Lesson 12 – Step 5: Confess

I have to imagine that if there were only four steps in the Celebrate Recovery program it would be a tough sell for folks.  I can only imagine telling people that we have a program where they are going to have to admit they’ve been in denial, admit they can’t solve all their problems on their own and that they need God’s help, they need to start turning their lives over to God, and then list out all the bad things they’ve done in their lives, and then that’s it.  I imagine most folks would pass on that.  Luckily there aren’t four steps, there are twelve.  And the promise of these twelve steps is a new life with God and freedom from our hurts, hang-ups and habits.  This starts with Step 5 and our lesson for today, confessing our faults to ourselves, to God and to another human being.

Our acrostic for this lesson is CONFESS:

C – Confess Your Shortcomings, Resentments and Sins

O – Obey God’s Direction

N – No More Guilt

F – Face the Truth

E – Ease the Pain

S – Stop the Blame

S – Start Accepting God’s Forgiveness

Let’s look at each one in more detail:

Confess Your Shortcomings, Resentments and Sins

For me the first part of this came when I began to realize I had done some wrongs in my life.  If you had asked me to do an inventory before I got into recovery, I would have simply told you, “I’m a good guy, I just drink too much.”  I really thought that was about the extent of it.  By doing an inventory (and especially the fifth column which forced me to focus on my faults) I began to realize that there was more going on in my life then just drinking a little too much.  The next part to this is being willing to confess these things to God and another human being.  I know that for me this can be a struggle.  Pride and fear can cause me to not want to confess my faults.  My pride tells me I don’t need to confess.  Some things my pride tells me are “after all, everyone does it, and it’s not really hurting anybody but me so why would anyone care” or “I’m an alcoholic so I don’t need to confess my faults in other areas of my life”.  If my pride isn’t telling me I don’t need to confess, my fear is telling me I don’t want to confess.  My fear tells me “if people found out about what you’ve done they wouldn’t want anything to do with you” or “if they find out about what you are doing they won’t respect you.”  Fear tells me the pain and embarrassment of my faults is too much to let out.  This pride and fear puts up barriers in my relationship with God and my fellow man.  If I can’t even find the willingness to confess my faults to God how am I ever going to accept God’s help in fixing them?  If I am unwilling to confess my faults to my fellow man how am I going to let anyone in to help me?  By getting past my pride and my fear I can tear down the barriers I’ve created and start on the path of healing.

Obey God’s Direction

The concept of confessing our faults is based in Biblical teachings.  In Romans Chapter 14 we are told that “every knee will bow” and “every tongue will acknowledge” God and that each of us will “give an account of ourselves to God” (BibleGateway.com, n.d.).  There is ultimately no escape from confessing our faults to God, we will all do this eventually.  In the same way, James Chapter 5 says you are to “confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed” (BibleGateway.com, n.d.).  Confessing our faults is a part of our spiritual walk.

No More Guilt

I know for me keeping secrets can cause a lot of guilt in my life.  When I do things that harm others it hurts me and causes guilt.  When I keep these things a secret it causes me to feel even more guilt.  I’ve found that admitting my faults is a powerful step to eliminating that guilt.  Bringing what I’ve done to God is an important beginning to the healing process and admitting what I’ve done to another person eliminates the guilt that that my secrecy has caused.

Face the Truth

Confessing my faults has also helped when it comes to seeing the truth.  First of all, it forces me to acknowledged that I’ve done some wrong in my life.  I have to get past any denial I have about my past and be honest.  Confessing also helps me to understand the magnitude of the things that have happened in my life.  I have a tendency to blow things out of proportion or to minimize things.  I’ve also found that the longer things bounce around inside my head, the worse it gets.  I’ll blow things out of proportion and start to think to myself, “nobody is worse than me” or I will convince myself that I’m the only person that has done these type of things and that I should be ashamed of myself.  And if I’m not blowing things out of proportion I’m minimizing them.  I will tell myself that I’m not really hurting anyone so it doesn’t matter, or that I’m not as bad as other people so I can continue on with what I am doing.  Sometimes just the act of saying things out loud can get me past this thinking.  Just confessing it to another person I will realize that the things I’ve been blowing out of proportion are not as bad as I’ve been making them out to be or I will realize that I’m impacting others more than I think if I’ve been minimizing.  My sponsor also helps with this.  Their neutral opinion and loving honesty can help me to face the truth about my past and its impact.

