A Chance A Gift

A common thought that is often shared in AA meetings is that people's lives are much better than they could ever have imagined when they first started in the program...and also much different than they could ever have foreseen. This is usually followed by some sort of acknowledgement that there continue to be problems...often serious ones...but those problems are now faced without drinking or drugging about them. And that, of course, makes all the difference in the world.

This is true for me. When I entered the program in March 2004 I was well on my way to divorcing my wife and moving out of my home. I was spending much more money than I was earning - a lot of it on my "boyfriend" who was starting to look like an inevitable but horrifying next chapter in the sad book of my life. To put it simply, my life was unmanageable and the future held little promise.

None of the scenarios I could play out in my sick mind included: staying married, staying sober, realizing that I had a lot of work to do in healing/restoring/creating a true loving relationship with my life partner, finding a God of my understanding, even understanding what finding a God of my understanding meant, driving to a state correctional facility on the other side of town once a week to talk to prisoners about restoration / redemption / spirituality and being inevitably inspired by them, having a closer than ever relationship with my children, joining that "cult" of religious fanatics called AA, burying my best friend after his tragic, way too early death courtesy of alcoholism, beginning once again to dream the dreams I had as a child and believe there might be a way for them to come true, having a blog, having a beloved cadre of blogbrothers and blogsisters around the world, the list goes ON and ON.

Is it all great? No. I still fight desires for anonymous sex; sometimes successfully, sometimes not. I still ride a rollercoaster of mood swings. I have no doubt that countless miseries await. But that's life.

And now I have a chance to participate in it.

That's a gift.

Take care. I love you all.

Flip