A "God Thing"

I have always believed that certain things happen for a reason. I have a hard time believing that nothing happens by mistake, but I do think that at least some things happen for very specific reasons. Certain people enter our lives at just the right time. There are some coincidences that just aren’t coincidental at all – an event that we in AA refer to as a “God thing.” Ever since coming into Alcoholics Anonymous – even before actually – I have experienced a number of these events. Usually these experiences involve walking into a meeting and hearing just exactly the thing that I need to hear, but often these experiences also involve just the right person unexpectedly stepping into my path.

In May of 2005, before I got sober, I used to attend ACOA meetings (Adult Children of Alcoholics). In May of last year I was having a particularly difficult time – things were happening that led up to my eventually making it into AA. Anyway, for two months I had been driving around in my car crying, sinking deeper and deeper into depression. One Tuesday night at the ACOA meeting, I finally broke down – which is something I very rarely do in front of anyone. I finally lost it in front of the group, talking about how I didn’t know if I could continue to live and that I didn’t know what to do. A visitor to the meeting who was visiting from the northern lower peninsula of Michigan asked for my phone number. She called me the next day and saved my life. She talked to me for 4 hours that day and over the next couple of days we talked for several more hours. She went home and we lost touch.

This past February, I walked into an AA meeting, on what was the most difficult day I had had in sobriety up until that point. I lost it at the meeting, talking about how I might be moving and my brother was leaving in a couple of days to move out of the country. She was sitting across from me but we didn’t recognize each other at first. In fact, I had sat down at one table and then moved to another. She followed me – telling me later that although she hadn’t recognized me until I started talking, she knew when I moved tables that she was supposed to follow me. If she hadn’t, we wouldn’t have reconnected that day. We talked later that day – I had a chance to thank her and tell her just how much she had helped me the May before – and I found great comfort in the things that she had to say to me. She went back up north and we again lost touch.

I went home to Michigan last weekend and while I was there, I went to a bunch of AA meetings – my old meetings that I used to go to. As I was talking about my visit to Michigan and that I had come home because I was having an extremely difficult time in Chicago – a hard time staying sober, a hard time living life, a hard time with everything – she walked into the meeting. This woman who had saved my life, who had helped me tremendously in just a few conversations, who has shown up, coincidentally, at all three of the hardest times I have had in the past year and a half – walked right in and reminded me in a moment that can only be described as a “God thing,” that my higher power is watching out for me even when I don’t ask, or can’t ask or don’t want to ask. Those little God things are just the kind of reminders I need sometimes and they always happen when I find myself the most mistrustful of the process and doubtful of my higher power’s presence in my life. Over and over again I experience such coincidences that are just too perfectly planned to be coincidences at all.

This actually happened twice this weekend – I was reconnected with a different person this morning who helped me tremendously when I found out I had breast cancer. Although she had told me how to get through chemo and how to survive cancer (herself a fellow survivor), she never told me her name and I didn’t really know how to track her down or if she was even still in the program. Just this morning as I sat at a meeting and thought about how much I wanted to see her, how much I needed her help and her positive energy right now, how much I wanted to thank her, she walked into the meeting – a not so subtle reminder that in any given moment my higher power hands me exactly what is needed.