January 20
A Smaller Yes
The whole task may look impossible. An inventory, a difficult admission, or a change in a familiar habit seems to require a person stronger than we feel. We promise that we will begin when we can give it the attention it deserves. Meanwhile, the size of the promise keeps the beginning safely out of reach.
A more modest form of willingness may be available. Perhaps we are ready to discuss what makes the task frightening, or to let someone explain how they began. A smaller yes has value when it brings us into honest contact with what we have avoided. It can also become another delay if we keep repeating it without moving. We need not settle the difference alone. The useful beginning is the one that opens something real, however little, and allows another person or God into a place we have been managing by ourselves.
What beginning is honestly available beneath my promise to do everything later?
Talking about the difficulty is a place to start.
For the A.A. nerds: Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, Step Three, pp. 34–35.