December 25
More Than We Came For
At the beginning, recovery may have meant getting through a day without drinking, keeping a job, or persuading someone not to leave. Those were serious hopes. We did not need a grander understanding to deserve help. Yet over time the question can grow beyond whether we have kept the things we were afraid of losing. We begin wondering how to live among the people who remain.
The widening of recovery need not make our early hopes seem selfish or foolish. We were in trouble, and the immediate trouble mattered. Step Twelve describes a life that keeps opening into new responsibilities and satisfactions. Perhaps the surprise is that we have come to care about someone else's day with no obvious benefit to ourselves. Or that a quiet evening has become enough. We may still want things to turn out well. We also have more to live for than getting our original list of wishes granted.
What matters to me now that I could scarcely have imagined caring about when I arrived?
We were welcome before we understood how much was possible.
For the A.A. nerds: Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, Step Twelve, pp. 106–110, 124–125.