But By the Grace of God There Go I......

Some days I wake in the morning and still have to pinch myself at how wonderful my body feels. No headache, no tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth, no checking my phone in desperation to see what occurred in the wee hours of the night that I will never recall....what a blessing just to wake up and feel good....ready to start the day. This is how my mornings start since the day I hit my bottom and listened to what God called me to do.   Walking in sobriety by His Grace I find that I crave the solution more and more each and every day....I crave it as much as I once craved a drink. I have a passion for it like no other....I am awed by it and absolutely in debt for it the remaining days of my life!  There is one and only one reason that I sit here typing this today clean and sober, and that is GOD!! If you are not at that place and you don't have an understanding of that....it is fine....however, I would love for you to take the opportunity to start if you so choose. I have many, many wonderful memories of my first years in AA and I have encountered so many wonderful friends along the way. I would love to shout their names out at the top of my lungs so that I could thank them for ways God used them to help me here....but I can't as the second part of AA is anonymous.....lol Little recovery humor.....However, one man in particular that I connected with instantly because he fully believed that God was his one and only reason for being in the rooms and sober....often said, "I was prayed into these rooms". I have always agreed with him, and NO doubt know that to be the truth. I know the very day those prayers hit full force and God called me to make a change or die. It was that simple.....oh, don't get me wrong....it wasn't THAT simple getting sober....it was just simply laid on my heart as two choices. That is why I say I listened.....I didn't want to die.....and as the fog lifted from my brain....and TRUST ME, it is TRULY a fog....I realized more every passing day that God obviously didn't want me to die because I should have been dead many times over already. WOW....come on, that is REAL right there! That is a gift so many people in recovery just say in passing but holy cow, the magnitude of those words alone is SO powerful.....God wanted me alive! That meant to me that He still needed me here. See, people can sit here and try and dissect that idea all the day long, "why am I still here, I should have been dead 100 times over already" I say, quit pondering, thank God for it, and look at how you can now cherish it, and participate in this life you have been given!!! There is a young girl who is sitting in jail right now here near me....she is a baby....all of 19...wracked by the horrors of addiction....completely lost, estranged from her family and right now awaiting an uncertain future. I have been writing to her.....one of the things I have told her is that I don't know what her relationship is with God....it is not for me to decide, that is between she and God....HOWEVER, there IS a real, true reason she is in a cell and not in a wooden box in the ground.... now is the time to embrace that, let it envelope her and take in all the recovery offered there in that jail. Those of us walking in recovery know all too well that some see that and run head first into it holding on for dear life and others let it bounce in and out of their lives like a rubber ball. For some it takes years to finally embrace it and hold on to.....and we have to be there for those and all others new and old in recovery....this is how we make it each every day....God calls us to steward to each other in our walk, to lift one another up, to guide each other when our days are dark and share the light when our days are bright.....I hope this will be our chance to share our ups and downs our heartaches and triumphs....our daily walk in recovery because the truth for ALL of us is .....but by the Grace of God there go I....