If I have a car that's broken down, and I ask a bunch of friends, "Who's a good mechanic?" And they all tell me to take it over to Ol' Joe on Some Street... I start to have faith that Ol' Joe knows what he's doing. They relate their experiences and Joe's fixed a bunch of cars and never had a problem. But until I take my car over there and actually turn it over to Joe, my car ain't gonna get fixed. And so, to me, that's kind of like it says: faith without works is dead. Well, faith without trust is also dead.
Since I've been sober, I've gone through loss of a parent and looked at life in the pen, bankruptcy, and a lotta things that a lot of people go through in these rooms. And I can tell ya, for me, what I did was exactly what they suggested: I stayed in the literature, I worked the steps, I actually know who my sponsor is and talk to my sponsor regularly, they know who I am, and I work with other alcoholics and drug addicts just like myself; both that're still active in their addiction and also in recovery. And I pray and meditate a lot.
And those things work to keep me sober every 24 hours. So if something stressful happens, the first thing I do is call my sponsor. And I will go to more meetings. I will pray more. I'll meditate more. It took me a long time to get to the point that I could talk to anyone else because I knew it all and I didn't trust anybody and I didn't think this program would work. By repeatedly taking these actions as suggested, what happened for me is: it didn't matter how I felt, I kept taking the actions. And then I started becoming comfortable with those actions and actually looking forward to them. Believe it or not. It changed the way I thought and the way I felt inside. So it's replacing that old habit and those old patterns that I religiously followed with new ones that're constructive and that changed my life. Now I have peace and joy and I am so grateful for that.
It always helps me to remember that when Bill W. started writing The Big Book, he was less than three years sober and when it was published, he was less than four years sober. So the quality, I believe, of sobriety is as equally important as the length.
Brienna
Brienna
At over two years I still call my sponsor about stuff. "Hey, somebody mentioned this" or "I'm thinking about this". And she'll give me her two cents on it. It's really nice to have somebody who's been there. I have a sponsor who has a sponsor who has a sponsor who has a sponsor. Talking with these women, I know they still work Steps. They're 10 and 12 and 18 and 26 years into it and they're still working Steps. They still go to meetings. I don't know. I'm just really grateful for sponsorship.
Because sometimes I don't know what the next right thing is. Sometimes I don't know what the action is or if action is needed. So I have to check in with her. I haven't been two years sober since I was 15 years old. Emotionally, and sometimes mentally, I'm still 15 years old. And my best thinking got me here. It's definitely a program of action. Like Burt mentioned and like it says on page 88: faith without works is dead. My god will do for me what I can't do for myself but he won't do for me what I can. If that means all that I'm responsible for right now is to suit up and show up, that's all I have to do. I have no control over the results. I don't have any idea, usually, how my day is going to shake out. When I wake up, I do my Third Step Prayer. I run through Steps 1, 2, and 3, and everything else... I just give it over to God.
I'm very fortunate. I'm what they call a High-Bottom Drunk. I didn't lose everything. But I lost everything spiritually and I lost everything emotionally and for me, being spiritually bankrupt meant suicide. And that's where I was three years ago. This kind of faith is in The Steps. I have to be looking at different aspects, different facets of my life. It's broken down so beautifully and I have to work them in the order they're written; I can't skip around. When I first came into these rooms, I was like, "Alright, I'll do that one. Not doing a Step 5. I'm not doing any of them that have 'god' in them. I'm not doing that." You know? I was really angry coming into these rooms. I wasn't like You People. I was just suicidal and depressed. I didn't have a problem. After being in treatment for a couple months, that pride and ego slowly started fading. I've learned a lot of phrases like, "How free do you want to be?" How willing am I to be honest? How willing am I to do things that my sponsor suggests that, in the beginning, I was like, "That's not gonna help me stay sober."
My very first day out of treatment I was helping my first sponsor move and she said, "Alright, well, me and my husband have to go run some errands and everything so we're going to leave you in the house alone." She had 24 years of sobriety at that time. She said, "I want you to pull all of the nails out of the walls and fill them with this putty." And I was like, "Are you serious?" She just let me move in here 'cause she needed slave labor, you know what I mean? I'm not down with this! And she said, "Do you want to stay sober? Are you willing to do anything to stay sober?" And I was like, "Maaaan... I guess so..." I was crazy and my brain went all sorts of directions: I could leave the house. I could find something. I could probably find somebody that I worked with that could get me some weed. I could probably run across the street to the CVS and buy some... whatever. My brain went a million different directions. And just asked me, "Can you follow directions?"
"Sure."
"Okay. Pull these nails out of the wall, fill them with putty, sand them down."
"You got it, sis."
So I did that. And all-of-a-sudden, four/five hours later, they come back and I'm still sober. And I didn't think that that was gonna happen. It's the weirdest things. My sponsor gives me the weirdest assignments and somehow, if I'm willing to do it and I take the action, God blesses the effort. And I stayed sober. And I was amazed at that... that that could work like that. So now, I've seen it over and over and over in my short time of sobriety: if I put in the work, God will bless the effort. Even when I don't like the way that it's going, even if it's not going the way I think it should, that's the whole deal on surrendering it to God. He knows his plan way better than I do. I'll burn the bridge I'm standing on so you know I'm serious about my crazy. I don't play. And I'm really grateful I don't have to live like that anymore. I'm grateful my god brought me to A.A. and A.A. brought me back to my god.
I've seen some people in here that've gone through some things that I can't ever imagine. My grandsponsor lost her mother earlier this year and that's one of my biggest fears. I don't know if I could stay sober if I lose my mom. And I see people do it. Ya'll show me. And that gives me hope that maybe, just maybe, if I stick with this deal long enough, I'll be able to weather those seasons. And I'll be able to weather those storms with a god that I don't understand. I'm really grateful for that today.
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