It sometimes amazes me how many people I talk to over a given day. Over a week it’s the same, except it’s even more so. And what amazes me more is how many subjects we cover. Today I talked to a number of friends who are struggling with a lot of things. One told me how they’re stuggling with things other than alcohol. One had lost their way in other things and had a hard time trying to get their focus back to alcohol as their real problem. I heard other problems, all of which I could identify with. But the one who intrigued me was one who really reminded me of my past in this program.
Many years ago, I seemed to have lost my way in this program. I became depressed, angry, even hostile to those, who had helped me so much. How I got that way is not important to why I’m writing this. The main thing is how I found my way out of that mess without taking a drink. We used to call the situation I was in as being in a “jackpot’.
How I recovered from this was what I was reminded of. I found someone, quite by accident, I thought. I had been told that when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. Lo and behold, as they say, is exactly what happened. I was put in touch with someone, who literally became that teacher. A guide to spiritual growth, who put me back on the path, and pointed me back to the sobriety I had come here to find.
What I found was that, when I was in the middle of this “jackpot”, I couldn’t see or hear anything which would help me out of it. Yet, looking back, I can see that I wasn’t lacking in these “teachers”. They often walked right up to me and I walked right past them. The key I discovered was that I wasn’t ready. I was all wrapped up in me. I was the one who had to do the work to ready myself. As long as I wasn’t willing, due to my overwhelming pride and fear, I was stuck and probably in danger of taking a drink.
My sponsor had told me that some night, if I had thrown some of the things I had been told away, I would have to get a flashlight and go out looking for them. That’s just what happened. I had lost hope and that was the light I needed to find what was lost. Somehow I got a modicum of hope back and went looking for what I needed. It was all there. It hadn’t gone anywhere. I was the one who had moved. I had turned my back on it. Then, one day I walked into a man’s office and told him what I had been going through. I had gone there to return something I had found, which he had misplaced at a meeting one night. He just smiled and called a woman into his office and introduced us. That meeting changed my life.
In fact, it changed the lives of others.
We spent two years together and then one day she told me it was time to get on the way. I asked her what I should do next. She just looked at me and said, “Work the steps”. Imagine that. Work the steps. The way to spiritual growth, enlightenment, peace and serenity, and the road to a happy sober life, which works.
I was sitting here this evening, reflecting on this and how fortunate I have been in my life in AA. I was thinking that everything which has happened is exactly what needed to happen in order to get me to where I am today. My sponsor once told me that AA does not promise me a rose garden, but that if I did what others had done before me I could stay sober. Bill tells us that along the road we might be tempted to go off the path. On the one side to the slough of despond and self pity and often into the mountains for the fools gold of pride on the other side. Someone has to find us and lead us back to the path we had started along. I’ve been on both sides of the road and lost and then found, when I was ready.