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Made A Decision

              The Miracles of AA come in all sizes

I've heard more than one person bemoan there are no miracles today like those found in ancient spiritual texts. 

But no one who has been in A.A. for any length of time will say that. 

We see miracles in our lives all the time.

The biggest miracle is - of all the alcoholics out there still lost in our disease - we are sober! Most of the millions of suffering alcoholics never even make it into A.A., and of those that do, not all manage to stay. 

So we - the sober ones - are all living breathing miracles!!!

Sobriety is our first miracle. 

Granted, it’s the biggest one, but certainly not the only one. 

Those new to recovery are quick to recognize the big miracle. Sadly, many longer-time sober members often take it for granted. But I've never known anyone with very long term sobriety to take their recovery for granted. 

The old-old-timers have seen far too many complacent sober drunks who, forgetting the cunning, baffling and powerful nature of our disease, returned to the bottle where death patiently had awaited their return.

The final stage of alcoholism is either a “wet brain,” where the drunk lives out whatever time they have left in an asylum’s rubber room because their brain is too far damaged for them to function in society; or just a lonely, miserable, painful death. 

That’s it. 

Those are the choices at the end of the drinking life for all alcoholics who continue to drink, unless of course they chose suicide. 

Many do.

We arrive in AA frustrated by our every attempt to control our lives while drinking uncontrollably. We arrive trusting no one. We see those happy, joyous and free AA members and suspect their stories are lies. We suspect they’re offering us bullshit. We look for the con. 

Or at least I did.

So I didn’t even recognize the first little miracles that showed up, the unrecognized ones that kept me coming back to A.A. But over time I started to see and marvel at them. 

They seemed to only show up on those days when I had checked in with my Higher Power first thing, too. 

When I had read my books offering spiritual ideas. When I had spent a little time in prayer and meditation. 

Hmmmmm … 

it made me start to wonder.

I once heard in a meeting that a coincidence is just God winking at us. I now think it's a perfect description.

But getting back to miracle number one - finding a way out of the drinker’s deadly destiny - that's just the beginning of the miracles in AA. 

We start to see them while still on that early pink cloud. That's when, for the first time in years, we again see how beautiful our world truly is.

Listen to newcomers talk about the beauty of nature. They are awed by such things as butterflies on flowers, dark clouds scuttling mysteriously across the moon, sunlight throwing diamonds across the sea or the call of an owl in the night ... 

Such things are miracles, but we never see them when we drink. 

Sobriety brings them back into focus where we are - rightfully - dazzled by them.

And as we learn more and more to release our problems to the care of our Higher Power, more miracles arrive. 

At first we call them coincidences, but when they show up on a regular basis, we start to realize they are a result of our partnership with that mysterious power greater than us. 

Miracles don't occur every day in recovery, but they become pretty thick on the ground as we start to begin each day acknowledging our powerlessness, accepting God has all power, and inviting our Higher Power to take charge of our day.  The results of taking those first three steps every morning soon became too obvious for me to doubt. 

An example:

My daughter was living in Ireland in the 1990s with her Dublin-born husband. One winter (cheaper flights) I went over from the states for a visit.

The weather was dreadful and, through a series of plane reroutings, I eventually caught the last night flight overseas out of New York. The truck-carrying de-icing equipment was blasting the wings of my aircraft even as we taxied to the runway. 

I had tried to alert my daughter I was on a different flight, but she never got the message.

And because of plane reschedulings I had not had time to visit a Bureau de Change.

 So when I arrived pre-dawn in Dublin, hours ahead of my earlier schedule, I didn't even have money to buy myself a cup of coffee or use a pay phone in that pre-cell-phone era. 

There was no sign of my daughter or her husband, Stephen (both still home asleep). 

As I sat there wearily with my luggage around me, to my amazement I suddenly saw faces in the crowd I recognized; Stephen's mother and father! They saw me at the same time and  made their way through the crowd to me.

