Who (or what) is in charge today?

This morning's meeting focused on a wonderful subject. It was one of those rare times when everyone stayed on the same subject, without wandering off into some side alley. Before I write more about this, I'm thinking that some of you who aren't familiar with 12-step programs might wonder what a meeting is like, so I'll explain a little.

Meetings are regularly-scheduled at the same place -- every weekday at 11:00 am in the community center, for example. It usually lasts one hour, and most of the time someone makes coffee. We stop and get coffee before we sit down. (I'm always surprised, and often disappointed, if coffee is missing. It just doesn't feel right.) Someone sets up the chairs before the meeting. Really big meetings might have auditorium seating, everyone facing in the same direction. In other meetings everyone is arranged in a circle or a square, facing each other. (I like that kind best because we can see one another.) I chat with my neighbor until someone who is in charge leads the meeting with a welcome statement and other useful information (e.g., "please park in the back parking lot"). We all try to be on time, but there are always "latecomers" who straggle in for a variety of reasons.

There are different kinds of meetings, and I'll name a few. In "speakers meetings" one or more of us will tell our story: "what it was like, what happened and what it's like now." If there is time left, others will have a chance to "share" what we'd like to say about the subjects introduced by the speakers. In "literature meetings" we read from a specific book, or from different types of literature. We go around the room, with each person reading a paragraph or two. Again, if there's time left, we share our thoughts. In "step meetings" we focus our reading and conversation on specific steps of the program. There's one thing that's the rule at all meetings -- we talk about the program and our personal experiences -- not about Sunday's football game, not about the weather, not about our recent vacation. We're here for a purpose.

Back to this morning's subject -- the words "if" and "because." It was about the times that we say, or think to ourselves, "It'll be easy to stay sober IF something happens (or doesn't happen)" or "I stumbled or relapsed BECAUSE something happened (or didn't happen"). It's easy, and very tempting, to place blame on factors outside ourselves. "If my health improves, I'll have the incentive to stay sober." "My boss cut my work hours, so I had a drink." In reality, it's entirely up to us. If we allow these other things to control what we do, we're going to fail. That's one of the foundations of Step 2, "Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity." In Step 1 we admit that our lives are unmanageable, and in Step 2 we recognize that someone else (or something else) needs to be in charge.

One person shared how she says to herself every morning, "I can never drink again, no matter what." Another person said that when he gets all wrapped up in some problem or another, "I don't have a drinking problem, I have a thinking problem." A third person said "things are never really as bad as my imagination makes them out to be."

All of this made me focus on the thing I spend too much time thinking about recently -- my back and leg pain. It keeps me from doing a lot of things I enjoy doing, like gardening and bicycling. The past two treatments haven't worked well, and I'm full of resentment about it. I can't even stand still for very long without needing to get off my feet! Then I remember something I read a month or two ago that said, "Expectations lead to resentment." In other words, if you expect something good to happen, and it doesn't, you'll experience resentment, or disappointment. Resentment is a very common cause of relapse, because we want that bad feeling to go away. Right now.

By the time the meeting was over, I decided that I was going to try harder to focus on other things. In the Serenity Prayer we say, "God grant me the strength to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference." Since I'm doing everything I possibly can right now to treat the pain, I have to accept it and focus on the rest of my life. At some point I will most likely be given a treatment that will reduce the pain, even if I have to have the courage to say yes to another surgery. In the meantime, despite the fact that I must limit my gardening and can't ride my bicycle, life is still full of wonderful things for which I am very grateful -- my husband, our two kitties Wrigley and Phoebe, my friends, travel, volunteer work, yoga classes and meditation, needlework.....

Going to the meeting this morning was valuable. I didn't learn anything brand new, but it reminded me of things that I already knew to be true, and had temporarily mislaid from my conscious thought. A lot of meetings are like that. That's why we "keep coming back."