There’s a comment I’ve heard many times in the rooms and it goes something sounds like this: ‘I don’t know how it works, I just know that it does.” There are lots of opinions out there, though, about exactly how it does work. The OA folks have a line in their prayer that I like a lot: ‘together, we can do what we could never do alone’. That is undoubtedly a big part of it. We depend on the help of others who have gone before us, who have the experience living a different way of life. Instead of reaching for that outside fix, we talk to others and they carry us through. They help us to heal the damaged self inside.
Those with a very deep faith in their higher power might argue that it’s that strength which gets them through, and I’d have a hard time arguing with them. As I heard someone in an AA meeting say once, the first time he got 24 hours was a spiritual experience all unto itself and the only answer for how that was possible was because of God. That any of us are successful in pivoting, making the change, putting down the stuff and picking up a different way of life, really is a miracle.
The literature tells us that Recovery is a process, not an event. It isn’t something that happens immediately, all at once. It takes take, and a lot of effort, but it does happen. And, as it also says in the literature, it happens at different speeds for different people. Some come into the program and make tons of progress right away. For others, it can take years. Some have difficulty putting together clean time. Others can stay sober, but are reluctant to make the other changes the program asks us to make in our thinking and in the way we live.
It’s different for different people, and that, too, is a blessing. It helps us to remember (or perhaps learn for the first time) that everyone is different. Everyone is going to respond to the program in their own way. Everyone is going to work it in their own way. Accepting that can be a challenge, too. It has been for me. One of my issues is with members who refrain from using but still live their old lives exactly as they had when they were ‘out there’. Being judgmental is one of my character defects that I continue to work on, but the challenge of remembering that not everyone has to work the program the way I do or the way I think they should is a good one for me. My higher power doesn’t give me what I want, but what I need.
One of the coolest things, though, is seeing that miraculous moment when someone gets turned on to the program. Maybe they’ve been coming for a few months, maybe many years, and all of a sudden there is a shift inside them. I’ve seen people start working the steps for the first time after years of being clean and sober. I’ve seen people who can't seem to stop relapsing hit a bottom and start claiming time. It’s beautiful thing.
It’s not my place to judge timing; that’s all up to God. There have been many people in my life whom I have hoped would ‘get it’. Some do, others don’t. My job is to refrain from judgment and Know that each of us ‘gets it’ when we’re ready to. Each of us makes progress at our own pace. Recovery happens in God's time, not ours. We get to put on foot in front of the other, take the baby steps, and live by the faith that progress will be made as long as we keep moving forward.
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