Dear Jesus, thank you for another day, another week. Let it be a positive and productive one. Let me make the most of the time I have today.
We have a section in our AA Big Book that we read at the start of most meetings I've ever attended. It's been given the name, 'The Promises.' The Big Book text appears at the end of the ninth step. Steps four through nine are the actual do-the-work part of the twelve-step program. In steps one through three, we try to either begin or come back to a relationship with you. In four through nine we do the hard work that the program requires of us if we wish to overcome our alcoholism. And in steps ten through twelve - the 'maintenance' steps - we practice things we can do on a consistent basis to make sure that we don't revert back to step one.
The first sentence in The Promises says that "if we are painstaking about this phase of our development we will be amazed before we are halfway through." And, of course, it's talking specifically about being painstaking in step nine, where we sit face-to-face with people we have hurt through our alcoholism over the years, and try to make amends with them. It's especially prominent to me right now in my own recovery as I'm putting a list together of the amends I need to make to my family, and making plans to actually sit with them and share what I've written. The promises themselves are short sentences that each reveal the good that will come of this humble and honest effort to talk about the past and commit myself to making sure it doesn't happen in the future.
A couple of The Promises stick out for me right now. One of them reads, "We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it." Again, this promise comes after the ninth step amends have been made. Right now I regret a lot of my past. I looked through a lot of old photograph albums at mom house last week, and saw my family and me in much younger days. In no small way I wanted to roll black back the clock and live life over. Of course, that's not possible. And there is certainly a lot in my past that I wish to shut the door on. Hopefully, through this process of making amends, my family and I can find some measure of peace with the past, and hope for a very different future.
Another one that I think about often: "No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others." It's been only through my wrestling with alcoholism that I believe my heart has become more open to others and their needs. One of the reasons I volunteer with the group that I do is because a lot of homeless people have similar addiction problems. And in whatever way I can, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant, I want to help them find a path by which they can walk a different life in their remaining years. I reach out to people in jails with texts of encouragement because I've been there. I reach out to newcomers at meetings, unsure of what to expect and afraid that their lives won't change, because I've been there, too. I try to keep contact with people who I know are struggling to get sober, who feel like things are hopeless, because I've been there as well. You've gifted me, as I wrote the other day, with a thorn that allows other roses to bloom. Help me be faithful to that charge.
But The Promises sentence that seems to be coming true most vividly these days is one that reads, "We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves." The evidence of that is spread everywhere through my life right now. You are as dependable as the sunrise, more constant than all the change around me.
You are the master of promises made, and promises kept.
And for that I am grateful.
Amen.
