On Fellowship
We’re Active Together in a Spiritual Reformation
September 20, 2010
Fellowship in my recovery program is so important because it reminds me that I’m not alone. I spoke on this in my very first share, months ago. I sit at meetings and reveal incredibly intimate details about my struggles and my successes with people who, like me, realize we no longer want to go to the same places of acting out. We’re finding out how to do things healthier. We’re learning how to work with the spirit gifted to us by our Higher Power instead of the rationalizations of the ego.
Fellowship allows me to be there for others in service and friendship and I am in turn blessed with the amazing input I’ve gleaned from other fellows’ shares, steps, and stories. The messages left on the recovery hotline I work on are part of that same dynamic in recovery, too, and for that, I’m grateful.
To me, a crucial part of the fellowship is getting to know my friends in recovery outside of our weekly meetings to the point that we not only listen to one another, but trust one another enough to be rigorously honest with each other. I’ve found I have shared more with people in fellowship than with many of my lifelong friends. One group doesn’t replace the other, but I’ve opened up in program far more than I ever have before in my life. I feel like I’m getting to a place where I can speak to a fellow’s vulnerability or difficulties as well as laud his or her good days, step work, and experiences.
In fellowship, I feel like we’re active in a spiritual reformation of sorts. I seek a progressively stronger relationship with the God of my understanding, who doesn’t expect infallibility but encourages grace and humbleness. To me, it really matters that I’m forming bonds with other people trying to change their lives with God’s help and do things as they’d never done before; that’s a very special bond to share with the people in the rooms. I stop relying solely on myself, which got me deep into the addiction in the first place, and I start calling on God and my fellows to get further into recovery, into spiritual healthiness, one day at a time.
