Chess masters know exactly how to move each piece on the board to bring about the desired result. Master chess players employ certain strategies like the Blackburne Shilling Gambit, which can bring about a victory in just seven moves. However, if one of the pieces in the master’s strategy is unexpectedly removed from the board by the opponent, it can result in a prolonged game or loss of the match entirely.
Life in recovery is much like a chess game. It requires all the pieces on the board for quality recovery to take place. If a player is setting up a board and they are missing a pawn, rook or knight, the match is over before it begins. That’s why showing up and suiting up is so crucial to the recovery process. It allows the Master Chess player to make full use of all the pieces on the board.
How many times have we heard from a newcomer or sponsee, “I don’t need to go to a group regularly. I’ll just show up when I need to or when I feel like a meeting.” The problem with this strategy is you are leaving the Master Chess player without an important piece on the board – you!
Sometimes it takes days, weeks, months and even years to bring about the right conditions for that alcoholic moment of clarity, that epiphany, that spiritual awakening. The moment of clarity doesn’t come all it once. It may start as a hazy moment for our newcomer when getting pulled over for a DUI. It becomes a little clearer when reinforced by a Judge who orders sober support or treatment. It becomes sharper when a loved one pleads with our newcomer to do something about their drinking. After all of these events the board has been set for that moment of clarity to take place. All it takes now for king denial to fall is for the newcomer to hear your story in a meeting. And that’s the night you decide to stay home from your meeting because something interesting is streaming on TV.
You may say, “Well gosh, if I had known I was going to be instrumental in someone’s spiritual awakening, I would have gone to the meeting.” Alas, if doing God’s work was always so easy and crystal clear. That’s where faith comes into recovery. We have to have faith in the Master’s moves. The hardest part of that faith is we don’t always get to see the Master’s work. We are like a thread in a great tapestry. Or as someone once said, “You can’t see the picture if you are part of the frame.”
I often tell sponsees that they are going to be part of someone’s recovery story, they just don’t know whose. That’s why it’s important to suit up and show up regularly. We never know if tonight, next week, or next month will be the night the Master needs us. We just show up faithfully and share our conviction and compassion. And then, once in a while we’ll have a newcomer come up to us after the meeting and say, “I really liked what you shared tonight, I was wondering if you’d be my sponsor.” That’s when we smile knowing it has taken a lot of moves in this person’s life to bring about this moment. We smile and are grateful that the Master Chess player has seen fit to use us in this person’s recovery.