By Dot P.
“I came to D.A. to stop debting; what I received in return was my life.” –Anonymous
When I entered the meeting rooms of D.A. I was at my wits end, desperate for a solution to my continuous worries and stresses over cash flow, bills, and the insurmountable personal stresses that plagued my mind and body. I was anxious, lived with terrors, was irritable, and I isolated, hiding myself and my deprivation lifestyle from professional coworkers, friends, and the fellows with whom I was walking a spiritual journey. I was living a false life, and I was miserable. I knew the world and everyone I met thought ill of me, was insulting me behind my back, conspiring against me to harm me and squash me down into nothingness. I was full of shame, self-hate, and hate toward others. My heart was a rock, unable to feel any softness. I believed deeply in God and held a master’s degree from a prestigious seminary. Go figure that.
At that time, I thought I had God all figured out. He was my father since a young age, as I had none. He was my provider and helped me out of financial scrapes. He provided food when I had no resources. He helped me when I was ill and needed medical attention to improve my health. He was my personal God, of course. From this side of recovery, I realize God brought many people across my path who helped me. People who were introduced into my life at critical times when I needed comfort and healing, who intervened in my crises and kept me from the brink of self-destruction. The world wasn’t out to get me, I was.
Listening and talking in the rooms of D.A. meetings, whining in self-pity and despair for several years while working the steps with sponsors, keeping my numbers, and doing service changed all that. In D. A. I have lived from one miraculous baby step stepping-stone to another miraculous baby step stepping-stone, each spiritual action and inner personality change introducing me to greater self-love, to loving others, and to financial and material stability. Now I live in, what is for me, unbelievable prosperity. For a woman who had not lived in a house since the age of thirteen, fifty-three years ago, and who has always struggled to have proper foods and to pay the rent, I am indeed living a life beyond my wildest dreams as a homeowner with a job where I have fourteen-year tenure as a valued employee. My new goal is to apply for a passport, build up a vacation savings account and travel. Oh, yes, and I am now a compensated published author, one of my far away dreams come true.
Yet, it has been my life with God that is my real miracle, the source of all the things listed above. it is a gargantuan miracle of God that has brought incredible beauty and love into my life. Throughout my fourteen years in D.A. God has slipped quietly into my inner being in many unexpected ways. Prayer and meditation, quietly learning to listen to the small, still voice in my intuitive inner self has brought innumerable blessings, too many blessings to keep track of or to count.
Through the D.A. program I have learned to ask for help to act on life rather than react to it, to get out into the world and really live instead of hiding under the bedcovers depressed and obsessed over my fearful imaginings about life. And I’m in the process of learning to let go and follow God, rather than acting before I pray. I listen to Him speak and ask Him what He wants me to do, if anything at all.
I have slowly learned in D.A. “The Solution is God,” and nothing else. Recovery is a byproduct of the condition of my life in God, my spiritual condition. Oh, I began to obtain the basic material rewards of a recovery life in D.A. by going through the motions of the steps and the tools. However, miracles happened when I threw open my heart to God with complete abandon. I’m not perfect and some days I struggle and rebel against practicing a spiritual life, but eventually I ask my peers and God for help and they get me back on track. That’s how things work for me.
I know without a doubt a spiritual life lived and enabled by practicing the steps and tools of D.A. and doing God’s will to the best of my ability, one day at a time, brings about wholeness of mind, spirit, and body. I have slowly learned what I now hold dear to my heart: 1) I am a debtor
and cannot manage my own life; 2) That probably no human power can restore me to sanity;
3) That God can and will if He is sought.” –paraphrased from Alcoholics Anonymous
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