Keep Coming Back

"Keep coming back. It works if you work it."
I didn't realize how much I had missed those words until they were spoken this past Monday night. My best friend took me to a recovery meeting. It was the first one I had been to since I was home for Thanksgiving break, and that was the only one I've been to since school started in August.
"Keep coming back..."
I don't want to live without a support group. As wonderful as my friends are, as wonderful as my school is, there's nothing that compares. It hit me that I love my family so much now because of our mutual understanding of our past. I have a friend who struggles with depression; we share a common knowledge of that one area. Another friend has been in my life since I was born; she knows me almost as well as anyone does. They are wonderful, but we don't fully understand each other. I can't relate to them because I've never been through anything similar to their lives, and they can't relate to my life, either.
"It works if you work it."
Daily recovery readings are not enough. People need each other. People need other souls who understand them on a deeper level. There is no one who understands addiction and codependency like someone who is and/or has lived with an addict. A friend can try to understand, but it will never quite get through to them. Good friends might be enough until someone really understands you, but the support group is a healthy addiction that replaces unhealthy ones. It's a way to learn to rely on a Higher Power, to live one day at a time and take responsibility for ourselves. There is no way I can express how much I need that in my life and how grateful I am.

God, grant me the serenity
To accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference;
Living one day at a time,
Enjoying one moment at a time,
Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace.
Taking, as Jesus did, this sinful world
As it is, not as I would have it,
Trusting that You will make all things right
If I surrender to Your will
So that I may be reasonably happy in this life
And supremely happy with You
Forever in the next.
Amen.
- Reinhold Niebuhr