There are certain patterns that I get into. Mondays are MoM Blog days; Tuesdays are Mess it Up podcast days; and of course, Fridays are for Celebrate Recovery. It’s not always the same on these days, but there are things that happen frequently enough that they become part of the pattern or routine. Among the Friday benchmarks is your MoM teaching a lesson at CR. I’ve been running groups for a little more than two decades so the material is pretty familiar for me.

This Friday found me teaching a lesson once again. My method for teaching is to work off of a set of bullet point notes. I hit the note then give the rolodex in my mind a spin and see what story fits into the message. I began telling a story about my wife’s recent knee surgery and then, right in the middle of painting my word picture, I lost my muse. I had no idea why I had gone down this particular path. Try as I might, I had nuthin’! Then, just as quickly as it left, the point of my story came back to me. It would have been nice if I could have remembered just before I announced that I had absolutely no idea why I was telling the story, but that ain’t life!

In recovery we sometimes walk down blind alleys, turn into cul-de-sacs and one way streets. Sometimes we find ourselves in places and we have no idea why. The thing to do is to go back to what we know. We keep working the steps. We keep doing the things that worked in the past. It’s like jumping in a pool: at first you plunge deep, but eventually you will…

–Rise Up!!