Friday Morning

That's a picture of my church at slightly before 5 a.m. when I get there each Thursday . I think it is so pretty.
And this is a picture of the corridor just inside the door... I love walking down that long corridor.

It is a beautiful Friday morning, it is cool outside, in the 60's. I can't decide whether to run or to ride my bike down to the lake for a quick swim. If I don't decide soon, the decision will be made for me because I won't have time for the bike ride and swim - and if I take even longer to decide, I won't have time for a run either!

The beginners meeting last night was just wonderful. There are so many newcomers to the 5:30 meeting, I am glad they decided to have a dedicated beginners meeting. I am also incredibly grateful that I started going to this group almost a year ago now. When my son left for Iraq last July, I was beside myself and did not know what to do. But thankfully, after 22 years of sobriety, I had a clue that perhaps I could start by adding more meetings to my schedule! There was a man from my 6:30 a.m. meeting who had always encouraged me to attend the 5:30 meeting, but I never did until last August. As soon as I went to that group, I found a new AA home (but I have not yet decided that it is my home group, that is saved for the group across town with the people I got sober with). I have been embraced into that group, and I have embraced them right back!

During the meeting, I will sit and look at each person in the room and truly look at their faces and remember their names. When I was sober about 10 years, I realized that I didn't know half the people's names in my meetings and I realized it was because I was incredibly self-centered! Me! Really! So now I concentrate on their faces and their names, so that I will see each person individually as a unique human being - not as scenery or extras so that I can have an AA meeting. I remember how much it meant to me when I was new that people remembered my name and welcomed me. Wow. For a drunk that is incredible stuff!

Have a fabulous sober Friday everyone.

"As active alcoholics, most of us are self-centered, and when we come into AA, our behavior can be still motivated by selfishness, self-seeking, self-pity, and self-centered fear. As we stay sober, however, we get released from 'the bondage of self,' as the Big Book puts it. We no longer have to be at the center of the universe. We learn a little humility. We give up the idea that the world must always respond promptly to our demands. We cease trying to run the show - ours and everybody else's. We stop playing God - and it turns out there is relief and freedom in that." -- Emotional Sobriety the Next Frontier, p. 39