The Pre-Requisites of Willingness

I've been going through something of writer's block recently.  Felt that I had sort of said everything I had to say.  That everytime I sat down to write, there was an eery feeling that I'd already told that story.  I took a break I suppose so that I could come up with some new stories.

The other night the speaker asked us to talk about willingness because she was at a point in her life where she was unwilling to be willing.  And that frightened her.

Whenever willingness is the topic, I always remember a woman who was new to the area and had just been asked to chair a meeting at the last moment.  I was probably two years sober at the time.  During her chair, she said that her favorite quote in recovery was a line that she had stolen from her sponsor in Santa Cruz.  The sponsor had often said that "she got sober at the corner of Grace and Willingness."  I was immediately struck at how beautiful that line was.  I went up to her after the meeting and asked her to chair a meeting for me in several weeks.  She was glad to.  She was trying to get to as many different meetings as possible now that she was in this new area with no friends or connections.

Between that night and the day she was to chair for me, I kept going back over the line she'd stolen from her sponsor and while I really understood the beauty of that description of where her sponsor had gotten sober, I knew that I hadn't gotten sober on that same corner.  Grace was right on: when I got sober, it was pure gift.  I'd done nothing at all to achieve the sobriety I achieved the morning of October 20th in the year 2001.  The night before, I'd taken my son to one of his 12 Step meetings (he was 15 and had 5 months and 10 days sober...) and then hid myself away in a local bar to have what became, to date, my last two drinks.  Two goblet sized gin martinis.  When I left the bar, I didn't feel drunk but was probably over the legal limit.  I went to pickup my son after his meeting.  He smelled the liquor and asked me if I'd been drinking.  I lied.  He let it go.

I'd wanted to tell him the truth.  But had I done that, I would have had to stop drinking.  Or at least go through the public motions of trying to stop drinking, while knowing in my heart of hearts that it simply wasn't possible.  So I lied.  We went home.  Chatted about what the meeting had been like.  I went in the house, told my wife that I was very tired and was going straight to bed.  I was very tired.  I'd been hiding my drinking for over 10 months and it was horrible.  I was lonely, isolated.  Controlling my drinking was very draining!  Around people all day---but connecting with no one.

The following morning, I woke up at 6am with the clearest of all true thoughts: "I can't stop drinking."  A thought I'd woken up to many, many times before over the previous 30 years.  More and more frequently as the years and the disease progressed.  And then the miracle happened with another thought, "Not being able to stop drinking is called Alcoholism--and alcoholism is a disease that I just happened to have."  Within a nanosecond, a third thought followed: "That's OK -- I can do what Pat (my son) had been doing."  And then I saw myself sitting in a circle of folks and when my turn came to check-in (it was one of the weekly multi-family group sessions at my son's recovery treatment center), I saw myself raise my hand and say, "My name is Mike and I'm an alcoholic."  The obsession I'd been living under for years left me with that disclosure to non-existent people.

Well, that moment was certainly one of Grace.  Grace was surely one of the streets which intersected my moment of recovery.  But was that a moment of Willingness?  Not really.  It was something else and I just couldn't think of what else other than grace brought about my sobriety.  What was the other street.  I thought about that for several weeks and it didn't get resolved until the morning I woke up to go secretary the Sunday Step meeting at the Lafayette Hut, the meeting where the line thieving sponsee was going chair for me.  That morning I realized where I got sober and I was feeling like I was going to explode inside until I could share my truth with the woman chairing for me that morning.

When she walked into the meeting, she walked over to sit in what I sometimes call the most uncomfortable chair in an AA meeting.  When she sat down, I welcomed her to the Hut -- and then leaned over to tell her that for several weeks I had been trying to figure out "where" had I had gotten sober.  She looked puzzled (as people often do when I'm talking to them!) and I reminded her about her favorite line and told her that while I loved the line as much as she did, I knew that that was not where I got sober.  I didn't get sober at Grace and Willingness.  She smiled and asked me, "Well, where did you get sober?"

I got sober at the corner of Grace and Hopelessness, about a half block down from Grace and Willingness.  What happened that morning for me was a moment of grace which occurred only because I had reached a point of utter hopelessness in terms of my ability to stop drinking.  What happened that morning is I gave up on "my" attempt to stop drinking.  And I began a new approach at life.  I began trying to stay sober that day.  That is what I had seen my son do for over ten months --- and he'd done it "poorly" at first, not being able to stay clean for more than 5 to 10 days for several months.  But then, something clicked for him in May 2001 --- not sure what streets intersected at his moment of clarity -- and he's been clean for almost nine years now.  That morning I knew that the solution was in doing what he had been doing: going to meetings, raising my hand, steps, talking/listening with other addicts/alcoholics, getting up when we fell down, telling the truth.

So what then are the pre-requisites of Willingness?  There are at least three:

First, willingness only comes into play when we are confronted by something that we really don't want to do.  Willingness isn't necessary for me to eat a piece of chocolate cake!  Willingness is only required when there is unwillingness.

Second, willingness presents itself only when one is experiencing a certain level of pain or suffering.  Unwillingness is a pleasant place to be: pain is the only thing that pushes us out of that state of unwillingness.

Third, willingness --- at least for me --- came only when I came to believe that the Impossible was in fact Possible.  That morning, I discovered that sobriety, one day at a time, was possible.  No guarantees for life, but at least sobriety was possible for me that day.  Tomorrow?  I'd deal with that when it came.  That morning, I realized that Pat had done what I had considered impossible.  He'd gotten sober and his life was changing.  Since then, I have seen many others who were like me: people who simply couldn't get sober.  People who couldn't stop drinking.  That morning, I accepted that I couldn't stop---but I could stay sober.

A moment of Hopelessness transformed by Grace into Willingness.

Take care!

Mike L.