Hope opens the door to sustained peace. . .

I was at a meeting tonight and the topic was hope.  It’s a certainty that everyone  who comes to any 12 step group for the first time is bereft of hope. And we seldom even realize that to be the case.  We just know that we are terrified and sick of being sick and confused.

In my case I went to Al-Anon first.  I was looking for a shorthand way to control the crazy, alcoholic man in my life.  I wasn’t impressed with the steps that were hanging on the wall.  I wanted steps to tell me how to control him.  And others too.  Alas.  That’s not what I learned.  In fact, I learned just the opposite, eventually.  I doubt that I would have gone to that first meeting had I understood the real purpose of Al-Anon.

I really don’t know why I kept going.  Desperation, I guess.  And the friendliness of the people in the group.  Every one talked so openly about their struggles within their own lives.  They talked, too, about how much their perspectives had changed about the disease of alcoholism since coming to the meetings.  What they didn’t talk about was the alcoholic.  That surprised me.  I actually thought that’s why we were there.  I heard them say in the welcome that was read at every meeting, “we are here for ourselves, not the alcoholic,” but that phrase flew right over my head, unheard I think.

It’s not easy to be a newcomer in any thing, is it?  But being a newcomer in 12 step rooms is comforting.  No one places any expectation on you and every one offers you the hand of hope.  I simply kept going and eventually found my way into “the other room too.”  Being a “double winner,” has blessed me so much. At the meeting last night, a number of us shared about being a double winner. Not every one in an AA group is open to Al-Anon as a path that might ease their life.  And yet, I have not met any one who goes to both meetings who doesn’t exclaim, vehemently, that their lives are doubly blessed.

Going to two programs means I get a double dipping of hope.  In fact, because I go to five meetings a week, on average, I get an infusion of hope, which means experiencing “peace that passeth all understanding,”  almost every day. It’s like receiving free medicine.

A woman who goes to one of my meetings says, nearly every meeting, “Meetings are my medicine.”  And we all helped her celebrate 41 years of sobriety last week.  That’s the kind of life that’s in store for us when we share our hope with others.  What a journey we have discovered.  Lucky us!