Ease the Pain

In the Leader’s Guide for this lesson there is the quote that, “Pain is inevitable for all of us, but misery is optional.”  I think this is an appropriate quote for this section.  We are all going to experience pain in our lives and we are all going to sin, but what we choose to do with that will determine our future.  Do we choose to keep the pain of our misdeeds to ourselves, preventing God’s healing power and the healing power of the group from helping us?  Choosing to keep secrets is choosing to prolong the pain and is only inviting misery into our lives.  As I’ve heard many times in recovery, “we are only as sick as our secrets.”  Do we choose the path of continued pain shutting others out and letting our secrets build barriers between ourselves and God, or do we ease the pain and let others and God in and experience healing.

Stop the Blame

When we confess our faults we can get past blaming others.  In Step 4 I was forced to find my part in my resentments, and in doing so I had to take a hard look at my own actions and begin to take accountability for what I had done.  When I finally confessed these faults to my sponsor, I could no longer blame others for my actions as I had finally said out loud that I was responsible.  I had taken accountability for what I had done.  When analyzing my part in my resentments I also began to see what things were mine to own and what things were not.  I learned how to avoid false guilt and only take accountability for what my faults were and not to take ownership of what others had done.  I learned how to stop blaming others for my faults and stop blaming myself for other’s faults.

Start Accepting God’s Forgiveness

The process of accepting God’s forgiveness begins with acknowledging our wrongs to Him.  If we are unwilling to acknowledge our faults to ourselves and unwilling to acknowledge our faults to God how are we going to be able to seek forgiveness for them?  For me the first part of seeking forgiveness is to go to God and be specific about what I’ve done and acknowledge this to Him.  From there I can begin to seek His forgiveness in my life.

Other Thoughts

I know for me one of the biggest sources of fear I have when it comes to confessing my faults is this fear that I am so unique.  In my head I will begin to believe that I’m the only person that has done these terrible things or that I’m the worst person that’s ever done them.  This fuels fear and embarrassment and pushes me to not want to be honest with myself and especially with others.  The thing I have learned in recovery though is that I am not as unique as I like to think I am.  In fact, I haven’t found anything that’s particularly unique about me.  All of my faults and shortcomings can be traced back to seven deadly sins that existed long before I did.  It’s not like I’ve invented a whole new deadly sin that only I’ve done.  I have to remind myself of this sometimes when I start to feel that fear.

In the same vein, I can find myself hitting peaks and valleys in how I view myself.  Sometimes I will be thinking to myself about how great I am.  I’ll be patting myself on the back for how great a husband I am, how great a father I am, how great an employee I am and how lucky everyone is to have me in their life.  Sometimes I will be thinking the opposite.  I will be thinking of how terrible a husband and father I am and how that if people at work knew how incompetent I really was they’d fire me on the spot.  A phrase that I have learned in recovery to help me get through these peaks and valleys when they come is, “better than some, not as good as others”.  The fact is that I’m not the best or the worst husband, father, employee, Christian, tennis player, etc in the world.  The fact is that when it comes to any and everything in my life, I am better than some people and I’m not as good as others.  This also helps me when I feel fear about confessing my faults.  I’m not the best or the worst person out there, the fact is that I’m better than some, and not as good as others.  Reminding myself of this also helps to get me past my fear of confessing my faults.

One caution on doing your 5^th Step.  The relationship between a sponsor and a sponsee is not protected like attorney-client privilege or confession with clergy.  If you have illegal activity within the statute of limitations to confess you can do that with a member of the clergy or find an attorney that is in recovery and pay them a dollar and do part or all of your 5^th Step with them.  This way you do not have to worry about a sponsor being forced to testify against you if the worst case scenario happens.

Lessons 10 & 11 – Step 4: Spiritual Inventory

When planning any kind of journey the most logical method is to know where you are, figure out where you want to go, and then make a plan to get from Point A to Point B.  I’ve found that knowing where you want to go is usually not too difficult.  In the business world, companies know that they want more revenue, or lower costs, or higher customer approval, etc.  Figuring that part out is usually pretty straight-forward.  The same can be said about our recoveries.  Most of us came in to Celebrate Recovery because we had some hurt, habit or hang-up that we wanted to be gone.  We wanted to quit drinking, stop looking at pornography, or just be happier.  In Step 2 we embraced that the path to these goals was a closer relationship with God – making improving this relationship our true goal.  But while I’ve found it’s easy to define where we want to go, getting there is still very difficult.

