AA Meetings Were a Default -- Part II

Why did I go to that first meeting? I needed something stable, some tradition,  some pattern that I was comfortable with.

I will never forget what one member shared that evening:

"All I have is this moment right now."

That notion gave me a lot of peace. It reminded me of:

"But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.

"Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." (Matthew 6: 33-34)

Yet even then, I was reading this verse without reference to the Finished Work. In Matthew 6, Jesus was declaring what would happen to every person who believed on Him. In Christ through the Holy Spirit, we receive this gift of righteousness every day.

In those days, I did not understand these things.

So, I went back to AA meetings to find whatever it was that I was missing.

After that one AA meeting in Lomita, I went to a "fellowship" in Torrance, at a meeting near Arnold Elementary.

This meeting was interesting. I found some support, since I was struggling to get through the last month of the school year, and barely at that. The previous day, I had thrown so many students out of class, that the referral room yelled at me and refused to receive any students from me.

I was really worked up, but one of the members in that meeting was a teacher who had been pushed through so many ups and downs in his life. He shared that he had been fired for "the cut of his hair", which usually happens to first and second year teachers who make an administrator "mad". I knew that feeling.

He told me to take it easy, not get so worked up about the end of the year, since very little was expected to get done, to begin with. "It's the end of the year. Relax!"

Another member came up to me during the break, a younger woman, though she was older than me. She told me that she related to much of what I had been telling her. She then told me that she had attempted suicide, then resigned from her job as an elementary school teacher. "I'm a good teacher," she told me, but she was struggling in her life with many issues.

That was not the first time that I ran into someone in an AA meeting who had attempted suicide, but more on that sordid trend later.

The first teacher whom I was talking to, a tall guy with blond hair, disdained the Gospel. He was convinced that this life is like a toilet bowl, and everyone is going down the drain. "Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die" kind of thinking. He did not believe in Christ and Him Crucified, something which I refused to let go of, although I had no idea what else to hold onto.

As far as relaxing and taking it easy for the rest of the year, I did that, and all went well.

That was the last time that I went to a meeting for many months.