Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits, who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy, who satisfies you with good so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.

Psalm 103:2-5

Renewal sounds so good when we sober up. That’s exactly what I wanted. A little rest. A little clearing of the mind. A little renewal of my spirit.

A recharge.

And I looked around at some of the clear-eyed old timers to see pillars of sobriety and hope and what appeared to be well-tended lives.

Let me dry out a bit, work some steps and that could be me in a few years.

And I started to listen. These were just people, and invariably the ones whose stories resonated the most and whose sobriety and faith I most wanted to grasp onto pointed toward God as their common solution.

Somehow this was my childhood faith made practical and being lived out in real life. Here was the evidence I unwittingly began to doubt in my years of using. That God is loving and active.

He does forgive and heal and redeem.

I began to believe this could be possible for me. Through fellowship and friendship and listening, my childish faith began to bud in a place I’d have never dreamed—the rooms of AA.

The seemingly impossible renewal I imagined transformed into the even better renewal he’d prepared all along.