Whoever would dare to define the gift of recovery as just a mere coincidence has surely never lived our misery.

As it was once explained to me, the opportunity to recover appears only when the sufferer is ready to admit complete defeat. And when that brief moment of clarity arrives, we begin to formulate a passageway into a new unknown.

Life has a way of casting some of us as wanderers, as if we’re born to lose our way. We stumble through storm after storm, clutching at anything to keep us afloat, never sure if we’ll ever find solid ground again. But those of us who survive, those who keep climbing despite the falls come to realize something profound: we don’t just survive; we transform. We belong to something greater. We belong to the society of the second chance.

I’ve often heard it said along my journey in sobriety that those who claim time means nothing are usually those who don’t have any. Time, it seems, becomes our first major accomplishment after losing so many years to its relentless passing. The great starter but terrible finisher begins life anew by achieving the seemingly impossible mission of staying sober from time up until bedtime. Then, they are reborn on a fresh calendar date, all of it beginning with a singular moment in time.

As I look back on my own journey I realize today that God has always walked alongside me.  He is always trying to tell me, “Do not be afraid, I am with you always”.  The God of my understanding whom I choose to call The Boss is the spiritual guide that sent me so many teachers on my journey.  My parents and family were my first teachers and they were as dysfunctional just as I am.  To be dysfunctional is to be human so welcome to the human race.  

I once heard in a meeting that the reason people suggest staying out of intimate relationships for the first year of sobriety is that most don’t dare to tell you five.

After years of being defined the black sheep, we are offered a gift many fear they don’t deserve. The turbulence of our once horrible existence inverts into a pink cloud we float on a while through the persistence of firm determination to stay sober. The roughest times with substances always on our minds soon become a memory of our jaded past.