Another Milestone Passes By...

I miss the routine of blogging regularly and just wanted to check-in with my blog site just to let those who visit this site that I am well and progressing in my recovery.

October is my birthday month so there's been much reflection on what these last eleven years have brought me.  Gratitude is one of the most important spiritual tools in my recovery kit.  And gratitude is not a feeling -- it's a decision, a habit.  And it involves lots of work.

Anyway, I recently completed my eleventh year of recovery.  I've gone to an average of 10-14 meetings a week for all these years--which totals up to almost 8,000 meetings and $8,000.  AA's expensive when you think about it longer term I suppose.  I sponsor a ton of  active sponsees (people I meet with anywhere from every two weeks to every months or so to talk about what's going on in their recovery and see what I can do to help) -- I've joked about how many men with bad sponsor picking skills have latched on to me since i finished going thru the steps 7 years ago for some time now, but yesterday it dawned on me that it is literally true given that they each weigh around 200 pounds.

I do my best every day to help someone, a suffering alcoholic most specially, in some way.  It always distracts me from what I mistakenly think as problems or challenges that require my direct involvement and expertise.  And inevitably, while I'm being distracted by someone else's problems and/or life challenges, my own so-called problems transform into blessings and the challenges pass and become grist for wonderful and healing stories.  In fact, I'm sitting here in a Seattle hospital now helping an old friend and his get thru the challenges associated with his fall last week which left him, an 81 year old man, with a broken hip.  I flew up for the weekend to be helpful to them.  Absolutely to expectation for any return or payback.  You see, I've already been more than fully compensated for anything I might do to help someone else.

I owe an unpayable debt to Life:

My 27 year old son still has five months and ten days more clean time than his dad and now he's dad to his own daughter, Harriet Charles.  (FYI: my name is actually Charles Michael....and, No, ChuckMikeLRecovery doesn't flow off the tongue does it?)  He's a far better dad than ever was back when my children were little.  He's able to be present to her and his almost wife in a way which was beyond my capacity back then. My youngest daughter continues her journey thru the grief after the death of her stillborn son in April the day before he was due to be born.  She's a wonderful mother and the epitome of courage.  And now my oldest daughter is pregnant with her second child, a boy, due in February.  My fourth grandchild.  We're walking thru this pregnancy a wholly different family than we were just six or seven months ago.  The following month my wife and I will celebrate 32 years of marriage.  The woman I sometimes jokingly refer to a my future ex-wife!  The absolute love of my life!