23

Today I celebrate 23 years of marriage, an accomplishment which dwarfs, which obliterates 25 years of sobriety in its impressiveness.

One thing I pray for every morning in my Quiet Time is to be the best husband, brother, and son that I can be and you can trust me here: there's a lot of room to grow in all three categories. These are the relationships  that are the most important to me and the ones that can be the most troublesome at times.  Worth every penny despite stepping on the occasional land mind.

I also pray that I may be of maximum service in my dealings with other people.  I have myself convinced that I want this to actually happen.  I believe that I have some room to grow here, too.  When I say "maximum service" I envision certain favorable situations, lacking in any pain or discomfort.  For instance, I hope that I meet someone in The Program who owns a Ferrari or any other Italian supercar and urges me to use it while he's on a lengthy foreign assignment.  "Drive me to the airport and we'll call it even," he'd say.  "Put as many miles on it as you want- it seems silly to have it just sitting there while I'm gone."

Instead, what plops in my lap is this: I give my phone number to a rough looking character from my downtown transients' meeting, secure in the knowledge that he almost certainly won't call - very few drunks ever do - only to have my phone ring.  This big dude wants to go to the meeting.  And work The Steps.  So I pick him up at the group home where he currently lives - not in a Ferrari - and drive him to my home group.  He has over two years of sobriety already, a fact I found encouraging until I discovered that he got most of it while he was serving time in prison.  For assault.  

He's actually a nice man but I don't think he has a Ferrari.