Spirituality and how to be Happy, Joyous, and Free every day?

First of all, let’s get the obvious out of the way right away! Every day is not full of laughing and chuckling. Life does keep on coming at us. The way that I remain Happy, Joyous, and Free every day, even when there may be tragedy around me or physical problems within me, is to remember what I have to be grateful for. In the most basic, I am alive and breathing! What a concept for someone like me who didn’t care if I lived or died for far too long. I was advised a long time ago to make a gratitude list by starting with three things and adding three different blessings each day. As you might imagine, it started out very basic with things similar to At least I didn’t puke when I woke up this morning, my dog wagged her tail when she approached me just now, and soon these basics began to flesh out with other people taking a more important part of my life. My dad told me many years ago, “You haven’t got time to bitch when you’re counting your blessings.” Then I am reminded of Step 3 in the amazing AA Program where it states that we turn our wills and our lives over to the care of God, as we understood him, and we did. But then it seems like we have taken portions of it back when it seemed convenient. Nowhere in the Program does it say that we may take it back so that means that we leave it in the hands of God and go on with living. I have discovered that, when I take back even a little bit, for whatever excuse, things start to go wrong. I get a physical problem, disagreement with someone, or whatever. Just something that makes me wonder where the happiness went. I soon discovered that it didn’t go anywhere, I did! So, to feel Happy, Joyous, and Free ALL THE TIME all I must do is leave it ALL in God’s hands and go on about my life. Misfortune hits us all because, as Spiritual Beings living now in this human condition, we live in a world that has many who, although born Perfect, have taken their Free Will and used it for selfish pleasures, often at the expense of others. When the Covid Pandemic hit us, much of the world came to a screeching halt and wailed “Woe is me!” This stoppage came and caused a halt to many activities, including AA Meetings. My Higher Power, who I choose to call God, took this 80-year-old, semi-computer literate AA member and reminded him that He had given me choices, not fiats. Since I did not drink or drug today, I am not forced into anything. I have choices for the first time in my life. I choose to count my blessings and figure out how best I can continue working the 12 Steps of this amazing program. To me, Zoom meant the sound that was printed in the comics for a speeding car or The Roadrunner but was starting to take on a new meaning since the Covid shutdowns. The thought that using this new program that was being used in business and industry for meetings could maybe be used for AA meetings for people who were staying home. This is how the Zoom AA Meeting that meets every Monday through Friday at 3:00 PM since March of 2000 was born. Today it still thrives and is kept alive by some wonderful, like-minded people who help in ways that they don’t even know by attending, sharing, and bringing newcomers into the meeting. This is now my HomeGroup in AA, and it seems like it may be for some of the others, too. For all of this, I am grateful and it just keeps on getting better. I say that EVERYTHING I have today, I owe to the program of AA. You are part of my program so Thank You so much for continuing with your love and support. By attending and contributing to this post, you are working your 12 Steps and for that I am grateful. See how easy it is to grow a gratitude list starting with the most basic?