Last week in my favorite women’s AA meeting, I heard a woman with many years of sobriety sharing how she got sober in the 80’s. She was sharing about a woman she was sponsoring coming up on a year of sobriety. While sharing, she accidentally said this, “She was getting many days lined up in a row and was coming up on her “A”—oh, I’m sorry, I meant coming up on her YEAR!”
This mistake really spoke to me, as I related to wanting to get the “A” in everything. Being performance-driven, I always had to get the “A” or push toward graduating. On the other hand, I LOVED school and being a student, so I didn’t want to graduate. If I could have been a professional student, I would have been.
When I was 50-years-old and ended up at the bottom of my drinking, I found recovery and started to go to AA meetings. A few months into the program, someone asked me if I had done “90 in 90” and asked what that was—It is 90 meetings in 90 days.
Being the willing an “anxious-to-do-this-right” student of the program, I got out my calendar. I marked on my calendar all the meetings I would go to and started in. Well, I ended up doing MORE than 90 meetings in 90 days, being the over-achiever that I am.
At the end of this process, I said, “Now what?” I realized the answer to that was that this was the plan. This was my life now, with all of these meetings. My behaviors were set in a new pattern. A new habit and plan for living that didn’t involve alcohol. Such a great revelation for me.
In realizing that going to meetings was continuous and ongoing, I was happy to know that I would never graduate from this recovery program. I had achieved my “professional student” status and was pleased. Now, I attend 4 meetings a week. It is a part of my life of continuous learning, from others and from God, how to live my life without alcohol.
Love my life as a sober, professional student.
I am grateful for continuous learning.
“Rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with gratefulness.” Colossians 2:7
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