Came to Believe. Anonymous

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

“HOW DO YOU PRAY?”

      Many times while I was drinking, I asked God to help me—and ended up calling Him all the curse names I could think of and saying, “If You’re so almighty, why did You let me end up drunk and in all this trouble again?”

      One day, I was sitting on the side of my bed, feeling all alone, with a shotgun shell in my hand, ready to load. “If there is a God,” I cried out, “give me the courage to pull the trigger.”

      A voice, soft and very clear, spoke: “Get rid of that shell.” I threw the shell out the door.

      In a moment of calm, I dropped to my knees, and that voice spoke again: “Call Alcoholics Anonymous.”

      It startled me. I looked around, wondering where the voice came from, and I said out loud, “Oh God!” I jumped up and ran to the phone. As I grabbed for it, I knocked it to the floor. I sat down beside it and, with a shaking hand, dialed the operator and yelled for her to call A.A.

      “I will connect you with information,” she said.

      “I’m shaking too damned bad to dial any numbers. You go to hell!”

      I can’t explain why I didn’t hang up. I just sat there on the floor, with the receiver to my ear. The next thing I heard was “Good afternoon. Alcoholics Anonymous. May we help you?”

      After I had been sober in A.A. four months, my wife and I got back together. I had always said it was her fault that I drank so much—all those crying kids and her complaining would cause anyone to drink. But after we had been back together for three months, I realized how wonderful a wife and mother she was. For the first time, I knew what real love was, instead of just using her.

      Then it happened. I had always been afraid to love. For me, to love meant to lose. I believed that was God’s way of punishing me for all the sins I had committed. My wife became very ill and was rushed to the hospital. She had cancer, a doctor finally told me. She might not pull through the operation, he said, and if she did, it would be only a matter of hours before she passed away.

      I turned and ran down the hall. All I could think of was to get a bottle. I knew that if I got out the door, that’s just what I would do. But a Power greater than myself caused me to stop and cry out, “My God, nurse! Call A.A.!”

      I ran into the men’s room and stayed there, crying, begging God to take me instead of her. Again the fear took over, and in self-pity I said, “Is this what I get for trying to work those damned Steps?”

      I looked up, and the room was full of men, standing there looking at me. It seemed to me that they all stuck out their hands and said their names at the same time. “We’re from A.A.”

      “Cry it all out,” one of them said. “You’ll feel better. And we understand.”

      I asked them, “Why is God doing this to me? I’ve tried so hard, and that poor woman—”

      One of the men stopped me and said, “How do you pray?” I said that I asked God not to take her, but to take me. He then said, “Why don’t you ask that God give you the strength and courage to accept His will? Say, ‘Thy will, not mine, be done.’ ”

      Yes, that was the first time in my life that I prayed for His will to be done. As I look back, I see that I had always asked God to do things my way.

      I was sitting in the lobby with the A.A. men when two surgeons came up to me. One of them asked, “Can we talk to you in private?”

      I heard myself answer, “Whatever you have to say, you can say it in front of them. They are my people.”

      The first doctor then spoke. “We have done all we can for her. She is still alive, and that is all we can say.”

      One of the A.A.’s put his arm around me and said to me, “Now why don’t you turn her over to the greatest Surgeon of them all? Ask Him to give you the courage to accept.” We all linked hands and joined in the Serenity Prayer.

      How much time passed, I don’t recall. The next thing I heard was a nurse speaking my name. She said softly, “You can see your wife now, but only for a couple of minutes.”

      As I ran up to the room, I thanked God for giving me this chance to let my wife know that I did love her and was sorry for my past. I was expecting to see a dying woman. To my surprise, my wife had a smile on her face and tears of joy in her eyes. She tried to reach out her arms, and in a weak voice she said, “You didn’t leave me alone and go get drunk.”

      That was three years and four months ago. Today, we are still together. She works her program, Al-Anon, and I work mine, both of us living in today, one day at a time.

      God answered my prayers, through the people of A.A.

      Huntington Beach, California

GOD FOUND ME

      I believe that God found me, more than I found Him. It was similar to watching a child walk; he falls down again and again, but it is better not to try to help him until he comes to realize that he cannot do it alone—and extends his hand. I had gotten myself into a position where I had no other place to turn; I was at a point of almost complete despair. Then, and only then, did I honestly and simply ask God to help me. He came to me instantly, and I could feel His presence, even as I do this moment

      Nashville, Tennessee

A SMALL WHITE CARD

      When I came to A.A., I was a self-ordained atheist, a part-time agnostic, and a full-time antagonist—antagonistic toward everyone, everything in general, and God in particular. (This was due in part, I suppose, to my trying to hold on to my childhood concept of God.) A more bewildered, confused, powerless woman there never was. It seems that I had lost faith first in myself, then in other people, and finally in God. There was only one good thing about my refusal to believe that I had a Creator: It certainly relieved God of an embarrassing responsibility.

      Yet I had a spiritual experience the night I called A.A., though I didn’t realize it until later. Two angels came, carrying a real message of hope, and told me about A.A. My sponsor laughed when I denied that I had prayed for help. I told him that the only time I had mentioned God was when, in my despair at being unable to get either drunk or sober, I had cried out, “God! What am I going to do?”

      He replied, “I believe that prayer was a pretty good one for a first one from an atheist. It got an answer, too.” And so it did.

      In a state more like rigor mortis than an acute hangover, I was taken to my first A.A. meeting, about sixty-five miles from my hometown. We visited a member’s house on the way, and I caught my first glimpse of the Serenity Prayer, on a wall plaque. It was a shocker! I thought, “I’ve really got myself into another big mess with my drinking, as usual. I hope this prayer has nothing to do with A.A., for heaven’s sake!” And I studiously avoided looking in that direction all afternoon.

      Little did I know that, starting twenty-four hours later, the Serenity Prayer would be my companion and hope and salvation for five horrifying days and nights.

      After