May 8 - A Place of Peace

Pride keeps the soul restless. In this episode, Paris and Corey work through what it actually takes to put it down — and why the fifth step is where rest begins. Pride keeps the soul restless. When I carry everything alone, I remain burdened. Peace begins when I stop hiding and allow myself to be known. We open in the morning — down on our knees, reading, sending a few messages to fellows in the program just to get our day started. Sober doesn't mean easy. Families still need tending, jobs still need working, frustration still shows up. But today there's a sense of peace underneath it. That's what carrying it alone costs: the burden. And the fifth step is the mechanism for setting it down. Corey brings 12 & 12 page 57: until we've talked with complete candor about our conflicts, and listened to someone else do the same, we still don't belong. Step five, he says, was the beginning of true kinship — with man, and with God. The men who come into this program aren't naturally closed-mouthed friends. That's something they become. And when Corey sits across from another man doing a fifth step, hearing things he's also lived through — things he maybe forgot — he calls it a spiritual experience within itself. Paris pulls 1 Peter 5:6-7: "Humble yourself under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you — casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you." If no one's available, that's still the door. Then Corey builds something: foundation at page 12, cornerstone at page 47, keystone at page 62, and an arch at page 75 through which a man walks free. It's an architecture of recovery laid across four pages of the Big Book — and his conclusion lands clean: "Freedom is a bigger word than sober. I don't care about sober. I want to be free." Find every daily entry at dailyripples.com. Reach out anytime at [email protected]. Daily Ripples is a daily devotional reflection connecting recovery principles with the life of faith. New episodes every day at dailyripples.com.