A Dozen Steps

I Don’t Remember His Name, I Do Remember His Tears

by Mark on July 30th, 2007

In my first year of sobriety I remember a younger fellow who often shared about his (I might be wrong on the specifics) leukemia. He spoke of having, I believe, six years sober. I also remember a day when a number of folks from my first home group (Blue Point Traditions) gathered at a members’ house for an afternoon of games and barbeque. I got to know this fellow a little bit better that day. A good guy, a power of example.

To cut to the “chase,” I’ll also never forget the meeting that I “happened” to be in (no, I didn’t normally attend this one of three on Tues. night) where this same young man shared about having had diagnosis after diagnosis of remissions, advancements then remissions again and he hadn’t had to drink. Then came that gloomy day when the Doctor told him it had come back and it wasn’t going to go back into remission this time. He gave up and drank. The day after he drank, this schmuck of a Doctor called to inform him of the error he had made, it wasn’t true, he’d be okay. As he was telling the story he was shedding a river of tears.

I suppose I could have sub-titled this post “Never Give Up!!!” because that is what I learned that moment I saw those tears shed.

If you can find the wherewithall to wait it out, to not give up, to rediscover your self-worth, to practice your program, the answers come…

From “Glenn F. Chesnut, Practicing the Presence of God” come these words which I can relate to yesterday’s entry;

“When I first came into the program, I thought serenity meant going around never feeling any kind of disturbance or upset of any sort, a kind of perfect inner peace all the time. What I think serenity is now, is when you’re wading through shit up to your chin, and you tip your head up so you can breathe, and you can keep on doing what has to be done.

In other words, you use your program so you can keep cool enough to continue making the best decisions that it is actually possible to make. You may feel hurt or frustration or disgust or grief, or a number of other very painful and unpleasant emotions. But you keep your inner sense of soul-balance. You don’t take out your frustrations on other people around you by attacking them, or playing blaming games (”It’s all your fault we’re in this situation,” and so on and so forth). If other people are behaving badly — selfishness, gross irresponsibility, totally egocentric attitudes — you try to work around it as best you can, and you keep your own side of the street swept clean, no matter what the other person is doing. You look for positive solutions, and try to move things that way as much as the other people and the situation itself will allow it. The fullness of serenity means keeping your soul-balance, keeping centered, even amidst that kind of emotional maelstrom.”

More to follow… [Noor, I visited your Blog and I'll get back to you...]

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POSTED IN: Courage To Change, Heard At Meetings