Читать книгу Came to Believe - Anonymous - Страница 17

In the not-too-distant days of my drunken past, when locomotion was failing and consciousness was fading, I would always manage to get at least one knee on the floor before I fell into bed. This gesture was accompanied by a mumbled “God, I’m checking in. I’m drunk.” I tell this, not to elicit praise for having kept an outward vestige of the faith I knew as a child, but because I want to show the deep entrenchment of a symbol after the meaning was gone.

When my life was mercifully turned around and I threw in my lot with A.A.—because I could not do otherwise and live—a new prayer took the place of the old one. Monotonously, almost every moment when I was alone, I repeated, “God, please restore me to sanity.”

And finally the answer began to come. A sane me was a startling revelation. Being able to look at the “what I was” part of my life with unclouded insight made me feel like a clairvoyant. I was looking into the life of someone I really had never known, though I knew everything that had taken place in her life. My perception is not keen enough to understand the how or why, but now at least I can see the pattern of that life.

Since my quiet miracle happened, when I happily found I did not need or want to drink, I have continued to pray. Now I say funny, private prayers, like one that is a line from a song, asking that there be peace on earth and that it begin with me. Most of my prayers are just short thank-yous for a favor or for making me stop to think before I act or react. My relationship with God has matured as any child’s might normally do with his earthly father—I appreciate His kindness and wisdom more.

Nashville, Tennessee