Are these extravagant promises?

I remember the day. Sitting in an AA chair, listening  as this passage was read from The Big Book.(pg 84) I’d heard it dozens, perhaps a couple of hundred times or more, but this time was different. 

THIS TIME it hit HOME!!

Always before, I had seen the 12 promises of AA as just that – 

              PROMISES! – for the far distant future. 

 “If I work hard enough, long enough, these too may someday begin to become mine.”  But I doubt it!!

Then one day, without even knowing how it happened, the reading of the PROMISES changed for me. I realized they were becoming mine!! They describe a new reality for which I have long sought. 

I realized how much it accurately reflected the changes that had – and are continuing to take place in my life.

1.     If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are half way through. 

2.     We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness. 

3.     We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it. 

4.     We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace. 

5.      No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others.

6.     That feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear. 

7.      We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows. 

8.      Self-seeking will slip away.

9.      Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change.  

10.     Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us.

11.      We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us.  

12.     We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.

   Are these extravagant promises? We think not. They are being fulfilled among us, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. They will always materialize if we work for them.

I’m reminded of what “Nice Guy Bob” told me after my first meeting more than 4 years ago: 

           “It keeps getting better!”

I had no idea how right he would prove to be.