"That Ye May Stand As Witnesses For Me Hereafter"

They say time flies when you're having fun, so I must have had a blast this past month as I see it's been a good month since I last posted. Work has been crazy and weekends short. I don't know about fun but I did have a birthday celebration on Monday July 31--a day that marks 28 years since my last drink of alcohol or use of drugs.

A loving God seems to have orchestrated my recovery from the beginning. The coincidental events of stumbling across the Twelve Steps in a drunken stupor, leading to two more years of "research" in a failed attempt of "moral inventory," to hitting rock bottom, to that fateful drive home, passing the same Alano Club, triggering the three words, "powerless over alcohol" from Step One, as my car swerved off the road into the parking lot, only to find the Monday Night Beginners' Meeting was ten minutes away. And the first person to greet me in that room, as I sat in solitary confinement, was a dear man now passed to the other side of the veil. But just weeks ago and nearly 28 years later, I was privileged to handle his Big Book at an LDS Twelve Step Meeting where his son now serves as our group facilitator.

Thirteen years of hard drinking and complete devotion to Satan's cycle of compulsion had stripped me of anything worthy or honorable. Seven years without a single sober day had left me destitute and wanting. Yet as those looming Steps stared me in the face, I recoiled in horror at the thought of returning to my Maker. I planned my negotiation strategy accordingly, trading real serenity for "half measures" and looked for the "easier, softer way." 

Instead, the terms of God's contract meant turning my will and my life over to the very Being I had spent thirteen years running away from. Yet one meeting was enough evidence and flicker of hope as we held hands in a circle, citing the Serenity Prayer: "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference." Then there was the chant: "Keep coming back. It works!" Does it? Will it? One gaze into their eyes told me they had something so much missing in my shattered life.

On the second day, God put a sponsor into my life. But I had to think why does he care if I'm drunk or sober? Another dear man on the other side of the veil, but on this day he said, "Brad, it's a simple program--90 meetings in 90 days and don't drink between meetings. Then after 90 days, if you don't like what you have, we'll refund your misery." Wow, a misery-back guarantee! Again, I could only do half of it. I could only go to a meeting every day.

They say, "A gut full of booze and a gut full of AA don't mix." So on July 31, 1989 I went home with the ultimate decision of either getting out of AA, or getting serious about the Steps and God's offer of a new life.

In my bedroom in solitary confinement, I learned of the reality of Satan with his quiver of lies like, "It's too late for you. You've gone too far. There's no hope for you now." Perhaps you've heard them. But it was my last shot.

Battle-torn, run down, and beaten up, this drunk fell down and somehow asked for the big one--one day of sobriety. It was such a long shot.

Immediately I felt a rush of sweet peacefulness and tranquility. But how is this possible? No, there was no voice, just a calming assurance that everything would work out.

Fast forward 28 years--July 31, 2017. Another "manic Monday" (Sorry, Bangles), but this time on the other side of the spectrum. Beginning with an extended version of the Serenity Prayer, this time praying for a sweet wife, a wonderful son, and a dear daughter serving as a missionary in Canada, spreading the news of the Atonement of Jesus Christ. I boarded the train for work, while catching the morning sunrise with crimson-lined clouds, displaying pink-cloud sobriety and a happy birthday wish. The train halted in South Jordan just long enough to see a beautiful temple and memories of a day there as I knelt at an altar across from my sweetheart. The ordinance performed there would last a couple of minutes, but transcend eternity.  

Time to exit at Salt Lake Central with the music playing in my ear, sounding like God speaking through the voice of Bob Dylan:

"How does it feel, how does it feel?
To be on your own, with no direction home
A complete unknown, like a rolling stone."

That was me 28 years ago. But on this Monday morning it feels real good. I remembered a verse:

"And I will also ease the burdens which are put upon your shoulders, that even you cannot feel them upon your backs, even while you are in bondage; and this will I do that ye may stand as witnesses for me hereafter, and that ye may know of a surety that I, the Lord God, do visit my people in their afflictions" (Mosiah 24:14).