Blog entry for:

ego that is a ticking time bomb is mine! okay, i almost decided to skip this topic and use my fallback, as this was once again a service related reading, or so i thought. in reality, when one gets down to the actual content and ignore the headline, it is a reading about personal recovery. after a weekend of serving some of the men that call me their sponsor, i understand about what role my ego has played in my recovery and my experience, serving the fellowship that is my home. although i believe that there is far too much energy spent by my peers on “smashing their egos,” i do understand that my own was more than a bit out of size for the longest time.
i used to think that having more than a handful of men who called me their sponsor was some sort of status symbol, as it reflected on the “quality” of my recovery. after i was severely disabused, by circumstances and events beyond my control, of that notion, by events in my life that shattered that illusion, i went down the path that GOD had put them into my life, so who was i to question that direction. as i grew up in my recovery and became more secure in what i actually believed, rather than what i wanted my peers to believe what i believed, i saw the fallacy i was living. these days, i still have more than a handful of sponsees, but i am a bit more circumspect when taking on a new one. the fact of the matter is, the men that have the most time clean, are the ones that require the least of my resources.
here is where, if i allowed my ego to get carried away, i would extol the virtues of how “well” i serve the men i sponsor. the fact is, i do not know how well i am doing. not knowing, instead of trying to suss out some meaningless statistic or metric, is a better state of being for me. over the course of time, i have had very few men, directly tell me they were seeking another sponsor, or were seeking a different direction for their recovery. i do not take that as a valid measure of the “quality” of my service, as i believe it would skew in a direction that would feed my ego. what i do “'know” that i am willing to provide whatever level of service the men i sponsor require. that means i stay out of their lives and allow them to work at their own pace and reach out to me of their own accord. some days that seems to be a bit cold and detached, but i have worked harder than more than one of the men i sponsor on their recovery, than they were willing to do for themselves. i have grown up enough to see that i can only do recovery for myself and i have to let the men i sponsor find their own way through, just for today.

∞ DT ∞