Amazing how much gratitude was evidenced today by the members of the group. Not one negative in the whole room. Everyone expressed their pleasure of being sober and having found a new way of life in here. The old and the newer members.
I know as the meeting went on and I listened to everyone speaking I was impressed. For myself I have had no problem when it comes to gratitude. I have been given so much in here that I’d have to step back, if I were to make a list. However three things always strike me, when I think of gratitude. One is life itself, another is love, and the main one is freedom from the bondage of alcohol. In other words sobriety.
I should have been dead back when I came in. The fact that I am still alive not only amazes me, but I know a few others. I always need to remember how much help I got, which opened the door to sobriety for me. The first is my Higher Power, the God of my understanding, who helped me to stop drinking and freed me from alcohol. The other was the man, who gave me hope and stopped me from committing suicide. He was the one, who told me there was a place where men and women met and stayed sober together. AA of course, which I had never heard about until I got here. And the others are the men and women in here, who introduced me to this program and how it works.
And then there is love. Before I came into this program I don’t think I ever really knew anything about love. I mean there was my family, and then my marriage, my wife and my children, and a few others, but love itself? I had to go back and think about that. The truth was that affection for others wasn’t really anything I grew up with and alcohol definitely eliminated that and my understanding of love. However, as time went on in here, I began to grasp love, when it was given to me by others.
I can look back over time how friendships have been formed with love as the basis for all of them. In fact it did make me go back and bring the love I learned in here to my family. I think not only about that, but I definitely look around at those friends in here, who opened my mind and my heart to the realization of what love is all about. The compassion and caring of others was a new concept for me. Being able to open up and share my life and myself with others, who were willing to do the same began to help me heal from the damage I had done to myself and others through the years out there. Talk about gratitude.
And then there is sobriety itself. How grateful I am for this miracle in my life. Without it I would not have a life. I look at the help I got from so many others in here, my old sponsor for one, who helped open the door to this way of life by introducing me to the Second Step and my Higher Power. That was the beginning for me of the concept of living a spiritual way of life. And all of that began to free me to begin to put this program into action and to change me. I began to let go of so much of the negative forces in my life and began to live a positive life.
I know that it was through all these actions that I began to be restored to sanity and to be gifted with a spiritual awakening. I know that, despite my being a chronic alcoholic, I have been able to not only grow along spiritual lines, but to become a better person as a result. Not perfect that’s for sure. I still am human and can find myself stumbling and bumbling from my faults. But I know that is not a reason to pick up a drink again.
I know that I can find help from my Higher Power and from many in this fellowship, who are willing to guide and support me along the way. I’m definitely not a saint and probably never will be. I also know that I have an incurable disease, which especially affects my mental and emotional life negatively from time to time. I also know that I’m still learning. If I ever stop I know I can be headed for trouble. So, I don’t want to.
And all this and more is what makes me so grateful. Like the others around me, I find that we can share what it is that helps us grow along spiritual lines. The new freedom and the new happiness our supported actions in here have given someone like me and those around me. The peace of mind and the serenity, which are available, when I choose to back off and rest and let my heart and soul absorb what it is that is being given to me each and everyday in here. Who wouldn’t be grateful?