Keeping the First Thing the First Thing

03/25/2021 8:52 PM | Anonymous member (Administrator)

When I got sober in January 2007, one of the first things I remember my sponsor telling me is, “Stacey, anything you put before your sobriety, you will lose.” I would look at her incredulously and say things like, “But Karen, I have to put my job first, my friends first, etc.” The list could go on and on, and whatever I said was the thing that had my attention at that moment.” She would look at me and smile and say, “Stacey, anything you put before your sobriety, you will lose.” It is just like what Mark 1:35 says, “In the morning, while it was still dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place to pray.” My sponsor Karen and Mark reveal the same message to me: keep the first thing, the first thing. Mark’s passage is a gentle reminder to me that even Jesus needed to spend time with God alone to pray.

Over the fourteen years I have been sober, I am grateful for the daily practices I have developed with my relationship with God. I look back to the early days and remember not being able to sit still to meditate for five minutes or being so rushed in the mornings that I did not have time to read from one of my daily readers. In some ways, I feel as though the person I was fourteen years ago is unrecognizable. And, although things today are radically different than what they were when I first entered sobriety, there are times when I can get lax about the practices that I know bring me peace and serenity. Whether I look at my life as a seminarian or my life in recovery, although it seems like I am eating, breathing, and sleeping God or working the heck out of my twelve-step recovery program, I forget the importance of taking time to fill my cup through quiet time with God.

With the year anniversary of the COVID lockdown and the coming of Holy Week, I find myself so grateful to be a part of the Episcopal Church and a Twelve Step program based on daily practices and rituals that bring me back to keeping the first thing, the first thing.

Stacey C.
Austin, TX