October 12: Hearing Yourself in Someone's Share

Someone at the meeting told your story tonight. They didn’t know it was yours.

It happens all the time. You’re sitting there, half-listening, and someone starts talking. About the way they used to hide their drinking in the garage. About how they got defensive any time their wife asked a question. About the resentment they held against their brother for years. And something in your chest tightens. That’s you. That’s exactly you.

Sometimes it’s comforting. You’re not the only one. Sometimes it stings. They’re describing a habit you thought you’d outgrown, and you realize you haven’t.

Either way, it’s a gift. It’s very hard to see yourself clearly from the inside. Other people’s stories hold up a mirror at an angle you couldn’t find on your own. That’s one reason meetings matter so much, even when you feel like you’ve heard it all.

The writer of Hebrews tells believers to encourage each other every day. Why? So that none of them get hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. Sin is deceitful. It tells you you’re fine. It tells you this habit isn’t a problem. It tells you you’re different from those people. Hardening happens slowly, when nobody’s around to say otherwise.

Meetings are one of the places where that hardening gets interrupted. Not by lectures. By honesty. One person tells the truth about themselves, and it gives everyone else permission to see the truth about themselves too.

Step Ten asks us to keep taking personal inventory. Some of the best inventory happens while someone else is talking. You don’t have to share about it tonight. But don’t let it slip away either. Take it home. Look at it. Ask God what He wants you to do with it.

And if you’re the one sharing, know that your honesty might be doing that for someone else. You won’t usually find out. Share anyway.

One thing today

Go to a meeting this week, and listen for the moment you hear yourself in someone else. Afterward, write down what you heard and what it showed you about you.

A prayer

Lord, keep my heart from getting hard. Use other people’s honesty to show me what I can’t see on my own. And when it’s my turn to speak, make me honest enough to help someone else. Amen.

Meetings feed the daily honesty of Step Ten.

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