My main goal on New Years Eve since I got sober is to stay off the roads after 5:00 p.m. One of the women I sponsor was chairing a meeting at 5:30 pm and I couldn’t miss it.
I had watched her go in and out of sobriety (mostly out)—in and out of rehab, hospitals numerous times, Child Protective Services almost taking her kids, crashing her car—all of it. But after all of this I knew she wanted it. I knew she wanted to stay sober.
My sponsor always said to me, “They have to want it MORE than you want it for them.”
I had to watch her hit her very bottom and also to let her go when it did happen—over and over again. This was part of my journey and the lesson God wanted me to learn. I could not make her stay sober. It was out of my hands. Out of hers.
After saying to my sponsor, “There must have been something I could have said or done to keep her from relapsing…” And, her response to me was, “Heidi, you’re not that powerful.” Ha, so true.
She now had 52 days of sobriety when one of my friends asked her to chair the New Year’s Eve meeting. I had to be there. She looked beautiful. She was finally living in a sober living house, going to meetings every day, helping others, and most importantly—Letting others help her.
Her light was on.
As I sat there in the very small meeting of about ten people, watching her chair so beautifully, the overwhelming thought came over me that brought me to tears:
“She finally wants her sobriety MORE than I want it for her!”
What a blessing and a gift to receive on New Year’s Eve. I drove home, sober and content.
She did too.
Thank God.
“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”
John 1:5
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