges us constantly! He swarms our conscience and if that doesn't work, He allows our bodies to react to the poison we've been feeding our Temples so that we finally come to KNOW that we have NO OPTION! Smoking is not an OPTION any more UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES!!! Then He brings people like YOU into our lives that lift us up and support us as we struggle to throw off the junkie twisted thinking and see the LIGHT OF TRUTH! TRUTH is right here each and every day for any of us, even the most hard-core junkie to feed on! TRUTH WILL SET US FREE! All we have to do is to say YES! I will at least listen to the TRUTH! I will give myself a chance to see beyond my ADDICTIVE THINKING and find out what's beyond! I really DO respect myself, LOVE myself, wish to affirm LIFE and LIVE ABUNDANTLY as My Creator intends! YES TO LIFE! YES TO FREEDOM! YES TO MY TRUE SELF! God bless each and every one of YOU and ME, too! We were all lost in the sea of ADDICTION and He is calling us back to OURSELVES! ALLELUJAH! Thank God I'm FREE at Last!

 

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About the Author
63 years old. 20 year smoker. 11 Years FREE! Diagnosed with COPD. Choosing a Quality LIFE! It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. -Galatians 5:1