Looking back and remembering my old sponsor Tom today, I thought about when I used to carp to him about all my troubles. He would get that cockeyed smile on his face and ask me if I had taken a drink that day. I would tell him “no” and he would say, “Well, then, you’ve had a good day.”
Of course I would get angry at the response. I would think to myself just how insensitive he was to my plight. He didn’t even listen to my troubles I would think. Imagine, all he was worried about was did I take a drink. I mean, here I am with this boatload of problems in my life and he was more concerned with whether I took a drink or not. The nerve of that guy. I mean, he’s supposed to be my sponsor and he’s not even interested in me and my troubles.
My real problem was that I wasn’t listening to him. He had the real answer to what was wrong with me and I couldn’t hear it. It was only later that I was to come to understand what he was really saying. He was telling me that all was well. I hadn’t taken a drink so that really all was well. He was teaching me a spiritual principle that my mind couldn’t comprehend at that time.
Probably because spiritual principles are not necessarily for the mind.
Later I was to read a passage in the BB, which stated that all my problems could be solved by the application of spiritual principles. That if all wasn’t well, I would probably have been drinking.
Taking a quick survey of my life so far in this program, I can see more clearly now, that despite all the road blocks I thought I faced, I am still sober. That the troubles of the past have been cleared away, when I once thought I was being confronted by the unsolvable and faced with terrifying disaster. That all my problems were just illusions, which I had made real in my mind.
That my feelings and emotions were in control of my mind, because of my failure to continue to build a spiritual life within me. And that only because I was relying on my own resources and not on that of a higher power.
I can still get into panic over something or other, but the truth is that all I have to do is take a deep breath, calm the disturbance, and remember that I didn’t take a drink over it. All is well.