Had a saying given to me the other day, which reminded me of why I am here. It stated that where your treasure is there is your heart. Sounds appropriate.
I know that I have been given a number of treasures since I stopped drinking and came into this program. One of the greatest of these was the fact that I was freed from drinking alcohol. And that happened because I prayed as never before and begged my God to stop me from drinking and that’s what happened. Makes me grateful every time I stop and think about what happened.
However, when I stop and think about it, my treasure is made up of a number of these gifts. And then my greatest treasure is my sobriety. It is exactly where my heart is each and everyday since I stopped drinking.
I really never came to realize that until I had been in this program for a while. And that’s because my mind, my thinking, was clouded by my insanity, which was fueled by my negative emotions, which always ran my life. Once I began to finally able to turn my mind and life around to a positive way of thinking and acting, I finally saw what was really going on.
I was still alive and that was an amazing reality for this alcoholic. I mean I just escaped killing myself, because I couldn’t stop drinking. And then I had been given the beginning of hope, which began to open the door to this way of life in here. And that hope grew, when I witnessed all those sober alcoholics at my first meeting.
And then I started to do something, which I woke up to after quite a while in here. And that was the fact that time takes time. Up to that point I was deafened and blind by my inappropriate thinking. Like I was told, that I didn’t know that I didn’t know. I just thought I did. My sponsor’s wake up call to me. And that really was the beginning of my awareness of this program.
I can’t help myself from growing in gratitude, when I stop and think how all of this began to turn around and grow. I started to become aware of what this program was about when the Second Step was handed to me and I found I had to surrender once again. I began to learn that the spiritual life is not a theory. It’s not only real, it’s what this sober life I have been given is all about. I began to change.
Today I truly realize that what my sobriety is based on is the strength I have been given by my Higher Power. My faith and my dependency on the God of my understanding. Each day I awaken I try to recommit myself to this Power greater than myself and to attempt to do this program the way it was given to me in here. I not only owe my gratitude to my Higher Power, but my old sponsor and all those old timers, as well as the rest of this fellowship, who have reinforced my sober life…one day at a time.
Time has taken time, but I did come to know where my heart really is. It’s in this way of life given to me. My sobriety. I just had to stop and think about it all one more time. Each and every day. The truth is that tomorrow never comes, because when it does it is today.