By Sue W., Renascent Alumni
Step 12: Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
My spiritual awakening came in January 2020 when I slammed my truck into the back of a parked car and was subsequently arrested for impaired driving.
I didn’t injure anyone and I wasn’t hurt.
There was a Higher Power with me that night that prevented injuries, but also sent me the message loud and clear that I am an alcoholic and it was past time that I dealt with it.
Two days later, I attended my first AA meeting and heard Step One for the first time: “We admitted we were powerless over alcohol that our lives had become unmanageable.”
I like to tell people this is the only step I have to do perfectly. If I let go of this step for one minute, the toboggan ride to the bottom of the hill will be a fast one.
Steps 1 through 10 keep me sober. Step 11 helps me grow. Step 12 gives me the opportunity to give back.
In the early month’s sobriety, I attended meetings to listen and learn. I decided I wanted what AA members had to offer, so I started going to meetings every day. Then along came COVID so, I turned to Zoom meetings.
Step Twelve is the last step but, as a newcomer I soon learned being in a chair at a meeting or a face on the Hollywood Squares of a Zoom meeting is Step 12 work.
In the chapter, Working With Others, the Big Book addresses the emotional ups and downs of Twelve Step work.
In my early months of recovery and today, I feel genuine happiness when a person attends their first meeting and receives their 24-hour chip, or other folks receiving chips for months of sobriety or medallions for years of sobriety. Likewise, there are the pangs of sad sadness when a person leaves the program or relapses. Then the joy returns when they come back.
When I got to Munro in May 2020, we were encouraged to get a sponsor if we hadn’t already. I finally got up the courage to call a woman from my home group. She had 25 plus years of sobriety. She agreed to be my “temporary” sponsor.
Under her guidance and with help from my Higher Power I’ve maintained my sobriety and gained a great friend and golf partner. It’s been four years and she hasn’t fired me yet!
I will be forever grateful for her Twelve Step gift to me.
There was a young woman who started attending our in person meetings. She was struggling. She’d get a couple of months sobriety, then relapse. After watching for the better part of a year, I asked her if she wanted me to be her sponsor.
We’ve ridden the emotional roller coaster together through a couple more relapses, but I’ve learned so much from watching her journey.
An early lesson was; I can’t rescue. My job is to offer the hand of support. As her recovery strengthens, I feel so much joy.
From Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions page 106. “The joy of living is the theme of AAs Twelfth Step, and action is its keyword. Here we turn outward toward our fellow alcoholics who are still in distress. Here we experience the kind of giving that asks no rewards. Here we begin to practice all Twelve Steps of the program in our daily lives so that we and those about us may find emotional sobriety. When the Twelfth Step is seen in its full implications, it is really talking about the kind of love that has no price tag on it.”
