A Story of Recovery:

Recovery in My Own Backyard

My sponsor suggested that I stop watering my lawn. What? What does my lawn have to do with my abstinence?

At the time, I was very tired, relentlessly looking for work, anxious about my dwindling bank account, and over $13000 in credit card debt. I was resentful about not being able to pay for yard help or house help and about living in less than clean and beautiful surroundings. I felt guilty if chores took me away from job hunting and guilty if chores got ignored. With meetings phone calls, shopping, chopping, reading, and praying, I could just never do enough!

However, I took my sponsor’s suggestion and stopped watering my lawn, which turned out to be a wise suggestion. It saved me about $50 a month. When I stopped watering lawn, it stopped needing to be mowed, and I didn’t need to replace the lawnmower I had just broken (irreparably it turned out). Yes, the lawn turned into a patch of bare dirt, but it was mostly there for the convenience of my dogs. It turns out that they didn’t file a complaint or leave home.

Over the past two years, I’ve saved something like $1,000 in water and countless hot and tiring hours of mowing, weeding, and trimming.  I’ve actually realized that I really didn’t want that much lawn anyway. I’d rather have shrubs and flowers, so I’m re-designing my new back yard and thinking I’ve already saved $1000 towards installing something I really like.

I always think that some things are absolutes and can’t be negotiated. Yet, with the cooler head and clearer eye of my sponsor, I was able to change one thing, which led to my changing other things in my life.

When I put my program first, life just seems to go so much more smoothly. I now maintain my weight at around 135 pounds (instead of the 270 pounds I used to weigh) and wear a size 4 rather than a size 24. The credit card debt I had when I lost my job was paid off in less than a year, and I live a simpler and more satisfying life. My expenses are half what they use to be, and yet I’m in the same house, with a new car, more clothes than I can wear and, thank you God, healthy food on the table (and in the garden).

At meetings, we say that we “practice these principles in all our affairs.” Weighing and measuring my food, my energy, and my money certainly has given me a new appreciation for life!