Sometimes the way to help yourself is to ASK FOR HELP!
I've been overwhelmed with the seemingly impossible task of dealing with 10 years of accumulated stuff (most of it junk) and moving from my house into an apartment. I spent most of the past month helping my mom get her house ready to sell instead of dealing with my own situation. My sponsor said that was the miracle of this program - we just be of service and the rest takes care of itself. Well, maybe that's true but things don't take care of themselves without us doing SOMETHING. So tonight in desperation I asked the person chairing the meeting to call on me before the break. Then I made a simple plea for help. Now I have several guys coming to help me tomorrow and the next day, to get the junk to the dump and the rest to my new place.
All I had to do was stop stewing about how impossible it was for me to do this all by myself, and ask for help.
I moved from Buffalo, NY to Brooksville, FL this past November. I did not ask for help but members of my home group informed me that "YOU NEED HELP" and they showed up in force at my house to help me load my belongings into a large trailer for the move.
This cut out about a weeks worth of work for me.
Great things happen when we get sober
Larry, --------------- "I am the black sheep of the family. I came to Alcoholics Anonymous and found the rest of the herd."
Reminds of when I moved house last year. I asked 6 civilian friends to help and 6 fellowship friends to help.
One civilian came, all 6 AAers came and two of 'em brought friends (both civvies). All I had to do was drive the van and tell people where to put things. Don't know what my neighbours would have made of it though, there was my sponsor ( a long haired rocker) his son, sort of a goth, a guy who looked like a foppish dandy, his hippy like partner, a guy who looked like a legal beagle, an enourmously fat guy who was racing with a sprinter type guy, a bewildered looking guy, a biker and me. Guess who were the civvies.
I got a fair bit of teasing for the amount of stuff I'd managed to cram into a 1 bedroom cottage, which seemed to fill the 3 bedroom house I moved into. Like a cubic metre of coffee and 2 cu. m of food. I've been here over a year and have only been to the supermarket 3 times.
The point is though, it was the brothers in the fellowship who kept their word (and they say you can't trust an alkie)
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It's not having what you want, it's wanting what you got. BB
All good stuff here. Thank you. In AA, I've found true honest friends that want to help beyond just the staying sober thingy. I've learned that true love is to give of yourself and not expect anything in return. Much different from when I entered the program. It was all about me and if I helped, you owed me something.
You sound like me. I wasn't going to help unless there was at least a case of beer involved. And even then, it would depend on how many people I had to split it with. :)
