Every now & then I feel my faith waivering in the AA program. Tonight I went to a speaker meeting & ended up losing $16 bucks out of my jeans pocket. I went around where I was sitting looking for the money & figured that was the end of it. A few minutes later a guy heard I'd lost some money & he'd found it & returned every $. It wasn't just the $$ I could have did without it. It showed me a true persons honesty & nenewed my faith in the program. This program really does work!! Guess, a second step of coming to believe....
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God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. Courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Rheinhold Niebuhr
That's great :) But even if the money was not returned, remember that we're a room full of sick people making progress in our recovery - not a roomful of perfectly recovered people! My wife does that all the time, (we're separated but still talking and she's 2 months sober) - she'll criticize something I'm doing, saying "You're a year sober, what's wrong with you?" Like somehow I should now be completely perfect. I wish!
P.S. - I brought in an airpot to fill with hot water in my home group. One night I forgot to put it away and it ended up being put on a shelf in the entry hall - so I left it there. Within a week it had disappeared. Rather than thinking the worst of my fellow A.A. members, however, I have chosen to believe that someone probably assumed it was not wanted since it was in the hallway - and decided to put it to use in their own home group. Who really knows what happened to it, but that's the attitude I choose to take. If I really wanted it back that bad, I'd have put up a note asking for someone to return it; but if they didn't, I'd assume that whoever had taken it just never came back and read the note. Even if the truth were that someone was just a thief, why should that make me question A.A.? I'm not gonna judge the whole program based on a single member.
-- Edited by FlyingSquirrel on Monday 8th of March 2010 11:52:01 AM
Fying Squirrel, I really like your way of thinking. It helps put things in perspective & saves resentments. Now, if I loan someone money I do it as an act of giving. This way if it's not returned I don't fret over it. If it's offered back naturally I accept it's return. Read that in a magazine one time & have applied that principle since.
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God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. Courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Rheinhold Niebuhr
