My name is Flint and I am an alcoholic. I like to hear about God. Anyone's God is O.K. I learn a lot from ya'll about the God of my understanding. I also learn a lot from the miracles in my life, before & after AA.
My folks did not express a need for me to go to church as a child and they did not teach me much about a God of anyone's understanding. I went to church with friends a few times. The last service I attended was at about age 11. I was in a Baptist church in Corpus Christi, TX with my two younger sisters along with some friends. I experienced a frightening thing. This fella was going on about Jesus jumping into our bodies and stuff. Before the service was over, both my sisters were freaking out and crying. I didn't know what the heck was going on and I was scared out of my wits. My folks later called the parents of these other kids and gave them the riot act. After that, I don't remember being asked to go anywhere like that again. I figured "they" all thought we were heathens. My dad spoke of the Great Spirit once in a while. I wasn't sure what to make of that. Most any time someone brought up any kind of religious or super natural kind of topic, I just avoided it. I spent a lot of time on the beach camping and fishing. All over the Gulf of Mexico and up the east coast to the Outer Banks of NC. I rode a Coast Guard cutter for two years back and forth between Hawaii and Alaska. I would stand out on the helicopter pad and be amazed at the stars and northern lights. I kind of followed the earth, moon, sun and stars train of thought for a while. There were other times that I lay out under the tropical stars and wonder what this is all about.
Alcohol was what I thought it was about and it was fun in the beginning. I drank regular from about 9/72 until 12/23/89. I don't think it became my HP until about 1979. Maybe it was sooner. Then there was the super natural of pot, mushrooms, etc. That was fun, too - for a while. Toward the end that stuff brought more paranoia and fear than anything else. The only time I made any contact with God was during times of desperation. Jail, mean hangovers, wives leaving, etc. It was just words with absolutely no understanding of God.
I struggled with doing anything other than meetings the first 13 months of my AA life. I, too, used a Group Of Drunks and Good Orderly Direction as a means of God for a while. I figured ya'll had better luck with living than I did. Might as well listen. After I got to know some of you, I found out you were also human and subject to defects. That kind of God could not continue to keep me on track.
I was put out of my "happy" home one 12/23/89. My son was still in diapers, my daughter was four. One day, while waiting to go into my home group, I was whining about how much I missed my kids and all, my grand sponsor nailed me. He said "Do you believe in God?" I was stuck. The big question. I can't lie, he will know - I wanted to squirm out of the answer, he would not let me. "Well?..." Thoughts raced through my head. About a thousand a second. Finally I said "yes". He bounced right back at me and said "Then put away the idols of your wife and children that you worship today and ask God to help you with your screwed up life!" Who does he think he is anyway? But the thought rode with me for a few days. I had to put away all the pictures I had setting around in the apartment. Some where along here the sunlight of the Spirit started to shine in my face. There is a God, it is not me. That was about 2/91.
The whole process since then is much like I have heard from others in recovery. It is a growing process. I have strong faith at times I am thinking on it. The fast track catches me and I forget. This heathen joined a Christian church two years ago. The Spirit flows through me today. It does not jump in or on me. I like it. It does not scare the crap out of me like I "thought" it would.
Page 55 in the Big Book has helped me so much:
Actually we were fooling ourselves, for deep down in every man, woman, and child, is the fundamental idea of God. It may be obscured by calamity, by pomp, by worship of other things, but in some form or other it is there. For faith in a Power greater than ourselves, and miraculous demonstrations of that power in human lives, are facts as old as man himself. We finally saw that faith in some kind of God was a part of our make-up, just as much as the feeling we have for a friend. Sometimes we had to search fearlessly, but He was there. He was as much a fact as we were. We found the Great Reality deep down within us. In the last analysis it is only there that He may be found. It was so with us.
Thank God for God. And thank you for "listening".
ODAT
Flint
There is hope.