My sponsor has 30 yrs of sobriety. It makes my measly 9 1/2 yrs. look pretty small. When I bring this up to her she reminds that we all just have today--no matter how long we've been sober. Sometimes she tells a story in meetings of when she was about 20 yrs sober and a young man relatively new in sobriety came to her home group. The young man brought up an issue that he was struggling with. It didn't sound too serious, and he was working hard to phrase it in AA rhetoric. My sponsor and some of the other "old-timers" who had obtained guru status came down pretty hard on him. She describes the incident as one where they had gotten so knowledgeable in the ways of AA that they could actually justify being rude and unkind as being honest and avoiding the dreaded "kinder gentler way". The newcomer was put in his place and everybody felt that they had given him the necessary wake-up call. The newcomer was dead by morning.
Today I pray that I can let go of my pride and ego in my years of sobriety--it is not my accomplishment it is my Higher Powers. My only accomplishment is turning my life over just for today.
This reminded me of a women in my home group who got her 40 year chip. When asked to speak she said many wonderful things and was full of gratitude, the one thing that stuck out to me though was when she said that "the first twenty years were the hardest".lol
