Last night I was listening to Corey D. from Owensboro, KY, speak at a meeting at our Area Convention when he used a word that caught my attention:

Sponsorable.

Then, a little later, he pulled out an old A.A. saying I hadn’t heard in a long time:

“If you wanna drink, that’s your business. If you wanna stop, that’s ours.”

I’ve heard variations of that saying throughout my years in Alcoholics Anonymous, but last night I heard those two ideas together in a way I hadn’t before.

Because they really are connected.

A.A. has a message that can save my life.

But I have to let you give it to me.

You Can’t Make Me Want This

When I first came into the rooms, I thought the people in A.A. were supposed to somehow fix me.

I was hurting. My life wasn’t working particularly well. Alcohol had beaten me into a place where I was finally willing to walk through the doors.

Wasn’t that enough?

Not quite.

Walking through the door got me into the room. It didn’t necessarily get the program into me.

There were people around me who had found a way out. They had experience. They had worked the Steps. They knew something about alcoholism that I desperately needed to learn.

• They could tell me what had worked for them.
• They could sit beside me.
• They could open the Big Book with me.
• They could introduce me to the Twelve Steps.
• They could answer the phone.
• They could invite me to meetings.
• They could tell me the truth when I didn’t particularly want to hear it.

But there was one thing they couldn’t do. They couldn’t make me willing. That part was mine.

Maybe that is the dividing line in that old saying: “If you wanna drink, that’s your business. If you wanna stop, that’s ours.”

A.A. isn’t going to chase me down the street and wrestle the bottle out of my hand. It isn’t going to force recovery on me.

But the moment I become willing, even slightly willing, to consider another way of living, there are people here who know exactly what to do with that willingness.

Being Sponsorable Doesn’t Mean Being Obedient

I think we need to be careful with this word, though.

Being sponsorable doesn’t mean surrendering my judgment to another human being. It doesn’t mean my sponsor becomes my boss. It doesn’t mean blindly doing everything another member tells me to do.

A sponsor isn’t my Higher Power.

Being sponsorable, at least as I understand it, means being teachable.

It means I become willing to listen to the experience of somebody who has walked this road before me.

It means that when my sponsor says, “Let’s look at what the Big Book says about that,” my first response isn’t automatically:

“Yeah, but…”

That may be one of the great warning signs that I’m becoming less sponsorable.

Yeah, but…

Yeah, but you don’t understand. Yeah, but my situation is different. Yeah, but you don’t know what they did. Yeah, but I’ve already tried that. Yeah, but I don’t believe that.

I can “yeah, but” myself right out of the sunlight of the Spirit.

Willingness Doesn’t Have to Be Huge

Here’s what I love about A.A.: I don’t think enormous willingness is required at the beginning. Sometimes willingness starts incredibly small.

Maybe I don’t believe everything you’re telling me.

Maybe I’m suspicious of God or I think the Steps sound ridiculous or I don’t particularly like my sponsor’s suggestion or I’m sitting in the back of the room with my arms crossed thinking half of you are crazy.

Fine. Can I become willing to listen?

Can I become willing to consider that perhaps the life I’ve been managing so successfully might not actually be going that well?

Can I entertain the possibility that someone who has recovered from alcoholism might know something I don’t?

• Can I try one suggestion?
• Can I read one chapter?
• Can I make one phone call?
• Can I take one Step?

That tiny crack of willingness may be all that’s needed for some light to get through.

The Big Book doesn’t tell us that we must arrive overflowing with faith. In Step Two it speaks of willingness as the beginning. Later, in discussing Step Three, it says: “Willingness was the key.”

That’s a remarkably simple proposition.

I don’t have to understand everything before I begin. I just have to become willing enough to begin.

The Message Still Has to Be Carried

There’s another side to this.

If the newcomer has a responsibility to be sponsorable, those of us who have been around awhile have a responsibility to remain available.

“If you wanna stop, that’s ours.”

Ours.

That’s a powerful word.

It means somebody else’s alcoholism isn’t my business to control, but carrying the message is absolutely my business.

The newcomer shouldn’t have to prove they’re worthy of our time. They shouldn’t have to know A.A. etiquette. They shouldn’t have to understand the Steps. They shouldn’t have to speak our language. They shouldn’t even have to know exactly what they want yet.

Maybe all they have is that tiny bit of willingness. Our job is to meet them there.

The Big Book describes this beautifully in Working With Others: we share what happened to us. We talk about alcoholism. We explain how we found recovery. And then we allow the other person to decide whether they want what we’re offering.

That’s sponsorship at its healthiest.

• Not control.
• Not coercion.
• Not governance.

One alcoholic saying to another: Here’s what happened to me. Here’s what worked. If you want this, I’ll walk with you.

Am I Still Sponsorable?

And maybe this isn’t just a newcomer question.

I’ve been sober a long time, and perhaps that’s precisely why I need to ask myself occasionally: Am I still sponsorable? Can my sponsor still tell me something I don’t want to hear? Can somebody with six months sober point out something I’ve missed after decades? Can I sit in a Big Book meeting and hear something in a paragraph I’ve read hundreds of times?

• Can I change my mind?
• Can I admit I was wrong?
• Can I take direction?
• Can I still be taught?

Because long-term sobriety can create its own peculiar danger. I can accumulate enough experience that I stop receiving experience. I can know the literature so well that I stop hearing it. I can become so accustomed to carrying the message that I forget I still need the message carried to me.

That’s not recovery. That’s insulation.

I Have to Let You Help Me

Maybe that’s what stayed with me most from Corey’s talk. Recovery requires this extraordinary partnership. You can’t recover for me. But I don’t recover entirely by myself either.

You carry the message. I become willing to receive it. You share your experience. I become willing to listen. You show me the Steps. I become willing to take them. You tell me what worked for you. I become willing to try it.

And somewhere in that exchange between one alcoholic and another, God does something neither of us could manufacture on our own.

So that old saying sounds a little different to me today: “If you wanna drink, that’s your business. If you wanna stop, that’s ours.”

Maybe there’s an unspoken sentence that belongs right after it: But you’ve got to let us help.

I have to become sponsorable.

Not submissive, obedient, or dependent upon another human being.

Teachable. Willing. Open. Willing to listen. Willing to apply. Willing to discover that perhaps the people who have walked this road before me know something worth hearing.

Because A.A. can carry a life-saving message right to my doorstep. My sponsor can put it in my hands. The Fellowship can surround me with it. But eventually, I have to open the door.

And sometimes recovery begins with nothing more complicated than saying: “Okay. I’m willing to listen.”

In love & service,