One of the biggest obstacles to building our plan to getting to a closer relationship with God is knowing where we stand today.  In the business world companies perform audits or take stock on a regular basis so that they know where they are.  Once they know this they take a look at where they want to go and they can then develop a plan to get from A to B.  The same is true for us in our recovery, if we are going to build a closer relationship with God we are going to have to get honest with ourselves about where we are in our spiritual walk and what our problem areas are.  I won’t try to “sugar coat” this, doing a spiritual inventory is not easy.  Asking ourselves the tough questions and being honest is tough, but this will form the basis of the work we do in the future steps that will help us to achieve our goal of a closer relationship with God and freedom from our hurts, habits and hang-ups.

We will be looking at eight areas of our lives.  Ask yourself these questions and be honest with yourself about where you are.  If these trigger things that need to go on your inventory put them on there.

Area 1: Relationship With Others

1. Who has hurt you?
2. Against whom have you been holding a grudge?
3. Against whom are you seeking revenge?
4. Are you jealous of someone?
5. Have you tried to justify your bad attitude by saying it’s “their fault”?
6. Who have you hurt?
7. Who have you been critical about or gossiped about?

As you’ve been working on your inventory and looking at resentments you have probably been uncovering incidents pertaining to the first three questions.  In addition to resentment, we should also look at people we have been jealous of.  There could also be people we have left off our inventory because we have tried to justify our bad behavior or bad attitude because of what the other person has done.  All of us have hurt somebody at some point in our lives.  One thing I had to come to grips with during recovery is that it doesn’t matter if I intend to hurt somebody or not, all that matters is that I did hurt them.  Are there people I have hurt that are missing from my inventory?  I also know in the past that I have certainly gossiped and been critical of others behind their back as a way of retaliating, but I never realized that these words can hurt and that I needed to note that in my inventory.

Area 2: Priorities in Life

1. After making the decision to turn your life and your will over to God, in what areas of your life are you still not putting God first?
2. What in your past is interfering with your doing God’s will?
3. What have been your priorities in your job? Friendships?  Personal goals?
4. Who did your priorities affect?
5. What was good about your priorities?
6. What was wrong about them?

In Step 3 we began the journey of turning our life and our will over to God, but are there still areas of your life that you have not?  If so, could it be that there are some ambitions you have in life preventing you?  Perhaps you are worried as I have been in my life, that God’s plan for you is different from your own and you can’t risk turning control of your career or personal relationships over to Him.  Perhaps there are some pleasures you have in this life that you don’t want to turn over to God because you are worried He will make you give them up.  Our ambitions and pleasures can be major roadblocks to turning control over to God.

When looking at our priorities we should also look at our jobs.  Analyze what your priority has been at your work.  Have you been more interested in creating friendships and relationships or has making your career goals happen always been your top priority.  We should take a look at who was impacted by these priorities and what the impact was.  Did putting personal relationships in front of the needs of the company negatively impact your work place?  On the other hand, did building a solid relationship with your team or customers help?  Perhaps your drive to achieve your career goals helped the company also achieved its goals, but did you hurt other people in order to get what you wanted?  Think about your work priorities and note the good and bad they have done.

Area 3: Your Attitude

1. Do you find yourself having an “attitude of gratitude” or do you find yourself always complaining about your circumstances?
2. In what areas of your life are you ungrateful?
3. Have you gotten angry and easily blown up at people?
4. Have you been sarcastic?
5. What in your past is still causing you fear or anxiety?

Our attitude is another area that we can look at when analyzing our current spiritual state.  If you have been around recovery programs for a while you have perhaps heard the phrase “attitude of gratitude”.  Do you find yourself able to see the good in your life’s situations or do you still find yourself struggling with gratitude?  Are there specific areas of your life or triggers that cause you to struggle to find gratitude?  When analyzing our attitude we should also look at issues with anger and sarcasm.  In addition, are there areas of your past that are still causing you fear or anxiety?  I have heard that fear and faith cannot occupy the same space, so if you do find yourself having fear over your past are there parts of your past you have not turned over to God?

Area 4: Your Integrity

1. In what past dealing were you dishonest?
2. Have you stolen things?
3. Have you exaggerated yourself to make yourself look better?
4. In what areas of your past have you used false humility?
5. Have you pretended to live one way in front of your Christian friends and another way at work or home?

