I’m grateful for a pretty fun expedition yesterday. I’m grateful to have lights on my xmas tree. I’m grateful for a pretty excellent cup of coffee. I’m grateful to feel like I’m in the right place. I’m grateful to be sober today.
One of the reasons I love Substack is the really great writing I’ve discovered here. First, Paulina Pinsky and Tatiana Gallardo collaborated on this the other day and I thought it was really fantastic:
And then this piece, by Holly Rabalais, was just incredibly moving. I’m not sure I’ve read anything that better captures the miraculous nature of recovery than Holly’s celebration of seven months of sobriety for her son this Christmas. You can feel the joy and the gratitude coursing through this. This is just beautiful:
My Sponsees and I get choked up all the time on our weekly Zoom sessions—and it’s not because we’re the mushy, sentimental types. I would say, among the many traits we share, prime among them, is the grim determination with which we practiced our craft during active addiction. We were all pretty pragmatic, get-it-done alcoholics and addicts—there weren’t many obstacles we couldn’t and wouldn’t overcome on behalf of our addictions. That’s why it gets so emotional now, we look back and see, with that same grim perspective, just how far down the scale we were.
Then we look around and, with a great deal of astonishment, see the miracle that has happened in our lives and it just gets overwhelming—in a good way. Those are the moments when you know this wasn’t something you did. As Bill wrote:
But my friend sat before me, and he made the point-blank declaration that God had done for him what he could not do for himself…Like myself, he had admitted complete defeat. The he had, in effect, been raised from the dead…Had this power originated in him? Obviously, it had not. There had been no more power in him than there was in me at that minute; and this was none at all.
Big Book, p. 11
For me, those are moments of pure, blissful connection; moments when I can feel a power greater than myself moving through me. I can see it moving through the people on the other end of the Zoom call, too. It’s palpable sometimes. If Christmas is a celebration of re-birth and renewal, then it’s probably a pretty good season for celebrating recovery, too.
Thanks for Letting Me Share
“Then we look around and, with a great deal of astonishment, see the miracle that has happened in our lives and it just gets overwhelming—in a good way. Those are the moments when you know this wasn’t something you did.”
Recovery is such a miracle, and while I don’t want to diminish the work that goes into recovery (because there is so. much. work. constantly.), the miracle is in the delivery. And no one delivers himself from anything.