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and STEP TWELVE are certainly not a pair i consider on any sort of daily basis, BUT if one thinks about it, and i did, serving my fellowship by carrying the message to the still suffering addict, is without a doubt an expression of love. if i had not found my way to the rooms and commenced a journey through the good, bad and ugly of recovery, i would have never arrived at a place that would allow me to receive and give love. in fact i was so closed off when i got clean that the notion of love scared the living shit out of me. as i stayed clean and started to see myself as worthy of all sorts of stuff, my ability to love and be loved was restored and as i become more “whole” i see how empty i was when i denied that i needed or wanted to love and be loved. that hole is still present, but much smaller these days and no longer looms over me like some sort of Sword of Damocles.
today, as i sat, i heard or rather felt a bit of gratitude for those who have walked this path before i did. they showed me that there was a way out, but that way was neither easy nor was it cheap. it may not have cost me any financial resources, but the emotional and spiritual cost of learning to live a program of active recovery was very steep and i may not have been willing to pay it, when i got clean, but today i see that it was worth it and i now need to “pay it forward.” what that means for me anyhow, is to continue to serve those men who choose to call me their sponsor, keep the doors open at my home group and be an example of what it means to live free from active addiction. what it does not mean, and this was a point i missed for a very long time, is that i need not be a paragon of virtue or a spiritual guru, all i have to be is a person who does his best to practice spiritual principles in all their affairs.
with that thought on the top of my mind, i think it is time to post this little ditty and get my ass to work. when i sat down this morning, i knew what i had to do and how to do it. no matter which way my boss thinks i should go, i need to get started on creating that new screen. i do not have the time to spend playing around in TWITTER, but i do have the time to express the fact that just for today, i am grateful i have the ways and means to get out from under that sword, give up my pretense of being powerful and revel in the life of freedom from active addiction.

∞ DT ∞