A letter of gratitude

I thought I would write to Roundabout as I haven’t done for a few years. I am sitting here just after spending time with friends at the Blackpool Convention, which was well-organised and the meetings were all great too. It was great to be back to some normality and I enjoyed the time spent with friends. We had many laughs and we did some nice walking – the weather was sunny and we enjoyed the entertainment at night. At the closing meeting on the Sunday afternoon they did the countdown and the longest sober member was a man from Helensburgh who was 53 years sober, which showed us how important meetings are to us all.

I am a member of the three-speaker online meeting on Saturday night from Cumbernauld, Scotland. I was able to chair that meeting from Blackpool where we had a woman from USA sharing on it who was also 53 years sober! There were 40 people present in the online ‘room’ that night and we probably wouldn’t have got to hear this woman anywhere else. Online meetings have been a godsend for a lot of us in the Fellowship, though I know we need live meetings as well. A lot of us wouldn’t have thought that the restrictions of the past two years would have gone on so long but they have and online meetings are another way to reach people so that they get sober and stay sober. Every online meeting I have been to has started with the Preamble and finished with the Serenity Prayer, though in other countries a lot have finished with the Our Father.

I thought back to the day when I came into AA and heard people say the Serenity Prayer; I thought “Oh no, is this the God Squad that I’m in amongst here?” It was a change for me to learn that wee prayer and I didn’t think it would become so important in my life. I remember a woman giving me the long format of the Serenity Prayer and thinking “Thank God it’s shorter and easier to remember at the meetings”.

Sandra
Cumbernauld Saturday online