By Christine R.

“Lord!  Grant me patience!” Later you find yourself in the longest line in the post office. You get to practice patience, and you get your wish! More patience. My sponsor prayed for more money. The response from On High was to send an exorbitant IRS tax bill. Forced to go out and get another job, she got more money. Yep! She got what she prayed for. 

From page 552 of our Big Book comes what some gals call the “Pray for the Bastard” prayer. “May he get what he deserves.” Actually, the text reads, “Pray for the person or thing you resent, and you will be free. Ask for their health, prosperity and happiness, and you will be free.” “Do it every day for two weeks, and you will find you have come to mean it…” Sometimes I have to pray for the willingness to pray. At times such a resentment arises, I have to pray for the willingness to be willing to be willing. It can start from the back 10-yard line. But willingness comes if I am to stay sober. 

My best example comes from a home group member who was always late, noisy, and argumentative. With a folding chaise lounge and two dogs, knowing dogs were not allowed on the property, she clattered on through. Four steering committee meetings later, we got the dogs out – outside the door that is, nosing around, in and out on occasion. Verbal altercations erupted. Not liking her became a pastime, ‘til my sponsor got a-hold of me. If I were a puppy, she’d have been shaking me by the scruff of my neck. “Where is your compassion?” she demanded. She continued with, “You’re just a garden variety drunk. No better or worse than anyone else here.” Then, she put me on the two-week plan of praying for the woman.  

Willing to be willing. And willing to take action. Trusting my sponsor, praying to be willing and acting, got my hubs turned and I was free from the muck of my discontent. The “emotional rearrangement” of old ideas for new ones came through. It worked! Eventually, this woman and I became friends. She attended all my speech competitions (without her chaise) and was welcome support right up until the day she died. 

As long as there are suffering alcoholics, there will be prayers. Prayers like: 

  • Pray for a slow recovery.
  • Pray for joy and victory. Why? Because you haven’t had much of these.
  • Grant me the serenity.
  • Thy will be done.
  • Or the alcoholics’ simple prayer, “God Help Me!”  

Another prayer story comes from my friend Elan, from the Apache Nation. As most Native Americans I’ve known, he dearly loves his family. But the Booze loved him more. Elan lost access to his daughter and his granddaughter to our disease. The daughter refused to see him and would not allow her daughter anywhere near him. Anguish, sorrow, and rage were his keepers by day and night. Frantic to see them but powerless to do so. His sponsor told him to pray this prayer, “I pray my family is safe and warm and well fed.” “Who could argue that?” he told me.

Fast forward a few years praying this prayer came the day when Elan is at a tribal gathering. From out of the blue appears a little girl swirling around his legs crying, “Grandpa!” His daughter was only a few feet away. Safe and warm and well-fed, they came of their own volition, not through his struggling to have his way. They came by prayer and the powerful Hand of God.  

Thank God for AA and Thank AA for God.