One of the subjects today at our meeting was on the word, “powerless”. That’s a word which is always right there in my mind, when I think about how I got sober.
I found out, after I surrendered to what I discovered to be the First Step, when I came in, that I was powerless over alcohol. But that was just the beginning. As I finally began to put this program into action, I began to find out just how powerless I was over so many things in my life. I guess the Serenity Prayer describes much of that.
When I found out in this program, from those old timers, what Fr. Martin talked about, how powerless most of us were, and sometimes still are, over our negative emotions. How much they can run our minds and our actions. Just witnessing how resentments have taken people back out drinking again, and how right the BB is, when it spells out how many of our kind of people have died as a result.
That kind of being powerless woke me up in this program. My first sponsor was one of those, who suffered from this. It made me get a new sponsor and to begin to listen and get honest for the first time in here. It was this, which drove me to listen to my new “old” sponsor, who helped me to put the Second Step into my life. The beginning of a spiritual way of life.
And, when I look at the word powerless, I can see what the answer is to this. I learned in here, how to turn my will and my life over to my Higher Power, and this opened the door to beginning to live a sober way of life. Up to that time my life was still in the confusion of trying to control myself and my life, which my dishonesty kept telling me I could. Thanks to my sponsor and those old timers I began to finally face the truth that I could not.
Anyway, I look back and am grateful that I was able to discover and learn how I could change myself and my life. By practicing these Twelve Steps and this program I began to change and to become the kind of person I probably always wanted to be, but didn’t know it. Alcohol and my way of life as an alcoholic had blinded me to this.
So, here I am again today reminding myself of what it is I need to do a day at a time. To live a sober life. The gift of freedom, happiness, even serenity and peace of mind, are in my life today, for most of the time. Never there before I came into this program. That and freedom from bondage of alcohol and alcoholism makes me so grateful that I have to try to do exactly what I learned in here. To carry the message to others like myself. To freely give to others what was freely given to me.