No Script Required

"The next time you come in you get a free card."

The store clerk hands me the purple buy-10-get-one-free card and I turn to go out of the store. That's when I remember my sponsor. It's her sobriety birthday tomorrow and getting her a card was on my list. Somewhere between reading dozens of cards saying Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays I'd completely forgot. I turn back to the cards and start looking halfheartedly for the right card. After all, thanks to all those Merry Christmas cards I just paid for, I could get her card for free. However my brain is overloaded with looking at cards so I turn and walk out of the store before I find her a card.

In between being at that store at 10:30 in the morning and buying groceries at 4 in the afternoon I packed a lot of day. A great home group AA meeting. I had the tires balanced on my car. I spent some time with youngest son. I figured out what to buy dearest one for Christmas.

The sun is starting to set as I make my way into the grocery store, one of those stores where you can buy just about everything but the kitchen sink. I make my way down the card aisle and start looking for a card for my sponsor. The next day I'm going to be presenting her with a group card and a medallion. I always buy her a separate card that expresses my feelings for her. Sometimes when I pick out cards I know I've got just the right one when tears spring up from within as I read it. That didn't happen this time but I knew the card was the right one when I read it.

This morning I drove to town to my sponsor's home group meeting. There are two birthdays and as the cards for them are going around the room, I see that one is the same as the one I bought my sponsor. I sit there and wonder if it's for her or for the other woman celebrating today. The meeting begins and soon I forget there are even cards going around. Until the card gets passed to me. I open it and find my sponsor's name in it. Identical to the one I bought for her. I lean over and whisper in her ear that I bought her the exact same card.

Often I'm distracted in meetings by the kerfuffle going on in my head as other people speak. Lately I've been asking God to help me trust that if I'm supposed to speak that He'll give me the words. After all,there is no script required. When I have not the foggiest idea what I'm going to say it helps me not take myself quite so seriously. I also get to absorb what other people have to share when I stop worrying what I'm going to say. Who'd a thunk that it's not all about me!

I get called up to present my sponsor with her card and medallion. On the spur of the moment I decide to read the card out loud to everyone present. I am pleased as punch that someone else picked the same card to describe my sponsor and I tell them that.

Tears might not have sprung up when I originally picked that card out but when I start reading it they do. I have to stop reading until I can talk without crying. Sometimes tears say more than words ever can.