What’s the Job of an Old Timer?

 

   For the last few weeks I’ve really been trying to decide what is the role of the old timer?  Simple things like, do we need Old Timers?  If we need them do we want them around?  If we want them around what should they do?  If they do something, anything at all, should we care? 

   My favorite question though is a hard one, what makes someone an Old Timer in the first place. Age?  Wisdom?  Truth?  Knowledge?

   Why should an old timer even sit in the rooms anymore?  I’ve read with some interest what others have had to say about people with time.  I’ve had my own thoughts about people who say they have time.  It’s funny to me, to be in the position I’m in.  To explain a little bit, I came into recovery at Twenty-one and it’s now twenty-six years later.  I was really blessed.  I came into recovery, loved what was offered to me and I never went back to my chosen addiction again.

   To be an old timer does it take someone with over ten years?  Maybe it takes fifteen years?  How about twenty years or even more?  To make an old timer does it take someone who has a really strong opinion about almost everything that involves recovery?  How about the ability to recite, verbatim, most of the text along with page number? Is that what it takes?  Another idea... does it take the ability to make people mad just from what they have to share?

   You know I’m saying some of this with mild sarcasm but not all of it.  What I really want to say is this about Old Timers.  What I think it takes to make an old timer is this.  Old timers are the people that walk into the room and they have a willingness to help.  They have the ability to understand people and they have a genuine love for those around them.  They have done the work and they know the pain of others because it is their pain also.  They understand that we are all humans and there is no escaping the human condition.  A true Old Timer is someone who is worth hanging out with.

   The first job of the old timer is the most important one I can think of for any one with any time at all, never stop growing.  I have sat in meetings where time in the rooms of recovery is equated to growth.  That’s not true.  Just because someone has time doesn’t mean that they have recovery.  Continued growth is where recovery happens.

   To me the best inspiration I can think of is where I get to meet an old timer and they have something current to share.  They have something to share that is helping them to grow that month or even that day.  They are still peeling back the layers of their life and looking to become a better person.  To me that is inspiring.  Inspiring is an old timer in the rooms of recovery and they are still willing to look at themselves.  

   I was sitting in a meeting in Oklahoma City and one of the most inspiring women I’ve ever met told us she had contracted cancer.  She was someone who kept on working on herself.  When she shared, everyone in the room listened to her because of her genuineness.  As her cancer got worse and it became clear that she was going to die, she didn’t stop coming to the meetings, she came for as long as she was able to come.  Even when she lost all of her hair and she had to start wearing a turban she kept coming.  She was inspiring to watch and her message, though weakened by the effects of the cancer, never rang truer.

   The second job of the old timer is to have something that is worth passing on.   The best sign of an old timer is their ability to pass along what they have learned because they have gone through the steps of recovery.  If they haven’t done the work then they don’t have anything to pass along.  
 
   Sitting in the garage in your car dreaming about becoming a car doesn’t make you a car.  Sitting in the rooms of recovery doesn’t mean that recovery happens.  Only illnesses are contagious.  Recovery is not something anyone can catch by sitting next to the right person.  Work has to happen for recovery to take place.

   The shock of my life was to find that bit of information to be true.  I was so bummed to find out that I had to do the steps.  I was angry to learn that I had to learn about my problems.  I was bummed to find out that the puny God I came into recovery with wouldn’t get me down the road of recovery.  I was saddened to find out that to get recovery I had to get a God that was big enough so I could recover.    

   I was also bummed to learn that I couldn’t ride on yesterday’s lessons.  Each day I wake up I start over again.  The best examples I have are the Old Timers that teach by example.  Like the woman in Oklahoma City.  She was an awesome leader and she died with incredible dignity.  I also have two men in my life who teach me by example.  Both are ahead of me in age and in time in recovery.  Both are still working ALL the steps and both pray throughout the day for God’s direction in their lives.

   Standing the test of time is the next one.  When it comes time to build a house, shifting sand really sucks to build your home on.  The mistruth of my life when I was using was the shifting sands of my active addiction.  I was so deluded that I believed all the things I thought.  I thought I was a really smart person and that my thinking mechanism was working.  Even today, step two, “We came to believe a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity”, has significant meaning to me.  Each day I wake up I need to know that God will carry me throughout the day if I let him. 

   Today I have my recovery program so that I don’t wander into my dangerous brain.  I also know when to slow down and allow God into my life and let him do his work... my life runs much better.  I understand that my limited thinking is warped by my humanity and that I need God in my life to let me hear those around that speak truth.

   By standing the test of time Old Timers show how God can work in people’s lives for good.  They show how far down the road people can go and still keep on changing.  I see people who are old timers and they just radiate recovery and God.  God is so strong in their life that it’s one of the first things they start talking about when people engage them in a conversation. 

   Standing the test of time tells me that the program is not something people get, it’s something people grow into.  By watching those around me work the steps and keep working on recovery they’ve shown me just how much farther down the road people can go.  I don’t want recovery to be “the destination” I want to keep recovery as the journey. 
 
   Growing through grace, I was one of many that thought that when recovery happened I became bullet proof.  I believed nothing bad was ever going to happen to me anymore because I was in recovery.  I thought that I had made it and I became a bliss ninny.  I was running around shaking my head at the people who were struggling with problems.  I thought I was problem proof because my understanding of God was so good and strong that nothing bad was ever going to happen to me again.

   Life reared its ugly head and I had problems.  Grace wasn’t a word I really understood.  It was something I learned about because problems taught me about the word.  I was just one dimensional; I had no depth of character yet.  Only people who have learned how to grow through their problems and share them openly with others seem to have grace. 

   When I’ve been challenged by real problems I’ve been told by others to never talk about it or even worse just shove the problem in a closet somewhere, to me that is ludicrous.  Not talking about problems is what got me into the rooms of recovery in the first place.  Talking about problems, opening the problem up and letting the light of recovery shine on it that brings the problem to its knees and helps me find solutions to it.

   The last thing is probably the hardest for me to share about.  Old Timers need to listen to young people.  I love the youth in recovery.  They are such awesome people.  I love what they bring with them.  I love their music and I love their energy.  Luckily I’m still young enough and I don’t have the old people jitters yet.  It will happen with time I know but for now I still love what young people bring to recovery. 

   I get sad when Old Timers try to keep young people out.  I get sad when young people get pushed to the curb of recovery.  I get sad when I see groups polarized by the extremes that life brings us.  Young people won’t sit with old people and the old people don’t want anything to do with them either. 

   In my thinking we only grow from our rich diversity.  We only grow from the new comer coming into recovery and meeting me, just being me, at the door with love.  Love is what kept me coming back and love is what enticed me to accept the miracle that recovery truly is.

 

 

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