If You Want What We Have

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"If You Want What We Have"
Sponsorship Meditations
by Joan Larkin

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To be alive at all is to have scars
JOHN STEINBECK

Newcomer
At a recent meeting, I heard someone sharing as if she’d solved every problem she’d ever had. She was smiling the whole time she spoke, talking about how great everything’s is. I don’t know why, but I felt angry afterward. She sounded so glib and self-satisfied and know-it-all. If that’s recovery, I don’t know if I want it.

Sponsor
I can identify with your anger. I, too, sometimes find it irritating to hear someone chattering about his or her happiness and success, especially when my own life seems to be full of messy problems. But it may not be the contrast between her situation and your own that got you upset. Perhaps you intuited that she may not, in fact, “have it all together.” Few humans do. I love hearing people talk about the ways this program has helped them, but recovery doesn’t make us perfect.

It won’t help my own recovery if I judge the quality of someone else’s. I know, though, that when I hear people sharing at meetings, I’m drawn far more deeply to some sharing than to others. Oddly enough, I sometimes get more spiritual sustenance from hearing someone who is having to cope with immense difficulties that from someone who appears to have none at all.

Recovery doesn’t require perfection. In fact, perfection isn’t possible.

Today, I have unconditional love for myself,
whatever my scars or difficulties.
I extend this unconditional love to all those around me.