He thought they were only for the very good people, the saints
Being a drunk and, hence, a “bad person,” I was not at all happy with a Higher Power or God who refused to answer my pleas for help. Over and over again I had asked God for surcease of my drunken, “bad” behavior, wanting nonetheless to continue drinking, minus the agony which followed.
The day came–after the medical doctor and the priest told me that they couldn’t help me and to “Go to AA” –that I finally dressed up in my best suit and went out to find an AA meeting. It was either that or suicide. No, I wasn’t on skid row, but I had brought skid row into our home so that both my wife and two-year-old child were frightened of me.
Angry with God, but believing he existed, I attended AA in 1968 at the age of twenty-nine. I rapidly found much to take issue with. “Get a Higher Power to do what we can’t.” “Keep coming back till the miracle happens.” “Get some dust on your knees.” Etc., etc. My resentments knew no bounds.
I told my sponsor that only hypocrites went to church. He said, “Can you think of a better place for them to go?” Still, I really seethed when hearing those AAs talk about sobriety coming from AA and a Higher Power.
My mind seemed incapable of clear thought in those early meetings. It just did not occur to me how terribly arrogant I was to sit among those sane and sober folks all the time insisting that I was the sole member whom God would not help. Only years later did I awaken to the knowledge that God had answered my prayers the very day I had become willing to attend an AA meeting.
Finally, after a partial surrender and trying to dig into the Twelve Steps, I got some dust on my knees. Then, in the course of accompanying my sponsor to AA conventions, an AA forum, and an AA assembly, I began to hear accounts of “miracles” happening to some of the speakers. Miracles, I thought, were only for very good people –and were so rare as to be associated only with saints.
After three months of sobriety, I got drunk. I got good and drunk and good and sick, as usual. Nothing had changed. I couldn’t face my sponsor, my family, my group, or worst of all, myself. I couldn’t look in the mirror.
A few days later the phone rang. It was that good sponsor–a man dying of cancer and too ill to conduct the AA meeting in a nearby mental institution. Reluctantly, I agreed to chair the meeting. At that time, an outside AA was required to open the meeting. Roughly fifty percent of the patients were there due to chronic alcoholism.
It was not the most joyous meeting I ever chaired, but chair it I did. Then I left, alone, to drive home. It was dark, cold, and snow was falling, and all I could think of was a drink.
I drove a mile or so through the snow and trees to a convenient tavern. I parked in the dark cold, amid the icy puddles. I opened the car door . . . and then, shut it. How could I go through all that hell again? But worse, how could I go without a drink! Again, I opened the car door . . . and closed it. Then, I sank into despair. Suddenly, I heard a voice; the voice was real, but no one else was there. I wasn’t afraid. The voice simply said, “Dave, it never has to be like this again. Go back to AA.” That was all.
I started the car and headed home. In the middle of a long bridge over the Susquehanna River, it occurred to me that I had never truly given myself to AA. I decided I would make AA my way of life–whatever that took. I resolved to go to a meeting every evening for a year. I didn’t, of course. But I did attend five to six meetings a week, and I stayed sober. Somehow, on that bridge, I felt intense peace–an unreal serenity unlike anything I had ever experienced before. In the years since that parking lot, I have not had one desire to take a drink.
Years later, I was attending a friend’s ninth AA birthday. He said that he’d never had a miracle happen. Nothing like Bill’s in that hospital. Nothing like the one I had in that parking lot. I said that it seemed to me a huge miracle that he’d stayed sober for nine years! He was clearly shaken. He brightened with the quick realization that that was very much a miracle.
I think we simply fail to recognize miracles for what they are. Sobriety–one-day-at-a-time–is truly a miracle.