Golfers walking out together onto a green links course past a slate-roofed starter hut with a weathervane under a wide blue-gray sky

Walk All the Way!

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Golfers walking out together onto a green links course past a slate-roofed starter hut with a weathervane under a wide blue-gray sky“Walk all the way with another person and with God. Do not go part of the way and then stop.”

That’s the Meditation for the Day in this morning’s Twenty-Four Hours a Day. I read it twice. Partway, and then stop. Be honest: how many things in your life have you walked only halfway?

Most of us know the pattern. We start strong: a new prayer routine, a promise to call a friend every week. Then life gets busy, and we quietly stop. Nobody announces it. We just drift.

Recovery doesn’t run on drift. It runs on walking all the way!

Halfway is a crowded place

The reading gets specific: “Do not push God so far into the background that He has no effect on your life.”

That one stings. It’s easy to keep God around like a framed picture on the wall, nice to have and never consulted. The page offers a simple fix: “Make a good companion of God by praying to Him often during the day.”

Often. A short word at a red light. A thank-you after a hard phone call. A quick “help me here” before a tough conversation. Companions talk to each other.

Walk with people, too

The meditation doesn’t stop with God. It tells us to “Work all the way with God and with other people, along the path of life, wherever it may lead you.”

Wherever it may lead. That includes the stretch where a friend is grieving, where a family member is hard to love, or where someone you’re trying to help keeps tripping over the same rock. Plenty of folks show up for the start and the finish-line photo. The middle is where they disappear. Years ago I wrote a short post on friendship that opened with Walter Winchell: “A real friend is the one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out.” I still believe it.

Scripture says it plainly:

“Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up!” (Ecclesiastes 4:9-10, ESV)

This morning’s Dynamic Catholic reflection, from Matthew Kelly’s Feminine Genius, describes the kind of presence that makes this possible: “It notices what others overlook. It senses what is unspoken. It creates space for others to be known.” That’s what walking with someone looks like up close. You pay attention.

When the road gets bumpy

Walk with people long enough, and you’ll get bumped. Today’s Courage to Change reading has a line worth taping to the bathroom mirror: “Someone else’s unkindness is no reason for me to lower my standards for my own behavior.” Getting hurt is not a reason to walk off the path.

Sometimes the bump is that things just won’t change the way we want. Your Daily Reprieve shared a Pot Luck reading from Joyce Meyer: “We always want everything else to change. We want our circumstances to change, and we want all the people around us to change, but God wants to change US.” She adds, “God is ALWAYS working in our lives, but He may not be working in the area of our preference.”

So keep walking. The change is often happening in us, right on the stretch of road we wanted to skip.

Growth or safety?

Daily Ponderables offered a Thought for Today credited to Abraham Maslow: “You will either step forward into growth or you will step back into safety.”

Stopping halfway feels like safety. It isn’t. It’s just the spot where growth ends. Right below it sat a line from Yvon Chouinard: “How you climb a mountain is more important than reaching the top.”

I couldn’t agree more. In Success-Full, Living Life with Purpose: Recovery Mode, I wrote, “Success is a journey, not a destination. Enjoy the ride!” In Recovery Thinking, 90-Days to Change Your Life!, I wrote: I put it this way: “Recovery is a process, a lifelong process! But it is worth it!” We keep walking, and the walking is the good part. I wrote about that in The Journey, too.

Five ways to walk all the way today

  • Pray in the gaps. Pick three ordinary moments today (coffee, the car, the checkout line) and say one honest sentence to God in each.
  • Finish one thing you started. Find something you walked halfway and let slide, like a call, a letter, or a promise. Take the next step on it today.
  • Stay for the middle. Check on one person who is in a hard stretch, not just a happy one. Ask how they’re really doing, then listen.
  • Hold your own standard. If someone is unkind today, decide ahead of time how you want to act. Their behavior doesn’t get to set yours.
  • Pick growth once. When you catch yourself stepping back into safety, take one small step forward instead.

Keep your feet on the path

Over 40 years in human services have shown me that the people who make it are rarely the ones with the fastest start. They’re the ones who keep showing up. As I wrote in Success-Full, “Winning takes work; I am a worker; I am a winner!” And if you stopped somewhere along the way, you can pick it back up today. Never quit.

The Twenty-Four Hours page closes with a prayer worth borrowing: “I pray that I may walk in companionship with God along the way. I pray that I may keep my feet upon the path that leads upward.”

I’m sober today, and I’m grateful for the people who have walked a stretch of the road with me. Life is GOOOOOOOD!!!

So here’s my question for you: Where have you stopped halfway, and what is one step you can take today to walk all the way?

Go, Go, Go… Dan 🙂

Books quoted in this post:

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A note on anonymity: Although I write about Alcoholics Anonymous, Al-Anon, and their literature here, nothing in this post should be taken to imply my membership in any specific mutual support group, in keeping with Tradition Eleven.

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Reflection note: I wrote this from my own daily readings. Quotes belong to their original authors and sources (Twenty-Four Hours a Day, October 26 / Hazelden Foundation, via Daily Ponderables and Your Daily Reprieve; Courage to Change, Al-Anon Family Group Headquarters, via Daily Ponderables; Abraham Maslow and Yvon Chouinard, via the Daily Ponderables Thought for Today; Joyce Meyer, via the Your Daily Reprieve Pot Luck; Matthew Kelly, Feminine Genius, via the Dynamic Catholic Daily Reflection; Walter Winchell; Ecclesiastes 4:9-10, English Standard Version; Success-Full, Living Life with Purpose: Recovery Mode; Recovery Thinking, 90-Days to Change Your Life!). I used AI to help organize it and reviewed it before posting.