He recommend that I go to an A.A. meeting that they have at the church.
One day, the church's security guard saw me sitting outside and came over and talked to me. I would guess he was in his early 60s. He was very friendly and very talkative. I think he talked so much because he worked in isolation most of the day. We would converse about some of everything: life, religion, relationships, politics, etc. He would see me sitting outside of the church in the future and we would have more conversations. Sometimes we would talk for hours. On maybe our third conversation, he asked me a little about my personal life and eventually I told me about my issues with alcohol. He commended me for my honesty and told me a few stories about his own struggles with alcohol in the past. He informed me of an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting that took place at the church every Sunday at 7 p.m. and recommend that I attend. I agreed with his recommendation and thanked him for it. I knew that I needed to go to A.A. and this was a perfect opportunity because it was only two blocks from my house. I had remembered the A.A. meetings that I went to in the past and they weren't that bad. It looked like people were really getting sober and turning their lives around in there. I hadn't taken A.A. very serious in the past because I never thought I was an alcoholic and things hadn't got that bad for me, but now my life had hit rock bottom and this seemed to be one of the last options I had to get some help for my alcohol addiction.
I looked in the mirror and didn't know the person looking back at me.
While waiting for Sunday to get here there was a time where I had a conversation with myself and God as to what I was going to do about my alcohol addiction. The first conversation was with myself in the bathroom of my parent's house. I went into the bathroom, looked myself in the mirror and I swear I didn't know the person who was looking back at me. I felt like the reflection of myself that I was looking at was not the real me. It was someone I had created and someone that at that time, I hated. The person I was looking at had drank my life down the drain. I began to feel a lot of self hatred when I continued to look at myself in the mirror; but I knew deep down inside that I was much more than the person I was looking at. At the same time, an inner voice began to tell me that God had put me here to do much more than what I was doing at today. It told me He hadn't put me here to be a drunk, to hurt people, to loose jobs, to loose my respect, to loose my freedom, etc. It told me that I can and will overcoming my current situation and be who God called me to be. At that same time, I just started praying. Right there in the bathroom, I prayed to God and told him I was going to do everything in my power to stop drinking and get my life in order, but I need Him to do the rest. I asked him to guide and direct me to the people I needed to meet and places I needed to go in order to get the information and support I needed to turn my life around. I asked Him for strength and I told Him I was sorry for putting Him on the back-burner and going back to fellowshipping with the enemy.So Sunday came and I went to the A.A. meeting.