I know for me integrity was something that needed a major overhaul in my life when I started recovery.  I remember when I first began my recovery journey I started a journal, and my only rule for that journal was that I would tell the 100% truth in what I wrote.  It was truly amazing how much I struggled to do that!  Denial, minimizing, and justifying my bad behavior had become so ingrained in my head I had to work hard to stop doing this in my journal.  When looking at our lives have we been dishonest with ourselves or with others?  Have we stolen things from other people?  Have we exaggerated our past accomplishments to make ourselves seem more impressive to other folks – whether it was something as seemingly unimportant as a “fishing story” or something more serious like lying on a resume.  Have you found yourself pretending to be humble but in reality you were feeding your ego.  (As the text says, “humility is never gained by seeking it”.)  Finally, have you pretended to be one way in front of your church family but acted completely different once you left church?  Do you change your beliefs, the way you talk or the way you act in order to fit in with whatever crowd you’re in.

Area 5: Your Mind

1. Have you guarded your mind in the past? What did you deny?
2. Have you filled your mind with hurtful and unhealthy movies, Internet sites, television programs, magazines or books?
3. Have you failed to concentrate on the positive truths of the Bible?

Since our minds govern what our bodies do, we will look now at our thinking.  Denial was the first lesson in recovery, but the beginning of our recovery journey is by no means the only time we will face denial in our lives.  Looking at the columns on the inventory I can see where denial can impact every one of them: from being in denial about our resentments, to not being honest about the impact, or not seeing what our part was in the resentment.  The best way I have found to cut through denial is by talking with my sponsor and getting a caring but honest second opinion.  In addition, one thing I have found is that my thinking is impacted by what I have been feeding my mind.  Have you allowed unhealthy choices in entertainment to fill your mind?  Have you setup daily time to read the Bible and fill your mind with God’s word?  As my dad once said about feeding bad data into a computer and then looking at the results – “garbage in, garbage out”.

Area 6: Your Body

1. In what ways have you mistreated your body?
2. What activities or habits caused harm to your physical health?

Many times, the hurts, habits and hang-ups we have can negatively impact our bodies.  Whether it is through abusing drugs and alcohol, over-eating, or even losing sleep through worry; our bodies can be impacted.  In addition to our addictions and compulsive behaviors there are other activities we can do or fail to do that impact our health.  Are there ways you are hurting your body that you need to bring to God?

Area 7: Your Family

1. Have you mistreated anyone in your family? How?
2. Against whom in your family do you have a resentment?
3. To whom do you owe amends?
4. What is the family secret that you have been denying?

When I am working with somebody on their 4^th Step I advise them to go ahead and just write down everybody in their immediate family and start from there.  Chances are with people you have been this close to there is something that needs to go on your Inventory.  Perhaps there are members of your family you have resentments against.  Perhaps there are people you have hurt that you owe an amends to.  Is there some family secret that you have been keeping that you need to put down to begin the healing process?

Area 8: Your Church

1. Have you been faithful to your church in the past?
2. Have you been critical instead of active?
3. Have you discouraged your family’s support of the church?

The final area we will discuss is our church.  When thinking about your inventory look at how faithful you have been to your church.  For me this includes attendance, service and tithing.  Sometimes it can be easy to be critical of the church – whether it is the pastor, the music or even the color of the carpets.  Think about whether you’ve spent your energy being critical of the church or if you have spent your energy being active and participating in church activities.  Finally, think about the impact your lack of support may have had on your family.  I know in my family prior to getting into recovery my wife had to beg and plead to get me to go to church, therefore we only went a couple of times a year.  Once I got into recovery and started to go to church every week, it soon became our family’s habit to go.

Other Thoughts

An interesting thought that was pointed out in the text is that we have three characters:

1. The character we exhibit
2. The character we think we have
3. The character we truly have

I had never thought of this but it is very true.  What people see from me is probably quite different then how I see myself, and if I am honest with myself how I see myself is probably different from reality.  Going through the Spiritual Inventory and being honest with myself helps me to see just how much difference there can be between these views.  The good news is that by working the steps I think we have a real opportunity to move these closer together.  Certainly by taking our Spiritual Inventory we can move the character we think we have closer to the character we truly have.

