Small Meeting, Big Message

9:00pm, laying on the couch absorbing Mass Medias thoughtless offerings, when my wife crashes through the door. "I have figured it out" she says as she throws her books to the floor and kneels beside me. "What!" I say as I mute the TV in anticipation of hearing the worlds problems had been solved and our credit card bills were going to be shredded at the source before ever reaching or local post office.

"My Program," she responds and begins to explain to me her night at a new meeting place she went to. Turns out the turn out, was on the slim side, a meeting where there was only one other member. Now we have all heard of big things coming in small packages, and this was to be no different. Apparently during some Big Book study, she realized what her Higher Power was, is and always has been. She dropped the title of "Dry Drunk," bestowed upon her by a passed sponsor who in my opinion should not be a sponsor.

To my wife's credit, she has never been bitter or resentful of having to give up the vino. She also was not walking a road of denial with the all empending "Bottom" looming in the distance. My wife embraced her program for almost two full years with great focus, it was only when she started doing what she thought she had to do such as take a sponsor or quickly power through some step work that her program became hard, pushy and time consuming.

Now her sponsors were asking her to put meeting before family, work the steps now, now, now and when my wife would question why she needed to go to more meeting, why she couldn't do the steps in the time frame that worked for her personal and professional schedule, she was branded as a Dry Drunk and resistant to the program.

My wife is the most loving, caring and supportive person I know. Her program only suffers when she is being told she is not doing it the right way. Now I am not in the program, but if I recall they use lots of slogans, one of which is "One Day at a Time." So if a person in recovery is going though life and each day they start with a stretch, and end with a yawn and no alcohol touches there lips I think that would be working your program right!! Call me crazy, seems simple. Live, Love, respect yourself, others and don't drink. If you need a drink, call someone and leave the situation.

So that night when my wife came bursting though the door as excited as I had seen her in a long time, it seemed that a light bulb not only went off, but it blowup!!. She realized that what she was doing was working and it was OK to keep doing what shes doing. The hard part for her will be mustering enough strength to tell her sponser that how they run their program is great. If it keeps them in recovery then it is doing it's job. That does not mean that it will work for my wife, or anyone else but that is ok. What she has and what she does is working for her, and she is sober and recovering, and I lover her the most when she is in love with herself.

Meeting on a train

Well obviously it's been sometime since I last posted. I think a lot of the reason I quit blogging about recovery was because I felt that I needed to just be me the Father of our son, the husband of my wife, not the spouse of my qualifier. Yesterday while on a Vanpool Van I was talking to a coworker about my wife's recent attempt to quit smoking. Now my wife just celebrated her 18th month of AA recovery and is doing great in her program. The conversation in the van pertained to my perspective of the Friend's of Bill W. and why they don't use the 12 steps and AA tools and apply them in other areas they feel they want to be freed from, in this case smoking.

My wife had quit smoking several time and recently had quit for what I recall being several months when she took on a new AA Sponsor. This sponsor has multiple year in the program and has what sounds like a few sponcees. But what I have never been able to get my head around is that though my wife had quit smoking, her sponsor offered her one. My wife is now trying to quit again.

I digress, This is about my program ahhha!!! My coworker on the vanpool said in so many words that though we Al-anon on the outside looking in see the AA program and it's tools as something that could be applied to any and all of lifes situations. Friend's of Bill are so focused on the recovery of Alcohol, Narcotics or what every other 12 Step there is, that they seldom consider asking their higher power to release them from some other issue or addiction.

This brings me back to my initial question, why do friends of Bill look at smokes differently then drinking. They will both destroy, and they both can kill. So with that in mind would an AA sponsor not see offering a cigarette to a recovering smoke as being the same as offering her a drink? Or am I over analyzing this?

My wife suffers from an intestinal disorder, and as I type this she is in another room under the knife remove portions of her small bowl that were damaged from Crohns. Thank god she does not drink anymore, but we will never know if the drinking increased the deterioration on here bowls. We do know that the smoking has to stop, this for sure is known to cause damage to the cellular intestinal walls

Thoughout our conversations my coworker used many slogans and statements, I then realized she was speaking from experience, she too has been in and out of AA and Al-anon rooms. I now have a new Friend to talk with and a refreshed reminder that my program needs to be worked if I am to understand what my wife is working.

I will try not to be away so long. This was an uplifting exprience to free these thought from my head.