Made A Decision
(97)
AA is all a bit confusing at first.
There's all that friendliness to deal with: "Hi, I'm Bill, Welcome!"
Encouragement: "You are the most important person in this room" ... "Keep coming back!"
Instructions: "You'll need to find a sponsor to take you through the Steps" ... "Read the Big Book" ... "Take it One Day at a Time."
Most of us respond with wariness or relief, fear or hope, confusion or willingness ... or something in between. But as long as we keep coming back, it soon falls comfortably into place.
That first powerless-over-alcohol-step was the big one. The one we had to accept 100 percent, even though many of us weren't yet even sure we were alcoholics. (I was one of those). Coming to understand our powerlessness can take us a bit of time.
And that's OK, as long as we keep attending meetings to listen and learn.
The second step immediately gave us a loophole in that "came to believe" wording.
"Whew," past tense, we won't have to "come to believe" right away, we thought.
Then - right on its heels - that Third Step arrived, instructing us to turn our will and our life over to that Higher Power, the one we weren't even sure we believed in yet!
How in the Hell are we supposed to be able to do that???
It's was easier than we could believe at first. As it says in our wonderful 12 & 12 book:
No matter how one wishes to try, exactly how can he turn his own will and his own life over to the care of whatever God he thinks there is? A beginning, even the smallest, is all that is needed.
Once we have placed the key of willingness in the lock and have the door ever so slightly open, we find that we can always open it some more.
Though self-will may slam it shut again, as it frequently does, it will always respond the moment we again pick up the key of willingness.
Many of us arrive in AA with a belly full of fed up about God. And our program makes it clear there is no need to have a personal deity to stay sober. There are many agnostics and atheists in AA with long term sobriety.
The only requirement for any of us is to acknowledge our inability to "control" our drinking and accept there may be something more powerful than us for help with that.
Recovery is a journey, not a destination. The spiritual path is our never-ending story. We learn as we go and we never stop learning. That's why you'll find old farts like me still attending meetings after decades of sober living. "More will be revealed" - remains absolutely true.
"Wanting what we want when we want it" is part of our alcoholic wiring. Our early superiority complex (hiding our second inferiority one) tells us, "I've got this sobriety thing," even when we have just barely begun our spiritual journey.
And if we are staying sober, we have indeed "got this" - but we've got this for today only.
Learning that, internalising it, is part of the spiritual rewiring that takes place in recovery OVER TIME.
Our lifetime of self-centeredness can't be reversed all at once. There are many things to be learned and rebellion can dog our every step at first.
Newsflash - that's normal!
There's a funeral involved on our graduation day from AA, so I'm personally in no hurry to get there! Recovery is an adventure. It's interesting, challenging, and much of it (but not all) is downright fun. And the more we turn things over to our Higher Power for higher guidance, the easier it becomes!
An alcoholic can never get well, if by "well" we mean being able to safely drink again. But can we stay sober? Absolutely. We can stay sober every day for the rest of our lives - as long as we do it in manageable one-day-at-a-time chunks.
We first turn our drinking problem (and eventually every other problem) over to a Power greater than us. Millions ask that Power every morning to keep us sober and thank that Power at bedtime for another sober day. It never fails us when we do it, or at least that has been my own experience. You can easily make it your experience, too.
Our Big Book states:
When we became alcoholics, crushed by a self-imposed crisis we could not postpone or evade, we had to fearlessly face the proposition that either God is everything or else He is nothing. God either is or He isn't.
Our spiritual path is an individual one, lived collectively. We get guidance from our literature, our sponsor, and our AA friends, but we don't find God by reading or word of mouth. We earn our faith by living it in our own individual way - although honesty and carrying the message is always involved.
AA eventually brought me to a personal God, a companion for my life journey that I can trust to look out for me. It didn't happen overnight.
It didn't happen quickly. I traveled up and down many spiritual by-paths before becoming comfortable with my own quirky, humorous, tough-love, ever-present God.
I am gradually learning to want God's will for me above all else. This requires prayer and meditation on my part to - little by slowly - gain more spiritual understandings.
When I allow my inherent selfishness, dishonesty, fear or resentment to reappear and settle in, I block God's communication with me. Steps 10 and 11 protect me from that. I'll never reach spiritual perfection (damnit), but I can work on improving.
Letting go of our pride allows our Higher Power to get hands-on in dealing with any problems we may face. We can learn to upload our problems onto broader shoulders. Serenity then becomes part of our daily bread.
And joy butters it.
Does God speak to me? Yes, but seldom directly. (He did once, very early in my sobriety, and it - literally - scared the Hell out of me.) Instead I get nudges, whispers in the wind, conversations with AA friends and my sponsor, many magnificent displays from nature, and in songs and books that clearly address my own issues.
God’s subtle ways of communication are surely true for each of us. We only need to pay attention and life is our school.
The Big Big Book (Bible) gives us the tale of the son who tired of living the life of a wastrel and returned to his family. At the end of the story, the father of that Prodigal Son says: "He was dead and is alive again, he was lost and is found." We alcoholics who have found sobriety in A.A. were certainly in that same category, and it is God - the Father - who restores us to our real, sober selves.
All of us have surely felt the Divine Presence at the seaside, under a spectagular night sky, hiking in breathtakin mountain scenery or planting in our own gardens?
I know that I have.
I've also felt God in a handful of meetings over the years, present as a Force so powerful it changed the hearts of everyone there, including mine.
Keep coming back.
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