A quick phone call on their part got my daughter and Stephen moving even as I was scooped up and taken to Stephen's cozy childhood home to wait for them. We had a lovely visit while waiting,

Now - here’s the miracle: 

On that morning I knew a grand total of only five people in Ireland - my daughter, Stephen, Stephen’s sister and his parents. 

When Stephen’s folks saw me they were leaving the airport after putting Stephen’s sister on a plane to Europe. 

We spotted one another during the busy early morning hours of flight arrivals into Dublin where crowd numbers were in the hundreds. 

I was jet-lagged, broke, and would have had hours to wait before anyone even realized I was there.

 

Not a miracle you say?

Well, how about this one?

I was headed to the AA clubhouse in Savannah,Georgia for my 6 p.m. home group meeting when I heard that flub-flub-flub unmistakable sound of a flat tire. 

I pulled over to the curb and confirmed it. I had just bought the car (an old one) and it had not come with a jack or spare tire, both were still on my ‘to buy’ list.

A lovely young man pulled over to help, couldn’t without my having a spare, but he pointed to the nearby Savannah Tire Company across four lanes of heavy traffic, and said they might still be open.

I thanked him, got back behind the wheel, the heavy traffic “miraculously” cleared completely and I crossed the highway and thumped my way into the company parking lot where two young friendly and chatty angels, one black and one white, bounded over to help.

It was almost their 6 p.m. closing time, but they whisked my tire off my car, took it into the garage for patching, and in less than 15 minutes had it repaired and back on my car.

 I went inside to pay, but the cashier waved me away saying he'd already shut down the till. There was no charge. He told me to just recommend the company to anyone in need of new tires and I said I would. (And I did, many times thereafter.) 

I drove on to my meeting and arrived just as a member finished reading “How It Works.” 

I never had those kinds of "miracles" before I partnered up with my Higher Power. And I also know exactly how my tire "miracle" would have gone had I not turned my will and my life over to my Higher Power on the morning of that day. 

Here’s what would have happened:

I was headed to the AA clubhouse in Savannah,Georgia for my home group meeting when I heard that flub-flub-flub unmistakable sound of a flat tire. I pulled over to the curb and confirmed it.

“Shit,” I said, kicking the tire. “Why does this crap always happen to me?”

No one stopped to help, but I eventually noticed the tire company. It took ages for a break in the heavy traffic, but horns still blared as I crossed, damaging the rim of my tire in the process. It was closing time. The men there didn't want to hang around. I was told to leave the tire and my phone number and they’d let me know in a day or two when I could pick it up. 

I asked the cost and was told because of the damage to the rim it would be $50, or maybe more.

I knew I could get a ride home after the meeting, but I now had to walk the two remaining miles to the clubhouse, pissed off every step of the way. 

I arrived just as the chairperson invited everyone to join her in the closing prayer, so I had missed my meeting, too.

How do I know that’s what would have happened? Because that was the story of my entire life’s experiences back when I was the one in sole charge of it. 

One more miracle A.A. has given me is I am not that woman anymore. 

Now - thanks to my partnership with that Power far greater than me - my days are filled with smooth-making miracles that roll in one after another, like:

Covid happened and shut down meetings. Zoom meetings arrived, bringing me friends I would never have otherwise met. 

When I need money for an unexpected expense, it always arrives. 

When I have a problem, the solution becomes apparent.

When I feel lonely, company shows up. 

I live in constant awareness of the beautiful gifts of nature that surround me in a place I would never have found without the direction (even insistence) of my Higher Power and the generous help from a beloved AA friend.

And, trust me, the list of my miracles goes on and on ...

All the promises of AA are ongoing in my life, but here’s the important thing. I am in no way special. I am a garden variety alcoholic just like you. This program of recovery offers each and every one of us the opportunity for miracles to be grateful for every single day. 

Pay close attention. We hear about such miracles in meetings all the time. 

Whatever you do, please don’t leave before your miracle(s) happen!