An old friend of mine asked me to remind her of a certain train story. I have a couple of those up in my attic. So, I went there and pulled out the one Dr. Sam Shoemaker used to tell. The one that deals with our inability to make a life saving decision. Come to find out it was the wrong one, although she like it.
The one she was thinking about came from a talk given by our old friend, Sandy B. from Tampa. It was about those little, wind up trains which run on a small oval track. You wind them up and round and round they go and sometimes jump the track and fall over. You have to pick them up, wind them up again, and then put them back on the track.
What has this got to do with sobriety? Sandy said we’re like one of those little trains. We run around the track and then fall off. Someone picks us up and puts us back on track. When someone else is running around the track and falls off, we pick them up and put them back on the track. And so it goes with all of us. It’s what we do to help each other to stay sober. We get off track and they get us back on and we them. It’s called working the twelfth step.
In essence, this is a very spiritual story. So is Sam Shoemaker’s. Our helping one another to stay sober. In every meeting we go to, someone might well be off track and sharing our experience, strength, and hope might just be the thing to get them back on track. How many times I’ve heard things, which picked me up and got my head back into the program where it belongs.
It made me grateful today to be reminded of that little analogy of the train.
I was thinking of how many times during these years people reached out and helped me stay sober, when I was off track, or as Bill W. said, off the beam.
Just thinking about this.