Reflective day

I am in a reflective mood today. I've been thinking about all that I have been given, all that I am grateful for, and all the ways that I could have made decisions that had irrevocable consequences. But for whatever reason I'm still here, still working the same job, still living in the same house, still married to the same person. There could have been other outcomes thus far in my life. But for today these things are my reality, and I'm glad for that.

I thought about my home group meeting last night. It was just me and my sponsor, just like when we worked the steps together. It was nice to talk and discuss Step 12. I especially liked this part from the AA 12 x 12:

"When a man or a woman has a spiritual awakening, the most important meaning of it is that he has now become able to do, feel, and believe that which he could not do before on his unaided strength and resources alone. He has been granted a gift which amounts to a new state of consciousness and being. He has been set on a path which tells him he is really going somewhere, that life is not a dead end, not something to be endured or mastered. In a very real sense he has been transformed, because he has laid hold of a source of strength which, in one way or another, he had hitherto denied himself. He finds himself in possession of a degree of honesty, tolerance, unselfishness, peace of mind, and love of which he had thought himself quite incapable. What he has received is a free gift, and yet usually, at least in some small part, he has made himself ready to receive it."

It is a free gift that I've been given. And what a gift it is.

I'm passing that gift along to another this evening when I meet with a new sponsee to start working on Step One. I'm looking forward to that and to finishing up chairing the Beginner's Meeting for the Tuesday night group. I can now work with the sponsees during that time. I'm just moving from one kind of service to another. No doors are shut but a lot of them are open to me. Thank goodness for that.