I want to share with you an honest to goodness God shot I was blessed with just 9 months into my sobriety. It happened in the Fall of 2015. A little background – I had a best friend that I worked with at a fast food restaurant here in Salt Lake City, Utah. We went to different high schools, but during our off hours we were inseparable. We were fortunate enough that the manager of the restaurant always put us on the same schedule as we could work the drive through like no other. We just jived. Then came the year that she met a boy and I met a boy and, being the teenage girls that we were, we drifted apart and eventually lost contact with each other. We were both 19 at the time. Back to the Fall of 2015, 35 years later. I started thinking about her and wondering what her life had turned out like. I found myself listening to the music we used to love, driving by her parents’ house, re-visiting places we had gone together and remembering all the good times we had had together. I asked my sponsor what she thought about it, because I was damn near possessed, and she thought that maybe it was the change of seasons and it would pass. Well, it didn’t. For the life of me, I could not remember the last name of the boy she married so I got on Facebook and did a search for her using her maiden name. And I found her!!! So, I looked her up in the white pages and found a local address for her. I sat on the information for a few days and then one Friday afternoon, I thought, what the hell. Let’s drive by her house. As I pulled onto her street, I could see a woman in the garage and looking at this strange car pulling up. I knew immediately it was her. I told her my name, we hugged, we were in shock, all that mushy girl stuff. She invited me to join her for a visit on her patio and we picked up where we left off with the love and knowledge of being in a safe zone while in each other’s company. Her brother joined us, and he couldn’t believe the things we were telling each other after having been apart that many years. Then came the God Shot. I asked her if she would mind if I had a cigarette and she said that I could, but I really should try to quit. I told her that I had joined Alcoholics Anonymous 9 months ago and giving up one addiction at a time was going to have to be enough. She got up out of her chair, started shedding tears and said to me, “Now I know why you are here. God sent you to me! I have been trying to get sober and am having the hardest time and I just don’t know what to do next.” I told her about the program of AA and asked her if she would like to join me at a meeting. We went the following week and although she has struggled, she keeps coming back. I realize that I have been touched by God’s blessings during my 57 years of life, but this one was huge. I felt like I was doing his work instead of asking him to work on me. I will have 4 years of continuous sobriety in January 2019 and I cannot imagine a life without this program and the people I have met along the way. I attend meetings, I have a sponsor who knows she is my sponsor, I have sponsored women, I participate in service at every chance I can, and I take every phone call I receive. And today I can honestly see how the small miracles in my life have accumulated to huge acts of love doing for my Higher Power want he has and continues to do for me.

-Sandy B.