God Has Such A Sense of Humor – AA Speaker – Don M.

Don M. opens with a story that captures the absurdity and grace of recovery: a call from the president of the state bar offering him a seat on the ethics committee. The irony isn’t lost on him. In his first ten years practicing law, sober and white-knuckling it, the ethics committee was one of the few things that terrified him more than the IRS or FBI. He had spent his early life cycling through institutions repeatedly—a pattern that shaped his fear of authority and judgment. And now, decades into recovery, the institution he once dreaded was asking him to serve as a guide, to be the ethical authority that lawyers in Kentucky could call with their hardest questions. If they followed his advice, they would be protected from disciplinary action—completely insulated—even if he was wrong.

The absurdity of this is what Don M. emphasizes. God, he says, has such a sense of humor.

But underneath the irony is a deeper recovery principle: the role of surrender and letting go. Don M. spent so much of his life trying to steer the log. He uses this metaphor—an ant on a river, gripping and clawing and convinced it could control where the current takes it. That’s how he lived. Frantic, exhausted, driving himself crazy trying to manipulate every outcome, every relationship, every situation. The ant believes it’s steering the log. It’s not. The log floats where it floats. The river decides.

What changed for him wasn’t willpower or determination. It was a fundamental shift in how he understood his role in his own life. When he finally stopped trying to steer the log—stopped trying to live his life as that little ant convinced it could control everything—something opened up. He could actually pay attention to what was right in front of him. Not the grand vision of where the log should go. Not the elaborate plans to avoid disaster. Just the immediate, present moment work that was his to do.

That shift, he suggests, is what made everything else possible. Not because he became more capable or more trustworthy, but because he got out of his own way. And when he did, others—non-alcoholics, judges, the state bar president—somehow saw something worth trusting. They extended a kind of forgiveness that, Don M. says, passes all understanding.

The talk captures what happens when someone truly grasps Step 3: not as a one-time moment, but as a working principle. Surrender doesn’t mean giving up. It means giving up the pretense that you’re the one driving. It means showing up for the ant work—the small, immediate, available work—and trusting the river.