A Lot Like Life

God gives and God takes back.

Gratitude may be the all time trick to staying clean and sober and warding off complacency.  For those who have received the gift of recovery, it's precious and fragile.  You earn it and continue to earn it each day, building trust and faith as you go, making amends where possible and learning to live anew.  Gratitude is a stepping stone leading to forgiveness of self and those who have harmed you, a bridge that will never fail under your weight.  If you so choose, it will last a lifetime.  The people I know who have found sobriety all share a common thread - they've each made a place in their lives for something more powerful than themselves - they don't broadcast it except in the most general terms, they don't force feed it to anyone else, they don't preach it.  But if you look closely, you can see it at work in their lives. 


After the death of one of their own, it was standing room only in the little bar across the river. Through a low hanging blue haze of cigarette smoke, musicians gathered to remember, tell stories, and honor an old friend with laughter and music - an Irish wake of sorts, my daddy might have said - they mourned his passing by raising their glasses but celebrated his life with their presence.  Liquor flowed but so, I noticed, did soft drinks, many there had reached an age or a stage where drunkenness was no longer an achievement.  I had a momentary flashback to a tee shirt I had once seen - Instant asshole, it had proclaimed, Just add alcohol


No one knows what precise combination of nature and nurture causes one person to step over the line and lose their way or what exact moment in time might bring them back.  Far too many don't make it at all, succumbing to od's, intentional or not, fatal liver damage, or just spending their lives in the dark.  The search to feel normal takes more and more and leads to nothing but waste.


Recovery is never something you casually or automatically slip into your back pocket each morning and assume will still be there each night.  It's a lot more like life and should never be taken for granted.  God gives and God takes back.