A Promise to Keep

Make a promise to yourself that you are not going to quit...

When you make a promise you have to keep it. ~ Rev. Felicia Hopkins

We come into the rooms of recovery having failed
for years and years, having tried every possible way,
having given up and found we're powerless over addiction
and that our whole lives have become unmanageable.
We come into the rooms of recovery and glimpse hope,
see others who understand us but who seem to have it together,
to have overcome, to have set aside the powerlessness
and who have lives we desperately long to have.

But we come in defeated, ready to give up,
knowing we're hopeless, expecting to fail.
And after that first pink cloud recovery it's so easy
to slip and to to give up, embarrassed, thinking we don't deserve
the wonders of recovery we've come to know in others.
But we owe it to ourselves to hold on to hope,
to promise ourselves to stay until the miracle happens.
And we owe it to ourselves to keep the promise to ourselves
just as surely and trying just as hard as we would
had we made the promise to another.
We owe ourselves to honor our promise, to find recovery.