“We thank God, from the bottom of our heart, that we know Him better.”
---Alcoholics Anonymous, page 75.
Thanksgiving Day is upon us, and it is common to “count our blessings”. I have many reasons to be thankful. I am thankful that, at age 40, I got sober in AA. At age 75, I have 35 years of sobriety. I am married to Priscilla for 48 years, and my sobriety has been good for us both. We are healthy and in love at ages 75 and 85. We now live in the same small Texas city as both our adult daughters and we all get along well. We get along well with our young adult grandchildren. The only shadow on all this good news is the realization that, at our ages, we are closer to the end of life than we are to the beginning.
Today’s life is very different than the home I grew up in. Everyone drank in my childhood home, including me. My first alcoholic drink was at age 8. I drank Jack Daniels whiskey all day long from age 10 to age 40, all day, every day. Our home was cursed by my violent mother and my passive father. My two sisters and I lived with frequent injuries and constant fear.
Thanksgiving Day was the only day of peace that was certain. For Thanksgiving, we traveled four hours north from New York City, up route 9W, to my maternal grandparents’ home in Schenectady, New York. We arrived the day before Thanksgiving, and spent Thanksgiving Day at my uncle Bob’s home.
Bob and Evelyn had nine children, and a big house. Bob was a happy drunk, and his was a happy home. My Uncle Jack was there, with his wife and one daughter, Mary. My two sisters and I were there with my parents, so there were thirteen children in all.
My grandfather, John Joseph Moran, was an archetypical Irish Patriarch. He was the unquestioned ruler of the family, and he, like Bob, was a happy drunk, and very kind to my grandmother, Bessie, and to all the family.
He had one rule for the day: “It’s Thanksgiving! Let the children play!” And so we did. All thirteen of us ran around in the house and outside. We played and played, ran up the front stairs and down the backstairs, shrieked and laughed. Whenever my mom started to get angry and would have been violent, my grandad just said, sternly “Now Betty……” and she was silent. Thanksgiving Day was always a happy memory in a bleak life.
That life is long behind me. Without Alcoholics Anonymous, I would have died long ago of the same disease that made my mother mean and my father passive. Out of every blessing I can count, AA is one that means the most to me.
I came to Alcoholics Anonymous to stop drinking and stop taking addictive drugs, and I did. I got a whole lot more than the end of drinking and drugging. I keep re-reading our basic text: page 1 to 164, over and over. This Thanksgiving season, I was reading page 75, which reflects what happens to us when we have completed Step Five.
Page 75 says “We thank God from the bottom of our heart that we know Him better.” One of the promises of recovery says, on page 83, that “We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it.” My parents’ alcoholism brought immense pain to our family, and I inherited this disease from them. However, this disease brought me to the fellowship of AA, and led me to take the steps for myself.
Now, having taken the steps, and enjoying the benefits of all twelve steps, I truly can thank God, from the bottom of my heart, that I know God better. Knowing God has completely changed my life.
