Back in November of 2024, I wrote a blog post about my needlepoint rug. I shared about how it took every stitch to make it —one stitch at a time and over ten years of meetings to complete it.

I shared that life was messy and difficult at the time I wrote it but if I just took life one minute, one hour, one day at a time, I would find my way with the help of my higher power.

Well, life is still very messy and sad and difficult. I got to thinking about my rug again. When I look at it, I see the completion of all those stitches. I had a friend put a backing on the rug when it was completed so I don’t see the back of it, raw with all the threads and mistakes. I only see the pretty outcome. The problems and difficulties of those years in early sobriety don’t show when I look at it. I do not think about them often.

The other day I looked at another piece of needlework I did. It was hanging on a wall in my bedroom. I see it every day. When I was looking at it this time, it fell off the wall. It was upside down. It looked so messy with threads going this way and that and threads hanging loose —not pretty at all. It seemed a metaphor for my life these days.

Nothing is pretty. My garden isn’t growing like I hoped it would in my new climate. The world is a mess and there seems little hope for resolution and help for those is so much need. Some family members are angry with me, and some are dealing with many problems.

I try to honestly share in meetings my struggles and work to sort out my part and make amends where needed. I talk with my sponsor and have lunch with AA friends.  I pray and read daily from spiritual writers. So why do I feel so lost and messy?

The back of that needlepoint showed me —I want life and sobriety to never be messy and sad and lonely. I’ve been sober a long time—shouldn’t my life be smoother and more pleasing?  As soon as I ask the question, the answer comes. The gift of sobriety and a relationship with God has no guarantees.

We are instead given promises—12 of them. When the Promises are read at one of my meetings and it gets to the question—

Are these extravagant promises? We think not—but I find myself saying to myself (in a whisper) —you bet they are extravagant!  AND YET—They are being fulfilled among us—sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. They will always materialize if we work for them.

There will always be messiness and sadness and all those things I’d like to avoid, but if I work through them and turn it over to God, the promises are there, too. Libbie S.