My Home Group

 I have been going to the same meeting on Sunday night for the last nine years.  We moved from a ½ mile east of Bellevue Square to another church 2 blocks west of the mall.  The Steppin’ Up group is a step study group (Steppin Up—get it?).  Two years ago we changed the format slightly so that we study an AA Tradition each month.  We have a business meeting every month.  All of our service positions have volunteers that do defined terms of rotation.

Tonight at the business meeting, I got voted into the one month service position of being the greeter.  We just started having a greeter two months ago.  Having a greeter helps make people feel welcome at our meeting.  That changes the ambiance at the meeting from being a place where people straggle in to a place hoping to find recovery to a place where both new and regular members are welcomed with a warm greeting and a handshake.

I used to be the greeter at Empire Way in Seattle for 6 months.  That was the best service position I ever had.  I learned and practiced how to welcome people with kind words, a handshake and a smile while getting to know a lot of people.

I am grateful for AA’s message of recovery and hope, my new service position and my sobriety.  I have been struggling with unwelcome thoughts of using situations for the last couple of days.  I talked about it at the meeting and was able to let a lot of that go.  One AA cliché is that we are only as sick as our secrets.  That is true for me.  Today I have one less secret and am a little less sick.