Déjà Vu

Don't ask me how, but I had forgotten....

I had forgotten how an AA meeting could be so soul restoring.

Years ago, I quit going to AA meetings.

I quit going because my home group had dissolved. The women I had known and loved, and by whom I was known and loved, had all moved on to other meetings, to busier lives or to entirely new geographies.

I was left feeling anchorless, alone and resentful.

Two years sober, I figured that I didn't need them anyway.

It was around that time that I began attending a Christ centered recovery group at our neighborhood church.

I was never able to recreate the circle of love that I had known in my AA home group, but something infinitely more wonderful happened.

I met Christ.

Yes, I met the risen Lord.

I had a genuine Paul of Tarsus experience, only mine was absent the blindness, call to evangelize and eventual martyrdom.

I spent the next several years investigating recovery through the church. For me, the church became a place of comfort, hope and restoration.

I was eventually asked by church leadership to lead groups of my own. Which I did. Those experiences grew me in surprising and sometimes painful ways.

Now, a decade later, I have found my way back to a secular 12 step meeting.

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that I've found myself right back where my life in sobriety began.

After all, isn't life really just one giant eternal circle?

In some ways, I'm not much different than I was all those years ago. I still puff up and want to sound cooler than I am. I still ache for all those present in meetings and for all those who aren't.

But thankfully, many things have changed. I'm not as angry, or as lonely anymore and I don't hate God the way I once did.

I now know that life can be lived one day at a time, without a drink, without hatred, without violence to self (and others) in thought, word and deed.

In some ways, I feel as though I am on a new road; and then, I realize that this new road is also old and familiar.

It's déjà vu, don't ya know.

It's that circle of life thing I spoke of earlier (cue Lion King music).

So, here I am.

I'm just a broken down drunk, who's not so broken anymore and I'm still traveling the road, picking up the pieces of my own life, stopping along the way to help others pick up the pieces of theirs.

This time around, I journey less hurried inside...

.... and I suppose this is what allows me to appreciate how some of those broken pieces from my life needed to be ground smooth by time, experience and the footsteps of others.

My frantic desperation to put all the pieces back together again is gone.

By placing everything in God's capable hands, my own are now freed to hold up the pieces of my life to the light of God's holy love. By God's grace, I get to see how those pieces sparkle and shine.

And then, just when I think things couldn't get any more beautiful, I remember that a big piece of my own journey is found in helping others discover the sparkle and shine of their own souls.

I can't think of any greater joy or privilege.