Sponsorship

I love talking about sponsorship. From time to time in a meeting, I will climb on a sort of soap-box and talk about sponsorship, the importance of it, what it looks like and how it had a strong finger on the hand that saved my life.
I have some very clear ideas on what sponsorship is, and what it is not. Most, if not all of these ideas have been passed on to me by AA members I trust and respect.
From time to time I am witness to some young sweet thing that comes to AA looking for help. Within months she has a male sponsor.
Now let me say, I do not live in a community that has one meeting a week, attended by a dozen or so people. There are 20 meetings a week where I live, and a healthy percentage of women to choose as a sponsor. There is also a healthy percentage of women who have long term sobriety, are willing to sponsor, and try to practice the principles in all their affairs. If I lived in a meeting a week community, I might not feel so strongly about same sex sponsorship.
But I live in a diverse, recovery community so why complicate our already messy lives with opposite sex sponsorship?
When I sat and went through the steps with my sponsor, some very intimate things emerged. We talked about sex conduct. I personally cannot imagine doing what I did with a male sponsor. I would have held back. I may have been mostly honest, but not rigorously honest.

Its not that I lack understanding.
I tried to get Lou to be my sponsor. He said no, and when I explained that women didnt like me and I didnt really like them either, I certainly didnt trust them, he gave me direction.
And because I trusted him, I did as was suggested.
Even though I thought I would rather die!
I was instructed to hug every single woman at every single meeting I went to for the next two weeks.
Gulp!
But I trusted him.
So I started my hug campaign. And I am not....wait, scratch that, I wasnt a hugger. Im a hugger now.
And I have a couple of handfuls of really great, intimate female friends now. And a female sponsor. And female sponsees.
That I dont have to censor myself with. That I did a complete inventory with, including sex conduct. That understood the nature of shame in regards to beings an alcoholic mother.
Was I uncomfortable doing all these things with a woman? Hell yeah!Did it go against my nature of distrust for other women? Did it ever!
But since when is recovery about staying in our comfort zone? Because my perception is way off base, what I think is a lovely comfort zone eventually begins to look like a coffin, or a jail cell or a padded room.
Thankyou, but I'll do uncomfortable.

The first time I heard God talking

I had been sober in AA for about 3 months. 3 long miserable months. I was showing up at a meeting a day, showing up 2 minutes before the meeting was due to start. At the end of every meeting I pretty much bolted. I made no eye contact and I avoided the people standing in a little circle smoking, even though I am a smoker.
I would rush down the street, head full of fear and anger and go home. I would sit on my couch for the rest of the day, or curl up in bed and try to sleep the afternoon away. I was not really surprised that this AA thing wasnt working for me....I mean, its a great place for people who are drunks but I wasnt sure I was one of those. And even if I was, I was too smart for any 12 step mumbo-jumbo.
Slowly, thoughts of suicide began to creep in, and I started to believe that while it might not be a great solution, maybe it was the only one available to me. I put a lot of thought into how to accomplish my own death and not have it look like I did it myself. Guns were out, too messy. Overdose was out, good gawd I couldnt hve anyone thinking I was an addict! Hanging, nope..no mistaken accident there. Walking in front of a bus became my constant thought companion. I watched buses and the streets they went on. I figured I would have to get myself to the expressway so I could wander in front of a fast moving one, to make sure the job got done and I wasnt left as some vegetable.
Monday morning.
I awaken with the same dull ache, the soul pain I always awake with.
Maybe today will be the day.
But, for some reason I decide to go to the morning meeting like I had been doing for the past few months.
I sit through the meeting, hearing nothing but my own head.
I scoot out of the meeting when its over, the same as I do every other day.
And on my way..where? Home? To find a bus? I hear it...well, hear is the wrong word...I feel it. "Julie, do something different."
Huh?
Different? Do what exactly?
Somehow my feet got me turned around and I walked back to the church, looked at the circle of smokers and said: "Doesnt anybody go for coffee around here?"
And that moment...everything changed.
I met a great spiritual teacher.
He took me for coffee...we drove around the outskirts of town for probably 2 hours. I dont remember a word of what he said....except that he said "You have value and you have worth." and ...well, it was the first time I heard hope.
Hope was delivered to me through a 6 foot bald man in his fifties.
God used him to deliver hope to me.
I didnt recognize for many months to come that when I felt "Julie, do something different" that was God talking to me.
I didnt recognize that God had a plan for Lou that day, and all Lou had to do was show up and try to do Gods will.
In my gratitude, to God for His grace, to Lou for showing up and being willing, and to AA for the principles that it teaches...all I do now is show up. Show up, stay out of my own way and try my best to do Gods will.
If I do that, then I get to be the carrier of hope to somebody else, and that is a feeling that no drink, no drug could ever touch.

What If?

what if
I am exactly where I'm supposed to be today.

what if I'm not supposed to be one single solitary molecule better, nor one bit faster, not one jot farther along.

what if I'm not supposed to be
any smarter, or more spiritually evolved,
better with money,
braver,
bigger or smaller.

what if
(just for today)
I let sobriety be the win,
let that be enough, and
take the day off from self judgment,
from comparing myself to others
and to the mythical stealth "ideal me" I've somehow been sold.

what if just for today I banish the "should's" and "supposed to's."

if there is a God
(and while sometimes there's doubt and some days the evidence seems to go either way what if today I sit with "there is")
then what if
my foibles and mishaps and shortcomings
are part of what I need to be what I'm supposed to be
eventually.

if this isn't bogus,
or utter bullshit,
then I can relax,
and have faith that
(as the old expression goes)
God don't make junk

and there is a Plan

and I really am
exactly where I'm supposed to be
today.

*This thought/poem/prayer was borrowed from one of my favorite blogs Mr. Sponsorpants.