Last November was 34 years sober for me. I was thinking yesterday about what started me on the road to sobriety. My brother was arrested for DUI, and asked me to go get some things for him from his apartment. He had a copy of “THE BIG BOOK,” from Alcoholics Anonymous, so I took that and read it, thinking it would help me understand his issue with alcohol.

The story that really spoke to me was about a man who didn’t realize he was an alcoholic until he retired. He drank all his life, but only on weekends. He worked, kept his job, lived a responsible life. But then when he retired, and had so much time on his hands, he was bored and stared drinking all the time, every day. This is was led him to realize he was an alcoholic and he got sober.

That’s what I did. I have always worked, so I was in denial, because I wasn’t lying drunk in a gutter somewhere. I had this preconceived idea of what an alcoholic was.

So now I am retired, and not working anymore, and I see how that could have happened to me. Amazing how God works in our lives. It is just interesting to look back and see what started me on my journey and now seeing how the redemption God gave me in Jesus freed me of what could have been. I am forever grateful for all that He has done and is doing for me, even now.

Titus 3:5
Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost;