In my mid-thirties I surrendered to my powerlessness over alcohol and received the gift of sobriety. For a year before that, I had some exposure to AA but couldn’t give up the old “I’ll do it myself” routine. Finally, broken in spirit, emotion, and body, I did give up and prayed for help. Within a couple of weeks I had what I hope is my last drink.
In the last dozen years of sobriety, there have been many beautiful times and also the normal share of pain, and the ordinary hassles connected with belonging to the human race. I’ve had to face the fear of failure, the reality of (gasp) getting into middle age, and the loss of people close to me, with that terrible feeling of abandonment that affects so many of us.
At such times, the true miracle of recovery in AA comes home to me. Even through the worst of the pain, I never once experienced a compulsion to drink–incredible for a guy who once needed to get bombed to deal with a hangnail.
Which brings me to the story of the tree.
One of my drinking fantasies was to own a place in the country. Of course, when alcohol was robbing me of the ability to deal with reality, I couldn’t put it together. I was lucky to be able to remember to pay the rent on my apartment on time.
By the grace of God (and the skin of my teeth), I kept my job during my drinking. So, after four years of sobriety, I could afford to make my dream of a place in the country come true, and moved into a 150-year-old farmhouse with a couple of acres of land.
The property was surrounded by several hundred acres of open fields, and since winter in Canada can be pretty cold and windy, I planted over 100 little evergreens around the house as a windbreak. Now, eight years later, these trees are several feet tall and growing well.
Except one. For several years it did fine, and grew to about six feet, healthy and green. Then this past spring, for no apparent reason, it died. That was a puzzle, since the trees all around it were healthy.
I dug it up carefully, curious about why it died. A couple of feet underneath, I found pieces of mortar, buried a long time ago and lying flat, overlapping one another. The tree had sent roots down, but apparently didn’t like the taste of the mortar. Instead of pushing through, the roots curled back up. So the tree died, while its neighbors which had roots sunk deep in the ground stayed healthy.
When I saw what had happened to the poor little tree, I realized that there was a lesson for me. Like the tree, I’ve had stressful times in the past few years. But because I had roots deep in the AA program, I was able to draw nourishment to see me through.
When I was playing around the edges of this program, I too lacked deep roots. I did not have the strength to deal with the normal problems of life and I escaped into the bottle. Without change, it wouldn’t have been too long before I, like the tree, would have died.
Just as trees draw water and nourishment from the ground, so do I draw sustenance from going to meetings, trying to get honest, helping others when asked, and working the Steps. In return I receive a strength which reduces my old fears, if not to zero at least to the point where they don’t usually get in my way. I am rewarded with joy and contentment with a frequency and degree I never dreamed possible before coming to AA. And probably most important, I receive wise guidance when I pray for it, in a soft voice which I can only really hear if my mind is quiet. A label that I choose to apply to this nourishment which comes up from my roots is the grace of God.
Around me are many people who are dying because they will not sink roots into this program. Some of them start to grow roots in the program, but don’t continue because they don’t like the taste of the soil. If they’re like I was when I first came around, it is the idea of getting honest that scares them the most.
When I see this, I want to yell, “Can’t you see how you’re killing yourself?” But of course that wouldn’t help. However, there are times when I am privileged to share my supply of God-given nourishment with the newcomer who is seriously trying to establish his or her own roots. Perhaps I can do this by sharing my experience, or more often by simply being there to listen.
And the real miracle of this? When I share the strength that has come to me, the other person is helped if they want help, and my own strength is increased. Both of us can then grow in the sunshine.