Coming Home

Look at what my kids gave me for my birthday!

God truly can write straight with crooked lines.  I have been despairing at the meeting I have been attending for a while (well, 17 years), and I have prayed about it.  I have been sponsoring someone who is having the same issues with the meeting.  I told her that if she was looking for a sponsor to tell her to "write inventory" about the group or some other such thing, she had the wrong sponsor.  I told her what my sponsor told me -- "go to another meeting."  Do not persist in going to a group you don't like.  It is that simple.  But the time and place are so convenient!

This morning, I woke and thought I could easily make it across town to go to my old homegroup.  When I walked in the building and saw the old threadbare stained carpet, and the old 80s office chairs chained to the wall in the lobby, I thought - Well, this seems to be my old homegroup.  I got to the meeting 20 minutes early because seating is always an issue.  When I walked into the meeting room, I was greeted by strangers - it was reassuring to me.  They didn't know me but they greeted me warmly and made me feel welcome.  What kind of awesomeness is that?!  And then old friends started drifting in.  I haven't been to that group for a while, so they were shocked (pleasantly) to see me.

The man who took me to my first meeting was there!  There were at least 4 people in the room who are sober longer than me!  They remember me as a young woman.  The woman who chaired the meeting has known me since the day I came to my first meeting.  She said to me and two other women who were bat-shit crazy back in the 80s (and into the 90s) that she really appreciates who we are today because she knows the misery we went through to become the people we are.

We talked about gratitude!  We talked about working with others!  We talked about GOD!

It was an AA meeting.  A meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous.  With people who are firmly committed to their sobriety and being sober members of Alcoholics Anonymous.  Happily sober, grateful, faithful alcoholics.  Wow.

I know where I belong.  I simply MUST make that trip at least once a week.

Some people say they have never been to a bad meeting.  (an old timer I knew used to say that if you haven't been to a bad meeting, you are not going to enough meetings.)  Some people think they ought to work on themselves if they are finding a meeting objectionable.  That all sounds good.

But I say, you must find a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous where alcoholics are talking about the program of Alcoholics Anonymous.  Not what their therapist said.  Not how they would love to have a drink.  Not how being sober doesn't matter.  Not how the only important thing is to "keep coming back."

Oh, thank you God! for sending me back to my home group.  I know where I belong.  And I am eternally grateful that I can still go there.

And now I am going to stick some vegetables in that fancy food processor and make a great breakfast!  I couldn't believe they bought me that!  I have an old, first generation, Cuisinart -  from about the time I got sober.  It still works, but it looks so bad, I have it hidden in a cabinet... on a top shelf where it is a pain to drag it down.  But this thing is so beautiful, I will leave it on my kitchen counter!  And maybe my sober daughter wants my old one.  I forgot to ask her last night.

So grateful.  So grateful.

As I sat in that meeting, it occurred to me that my blogging community has probably been my only link to real program I have had in the last couple of years.  For that, I thank you with all of my heart.
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo, Mary Christine.