It's funny. I was planning to write about trust and the role it plays in my professional life and in my life in recovery. But, I realized tonight that God had another topic picked, if I only had the willingness to listen.
I chaired a noon step meeting today and a halfway house downtown. I've sort of become the de-facto chair of the Tuesday meeting and I love doing it. The meeting, because it is at the house, usually has a number of newcomers and there is a contingent of men and women with five to more than 30 years of sobriety who make it a point to make that meeting. I guess that's one reason I love chairing the meeting -- it's an ego boost for someone as new in recovery as I am and I have to be careful not to let my selfish, self-centered, ego-driven self take charge. It's a chance for me to exhibit the trusted servant aspect of our second tradition and during our meditation before the Serenity Prayer I always pray for the Holy Spirit to dwell within and guide me.
We had a new speaker starting the steps today and when she finished her sharing on the first step we had some time for group discussion and the sharing was sharp and on topic. Everything went just as it was supposed to. A good meeting.
After work this afternoon I decided to take advantage of the chance to make it a double-header today and headed for my home group for its 8 p.m. speaker meeting. I got there a little early and grabbed the seat I normally like. I put my copy of the Big Book in the seat and set my Coke on the table next to it before I stepped outside to grab a smoke and have a "meeting before the meeting" with some of the other drunks.
Heading back inside, I stopped and said hello to some of the people I hadn't seen outside. The meeting room was filling up pretty good when I finally made it back to my seat. As the clock hit the magic big hand on the twelve, little hand on the eight I realized that no on was up front to chair and no one apparently prepared to share their experience, strength and hope.
Then I heard someone in the back ask one of the newer young men in the group to step up to chair and I thought we would probably just turn it into a discussion meeting. But as J stepped up to the podium a lady sitting up front motioned to him and I heard her tell him she would like to tell her story. "Oh great," I thought, "I wonder if I can still slide out the back?"
I had never seen this lady, I hadn't noticed her talking with anyone else I knew in the room and my cynical tendencies started rearing their ugliness. I need to talk to my sponsor about this because my reaction proved my character defects are alive and well.
But, after the announcements, the readings and the reminders about parking, cell phones, etc. the lady was introduced as our speaker.
Simply put, she knocked it out of the park. She was 22 years sober and had been in our city only five years. She lives at the beach and so makes her home group there. Why she was at this meeting I don't know. I'm just glad she was. She said some things that resonated with me and reached me in a way no one else has been able to since I came back to the rooms. I'll just mention one of them.
She said she never felt that she fit in with her family or any other groups and there was a time that she wondered if maybe the jokes about "the milkman" aimed at her might not be true. She talked about her drinking persona of the bad girl with the foul mouth and blackout behavior. She also said that when she came to AA she had trouble identifying with the people there because she hadn't been through the DUI's, treatment centers and jails, and she was still relatively young.
She said "I was too bad for my family and now I wasn't bad enough to fit in at AA." But, she said she finally realized that it didn't matter if some oldtimer had "spilled more than she drank" or that she hadn't faced jail or treatment. The only thing that mattered was that she had reached a point where her drinking was no longer tolerable and she could no longer live the way she was living.
That I identified with. I, too, was lucky enough to escape a lot of the experiences many of my friends in recovery have been through and, for a long time, I had difficulty believing I could be part of the recovery culture without them. Now, I know I can.
Two meetings. One went the way it was planned and was good. The other went the way God planned and it was great!
