I did not arrive in AA based on the power of my resume, nor did I come to AA looking to fill a sudden lull in my social calendar. What happened was I was bleeding from the bowels, throwing up blood, and shaking like a leaf. I had no food, no shelter, and no transportation. I was unemployed and unemployable. So in early June of 1989 I had become a man in desperate need of angels.

I suppose had I lived a Mother Theresa kind of life my angels would’ve had white robes, halos, and harps. But that’s not the way I lived, so I got the members of Alcoholics Anonymous. And although you are a rather scruffy bunch, perhaps the largest group of malcontents and social inepts ever collected under one roof, you are angels indeed.

Within two weeks of attending meetings I had food, shelter, transportation, a job and some walking around money. Anyone who had witnessed this incredible improvement in my life would have seen the transformative power of the fellowship at work. I, on the other hand, arrived at the conclusion that AA wasn’t working for me and I decided to get drunk. And I had this epiphany at an AA picnic. Along came an angel cleverly disguised as an old Scotsman, sober just one year after a relapse, who proceeded to jaw my ears off for an hour or so. I remember thinking that as soon as I could dump this bore I was headed to a bar. He droned on and on until finally I said I had to run, and as I left the park I knew that if I turned left I was going to drink, turn right and I was going to a meeting.

Had David not talked so long I would have had too much time before the meeting to think, but instead I found myself pulling into the parking lot of the AA clubhouse that still houses my home group nearly 17 years later. Over the years the Good Lord has intervened subtly in my life again and again, for purposes that only became clear later. Sometimes I’ve been in places I had no intention of going just hours earlier, and been someone else’s angel. I’ve greeted a newcomer at his first meeting who twelve years later became my angel during a dark, dark time in my sobriety. And so today, when I greet someone new, I think to myself, are you the one? Are you my new angel?

God Bless Us All