HERE’S TO YOUR HEALTH
This week’s HTYH is a continuation of Polly’s story: The man, who 12th stepped me out of that cheap hotel room and brought me back to the treatment center, half-dead, was an ex-monsignor priest. I did not know how to cope with life; I had an immature belief that life was supposed to be a rose garden where nothing bad happened to me. The fellowship of A.A. taught me how to live one-day-at-a-time and to accept life on its terms; not mine. Hindsight is 20/20 and that’s what it took for me to see the blessings and the grace of God working in my life. I desperately needed this man (Frank), who talked and walked me through all 12 steps. As my mind and soul began to heal so did my physical body. Frank began to change my negative thinking about that Baptist Church and everything else. He began to remove the distortion from my thinking and show me the truth about my parents and he began to let me face life as it is and not as I imagined it. Frank is attending that big meeting in the sky today but he gave to me the spiritual principles of the A.A. program and I’m grateful to have known him. He told me to get busy in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous and to burn the 11th step prayer into my brain (God, Thy Will, not mine, be done). Frank told me it wasn’t about being loved, he said, “Polly you’re out there trying to get people to love you, but it’s not about you, it’s about you loving them.” I had to hit a spiritual bottom in A.A. that was nearly as bad as the one I hit doing alcohol and drugs. I wanted A.A. people to love me and make me better; I imagined if other people loved me enough then I could get better? I thought A.A. was about other people doing things for me. I didn’t know that I was going to have to unconditionally love them too. Frank said, “The reason you feel empty is because you don’t love others, it’s not about you anymore, get busy helping others.” He said, “It’s not about your kids forgiving you, you must forgive them.” And the more I began helping and forgiving others the better my life got.
I met a man named Dave when I was six months sober and he was about a year and a half sober. We became good friends during the next three years and if we would’ve known that we would end up married, we would’ve never told each other all the things we did. Neither one of us knew anything about healthy relationships because in the past we took hostages instead of partners. We desperately wanted to have a good relationship. I had been married once for many years so, I knew how to be married while Dave had been married several times, he knew about courting and how to get married, but not how to stay married. Since neither Dave nor I knew anything whatsoever about human relationships, Frank sat us down and said, “You should both begin by treating each other like A.A. newcomers. How do you treat an A.A. newcomer? By unconditionally showing them love, tolerance and patience. The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous clearly states that “patience and tolerance” is our code. I didn’t know anything about patience and tolerance because I took advantage of and badly used my significant other. Frank said, “Love is an action not a feeling!” If you really love someone you should treat them that way instead of abusing them. Frank insisted that we should firmly plant ourselves in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous and to base our relationship on A. A.’s 12 Traditions; what a concept. The 12 steps are designed to protect the alcoholic from alcohol while the 12 Traditions are to protect the group and A.A. as a whole from self-centered, manipulative, control freaks who have a burning desire to change everything and everybody in A.A. except them.
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