Keep coming back
If there was anything more valuable than this three-word phase I don’t know what it would be. So many of us come from a place where we have worn out our welcome long before they finally asked us to leave. The last thing anyone would consider to be a logical request would be to ask me to come back. The only reason you would ask me to come back would be because I had more money for alcohol and or I had a better supply of drugs than you. Other than that, your asking me to come back was not a good decision for you. Remember when we had worn out our welcome in so many ways? Even the people who should love us the most, knew that asking us to come back was probably not a good idea.
You can imagine my pleasing surprise when, in a chanting fashion, at the end of an AA or NA meeting, they would say “keep coming back, it works”. At first, I thought they were just saying it because it was a cool and catchy thing to say. The more I got to know the individuals in the rooms of recovery the more I knew they meant it.
It was the fellowship I craved and somehow this group knew it. They knew if I was willing to come back, eventually the most challenging and revealing information given to even the most prideful person would break the icy denial that flows through our veins.
Little by little, as one would chip away paint and remove layer by layer, I began to see how coming back was putting me in position to learn what I needed to learn so I could grow the way I wanted to grow. As I began to see myself change, I no longer had to be told to keep coming back. I was coming back because of how I was being fed. When you deny yourself the sustenance of life for as long as I did, feasting at a table with untold wisdom and practical applications to truth was the secret of a lifetime. Coming back became my fuel and it would drive me to meetings just to listen to others as they would share their life transformation. As I began to see my life transformed, they wanted to hear me share as well. Slowly, I began to compile time under my belt, and I began to see others coming in for the very first time and they were as excited to hear the phrase “keep coming back” as I was when I had first arrived. Mind you, I hadn’t been there but a few months and yet telling that to other people, there for their first or second or even third meeting, was a way that I found to give back. This further encouraged me to come back.
Here are some of the things that I found out as part of coming back.
- Time is our friend
- I found others who were aligned with me
- I became willing to listen more than sharing
- I remembered it is practice not perfection
- I began to share who I was and what I was doing
- I became honest with myself as a person who would look from the outside
- I began to develop and grow a relationship with God.
I did all of this because I decided to keep coming back. I hope you come back as well. I hope and pray your recovery journey is even more exciting than mine. I wish you well in all the abundance that you deserve. You were a person who once was alone. Now you are invited to keep coming back.
Robert Pardon
Robert is the Recovery Guy. Getting clean and sober on April 25, 1986 has given me the insight and practical skill set to not only stay sober, but to also re-invent myself to the person I always wanted to become. Showing others how to do this is my life goal.
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