Daily Gratitude List 10.25.22

Lost and Found

I’m grateful for a super foggy morning. I’m grateful for a sense of purpose. I’m grateful for a phone call. I’m grateful for patience and faith and love. I’m grateful for people who don’t give up. I’m grateful I didn’t give up. I’m grateful to be sober today.

Click the Picture to Read this on the Website:

How foggy? This foggy.

If you heard a really large, thumping noise yesterday afternoon, that was Your Sponsor dropping some knowledge on us and if you haven’t read this yet, you should:

And Now A Word From Your Sponsor

Coincidentally, I was going to attend a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous with Your Sponsor last evening. The press of business forced us to scuttle those plans at the last minute and I proceeded to head out to find dinner. We were planning on going to go to a 6:15 meeting and at around 6:23 my phone rang and the name at the top of the screen was a name I hadn’t seen in a long time, a name I wasn’t sure I’d ever see again.

I grew up in a pretty religious household, we went to Zion Lutheran Church every Sunday at 8:00 am.¹ I’m not going to whine about how cold and dark it is in Iowa in January at 7:30am because there was a real bright spot on those Sunday mornings and that was an amazing pastor, Pastor Trost. He was smart and funny and knew Greek and Aramaic and was an amazing speaker. What made him amazing was the emotion you could feel when he gave his always excellent sermons, there was no question what he believed.² Pastor Trost pounded home Sunday after Sunday what he thought were the central themes of the New Testament: Loss and Redemption and Hope.

I think most of the parables are about the joy and power of unexpectedly finding that which you thought had been lost forever. There’s the Parable of the Lost Coin, the Prodigal Son, the Story of Lazarus and of course, the Shepherd searching for the single lost sheep:

If there is any man to whom a hundred sheep belong, and one of them wanders off, will he not leave the ninety-nine upon the hillside and go in search of the one who has strayed? And if he happens to find it, amen, I will tell you that he takes more joy over it than over the ninety-nine who have not strayed.

Matthew 18: 12-13

I wrote this in May:

Daily Gratitude List--Extended Version

It told a story about someone who celebrated a year of sobriety and was literally living on a park bench a week later. This was how I felt then:

I’ve asked people on the podcast what is the hardest lesson they’ve learned in sobriety. Today, I’m thinking it’s this: No matter how much we love someone, no matter how much we invest in them, no matter how much we want it for them, it has to take root deep inside them and it has to flourish there on its own. There is no other way and the part that makes this so sad and so hard is that it doesn’t always happen. That’s very hard to accept. AA is built upon the principle of attraction rather than promotion for a very good reason: It only works when people want it, not when they are told they have to do it.

So, my phone rang last night and fortunately it wasn’t silenced and in my pocket. I told him that I was really happy to hear from him, that I didn’t think I would. He was hesitant and apologetic and told me how hard it had been to make this call. I laughed at him, “Did you really think I could be angry at you about this?” And there’s that pernicious, so-deadly shame that kept him from reaching out sooner—the idea that he was somehow responsible for the disease overwhelmed him.

Moments like last night are when the power of Alcoholics Anonymous is on full display. It’s the story that was powerful enough to drag Bill W. out of his catastrophic, incurable disease and keep him from ever drinking again—the power of helping another alcoholic find their way out. It’s the power of redemption, of miraculously finding the path that had been obscured for so long, bringing home the single strayed sheep, getting a phone call from someone I thought was long gone. These are the miracles we’re told to hang on for, and these are miracles that actually do happen.

I was disappointed not to get to a meeting last night, but I’m going tonight with someone I haven’t seen for a while. I’m feeling pretty good about that.

Thanks for Letting Me Share

1. Every Sunday is a literal statement. My brother and I were the poor unfortunates who were recognized for perfect Sunday School attendance year after year. That was an award I definitely did not wish to receive.

2. I would like you to dwell for a moment on the image of a 14-year-old basically being dragooned early on a Sunday morning, but actually loving those sermons.