When I admitted powerlessness and unmanageability (Step One), I began Twelve-Step recovery. Within one week my spiritual awakening began as I could believe in the experience of others and feel hope. For me this was Step Two. Beginning to learn and live the Steps in my life (with some assistance from professionals) enlarged and deepened my spiritual awakening.

Steps Ten and Eleven kept my spiritual experience fresh. However, it was Step Twelve that gave me the most spiritual growth. Practicing the principles in all of my affairs infused me with a spiritual experience that I could share with others. In my recovery it’s important to share with others rather than give things away. If I give something to a person, they have it and I don’t. However if I share something, we both have it, and it becomes more powerful. For me, sharing may be the greatest force in recovery leading to a spiritual experience. Ironically, sharing a burden makes it half as heavy while sharing a light makes it twice as bright. That is the principle I apply to service.

Nearly all sharing enlarges and deepens my spirituality. Sharing is as simple as opening the door for the meeting, setting up chairs, leading a meeting, or sharing in a meeting. Much more intense is one-on-one sharing in sponsorship. Bill W and Dr. Bob were both powerless over drinking alcohol. However, when they met and shared one-on-one, they were connected to a much larger power that kept them sober for the rest of their lives.

Sponsorship has been and continues to be the largest part of my service–my sharing–because it is every day. Sharing my recovery experiences with others allows my awakening to grow every day. Helping others is the primary message of the entire Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Very early in my recovery I began participating in the administrative parts of recovery such as steering committees for individual meetings and intergroup meetings. It is not directly my spiritual experience that I am sharing, but I am sharing abilities that were opened up to me through having my spiritual awakening. I have continued the administrative participation now for the past 36 years. Before we had a telephone, it was my job to receive the mail in our post office box and reply to it. I am in three fellowships and have been a group representative, committee chairman, intergroup chairman, and a representative to regional conferences. Today I stay connected as the phone contact for newcomers. Service has been the key to receiving, keeping, and enlarging my recovery. It’s the sharing of my recovery with others that makes it continue to grow into something larger and more powerful every day.