My journey back to this Church and gospel began with my struggle as a practicing alcoholic and addict. When I hit a hopeless bottom and thought life was well over for me, I one night attended a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous where I had previously read the Twelve Steps posted on the wall at a local Alano Club. I was only interested in that "club" that summer morning twenty seven years ago, because I thought it was a bar, since the word "club" appeared in the title.
Two years later, when I hit rock bottom, I remembered three words I had read in Step One: "powerless over alcohol." After two weeks of attending meetings, often twice per day, I still could not stay sober for even a single day. I went home one night not knowing whether to give up on AA or to make an attempt to seriously work the Twelve Steps. After an hour-long battle with the enemy, I fell to my knees and offered perhaps the shortest but most sincere prayer I have offered to date. I felt a strong feeling of peace come over me and something tried to whisper to my soul that things would work out alright. I pleaded for God's help and asked for the biggest miracle of my life--one day without alcohol, something I had not experienced in seven years.
In spite of myself, God was able to perform this miracle, and I began to live my life sober with God's grace one day at a time.
Forty sober days later I was in Washington DC on a trip I had signed up for months earlier. I checked into my hotel room all alone, and knowing myself to be a long way from home and on vacation, I felt extremely weak and vulnerable. I thought it best to go to the dresser drawer in search of a phone book so I could call AA and get myself to a meeting. I pulled open the drawer but found no phone book. Instead, my eyes fastened on what looked like about 50 mini bottles of hard liquor. My beverage of choice was there right in front of me!
I slammed the drawer shut, dashed out of the room, and went downstairs to a payphone where I called the local AA Central Office and got some addresses of AA meetings. I called a taxi and found one of the best AA meetings I ever attended.
But I knew I had to go back to that hotel room surrounded by liquor. When I walked into the room the compulsion to drink was overpowering beyond description. I felt like I was being consumed in my addiction. It seemed like an evil monster in the room and seemed inescapable. I was sweating, breathing hard, and felt my heart race.
Not knowing what else to do, I got down on my knees and with clenched fists pounded on the bed, pleading for help or relief of some kind. After struggling like this for a few minutes and feeling there was no way out, something then happened that totally surprised me.
I felt a calmness come over me and suddenly began to feel very tired. My energy seemed sapped and completely disappeared in a matter of seconds. A peaceful feeling replaced the feelings of fear and despair, but the feeling only lasted a few seconds, as I fell harmlessly asleep. It was so bizarre. It was like going to sleep on a roller coaster. I partially woke up later; I don't know how much later. It may have been a few minutes or a few hours. I could not tell. It seemed to take all my energy to pull myself into the bed, where I instantly fell asleep again.
I woke up the next morning feeling refreshed and relatively full of energy (something not common for me). I walked over to the dresser drawer again and thought about my experience of the night before. It seemed surreal, almost like a dream. I pulled open the dresser drawer and there saw the same mini bottles staring me in the face. But now it was different. I felt absolutely no compulsion to drink them. It was then that I decided to look in the fridge I had discovered in my room. I opened the fridge to find some beer, soft drinks, and bottled water. Being allergic to water (just kidding) and with the grace of God, I chose the Diet Coke.
I slept peacefully in the same room with my enemy for four more nights and checked out of that hotel with all the mini bottles and beer cans (and water bottles) unopened and full to the brim. The Diet Coke didn't last til sundown.
I walked out of that hotel with the absolute assurance that the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob is still alive and well! And He had rescued me. This miracle for me is as major (really more important to me) as the parting of the Red Sea. Years later I read about how Jesus stood in the ship and calmed the tempest. He "rebuked the wind, and said unto the sea, Peace, be still. And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm" (Mark 4:39). I know He calmed the tempest because He calmed the storm inside of me.
Every Easter I am grateful and awed by His willingness to go to that garden, where He "began to be sore amazed, and to be very heavy." In the Greek sore amazed means struck with terror. Here He said, "My soul is exceeding sorrowful unto death." Here He "went forward a little, and fell on the ground, and prayed that, if it were possible, the hour might pass from him." It was here He pleaded with His Father in familial terms of affinity, "Abba, Father, all things are possible unto thee; take away this cup from me: nevertheless not what I will, but what thou wilt" (Mark 14:33-36). Nonetheless He "partook and finished (His) preparations unto the children of men" (D&C 19:19).
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