Before I came into FA, I did service and performed many acts of kindness. But I find that service in recovery is different. For me now, doing service comes from a deep desire to arrest my own suffering, and to help others with God’s wonderful gift. I feel good when someone else finds the freedom I have found.

It is not important that I like doing the service, but rather whether it gives someone else the opportunity to share the joy I have found. Learning to do FA service and do things I ordinarily don’t like to do was an acquired taste for me. Service has become an expression of my recovery, but it is also has been a route to getting there.

I remember my early days in program 16 years ago. My sponsor and old timers had to teach me to love and do service. “Could you stop and pick up this person who can’t drive because of a physical disability?” I hesitated as I tried to think of a reason to say no, until I saw that the person who needed help was waiting for my answer. “Can you help with the tape recorder at the Thank-a-thons to make tapes and CDs to distribute?” My answer to that was no, but I was asked two more times until I finally said yes.

“Could you be the literature person at the Saturday morning meeting?” I found myself saying yes, even though I wasn’t sure I wanted to do it. No one else wanted to do the job because it was a large meeting with big literature needs and there was no place to store the literature in the building.  I surprised myself and ended up doing it for four years. That’s when I realized that I had stopped listening to myself and had started listening to God. I didn’t know I was doing that, but it’s clear to me today.

Because I’m living in recovery, I have come to love the service I do. That to me is what true love is all about, rising above myself to give what I ordinarily wouldn’t want to give. I feel good when I’m doing God’s will. I feel good when I help a newcomer, with God’s help, to lose 100 pounds, when I reset a room after an AWOL I have attended, and when I invite my ex-wife and her four cats into my home for four days and nights because she has lost power in a snow storm. To me, that’s service. It’s being a good human being; a recovered human being. I have come to love doing God’s will. It makes me feel so right, so good, so whole as an integrated person.

Doing FA service helps me know God’s will for me in all parts of my life. My knowing what to do starts with my surrender of my will to God, whether it is to choose writing as a career, to love and forgive my ex-wife for the hurt she caused me, or to let go of my dying sister, who has terminal cancer. This program has taught me to love and to be still and know God. Because I love, I do service.