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it is particularly important to check my motives to find out what i really want. although this reading was about discovering motives about my desire to do service, i have been spun in an entirely different direction. there are a couple of things that i need to say before proceeding down that path. first off, when i was very new in recovery, and called upon to do service, my motives for accepting those responsibilities were far from pure, and by the grace of a POWER GREATER THAN ME, my fellowship survived and actually started to grow in my hometown. over time i have learned what serving the fellowship really means and how i fit into that whole scheme. i have learned that being of service means exactly that, being a servant to the whims and wishes of those who call themselves members and who form groups to carry the message to the addict who still suffers. why do i serve today? well for one thing, it is one of the things i do stay clean on a daily basis. for another, as a member of the fellowship that gave me this new life, i feel a debt of gratitude to those who came before me, they were the ones that created, nurtured and maintained this fellowship, so it was here when i was ready to consider becoming a member myself. those concerned addicts could have walked away after a few years clean and let the fellowship flounder, but they created a means for this fellowship to sustain itself by attracting members to the rooms as well as attracting members to service. so i am proud to be a part of the tradition of service and contribute to the ongoing concern of sustaining this fellowship locally and globally through whatever resources i can offer. so are my motives for service "pure" today? well probably much purer than they have ever been in the past, and as i grow and mature in service i am sure that the less than pure motives for me to serve will be stripped away bit by bit. life in recovery has a tendency to do that after all!

∞ DT ∞