Going through this lesson was not easy for me.  It was tough to really think about where I was as I asked myself these questions.  I began to actually get down on myself and my recovery as I thought to myself that I should be doing better in every category, yet all I could see were my shortcomings.  The thought that got me out of this slump was remembering the phrase that we seek “progress rather than perfection”.  When I looked at it from that light my perspective changed quite a bit.  I thought about the person I was 11 years ago when I was a daily drinker and I thought about the person I was 6 ½ years ago when I got into recovery.  I thought about how different my life is now compared to then.  Yes, I still have a long ways to go, but I could also see the progress I am making.  Perhaps you are at the beginning of your recovery journey and struggling to see progress in your life.  The fact that you are willing to read this shows progress over where you have been in the past.  We’re never going to achieve the perfection that many of us want, but if we keep on our recovery journeys we can keep taking steps in that direction.

For those who might have found this lesson disheartening I will pass on something that I have been taught in recovery.  Sometimes we may enter recovery thinking everything will instantaneously be better, but that’s not always the case.  In fact I have never heard anyone say that recovery is going to fix all your problems over night.  The phrase I have often heard though is that it gets different and then it gets better.  Your experience with the steps will probably mirror this.  You are doing things differently now.  You are breaking through denial, trusting your problems to God, turning your life over to Him and now taking a hard look at your life and being honest with yourself.  These are all probably very different from how you have done things in the past.  The good news is that the steps that follow are going to build on this. We are going to confess our faults and get some freedom from our past, turn our defects of character over to God and let His will be done, and we are going to make amends to people we have hurt and start to repair our relationships.  All of these will in turn involve doing things differently, and my experience has been that doing this work has made my life better.

One final note on inventories, remember to keep your inventory balanced.  If you’re like me then your mind might automatically focus on all the bad aspects of your life.  Don’t let that throw your inventory off, we have all done things to help others in our lives – give yourself credit for what you have done.  It will help you to see the progress you are making and can help to see how things are getting better in your life.

Lesson 9 – Step 4: Inventory

Over the past few lessons we have been discussing how important a moral (or honest) inventory is and how it can impact your recovery.  In this lesson we will discuss how to actually build the inventory.  (To aid in following along it may be helpful to look in the Celebrate Recovery Participants Guide 2 on pages 30 & 31.)  Building your inventory will require putting pen to paper (or conversely you can type out your inventory).  This should not be a mental exercise, you need to actually write down your inventory.  Do not try to rush through this exercise, I have found that being as thorough as possible is key to getting the most out of it.  The technique I was taught was to go column by column versus going row by row, so that is how we will go through this.

Column 1: The Person

In the first column we are going to list the people, institutions and principles that we have resentments towards or fear of.  Institutions can include companies, political parties or even sports teams.  Principles are basic laws or truths such as “alcoholism is incurable” or “everyone has to grow old.”  When filling this out I would start by listing all of the people in your immediate family – chances are people you have been very close to will have triggered some type of resentment.  From there take a walk down memory lane.  You can pull out school year books or family photo albums; I have even heard it suggested that you write out an autobiography of yourself to trigger your memories.  If you think about somebody and feel some anger or fear towards that person, put them down.  Don’t worry about whether you should have a resentment or fear towards that person.  I know for me my two year old daughter was on my list.  I felt guilty because I thought to myself, “how could someone so young have ever done something to harm me.”  The reality was that I had some resentments towards her because I had to spend time taking care of her instead of doing what I wanted to do.  Finally, don’t forget about yourself.  I found that my biggest resentments were against me and who I had become.

Column 2: The Cause

After you have listed all of the people, institutions and principles in the first column, it is now time to list out the specific actions that somebody did to hurt you.  It is best to be specific in this column, so rather than writing down that your former boss was a jerk put down a specific event such as “my boss made me redo a large project because they said my work was not good enough.”  There can be multiple causes for the same person as well.  For example, on my inventory I had more causes of resentment against myself than anybody else.

Column 3: The Effect

Example Inventory:

Name	Cause	Effect
My Boss	My boss told me that my work on a project had to be redone because it was not good enough	I lost sleep because I was worried about my job
My Ex	My ex hid money they were spending	I ended up declaring bankruptcy because of all of the debt they accumulated

In the third column, we are going to list out the effect of the event in the second column.  In the first example, the effect of having to redo a project was losing sleep because you were worried about your job after talking to your boss.  In the second example where the spouse was hiding their spending, the effect was having to declare bankruptcy.  It is important to be honest with ourselves here because it can be easy to overexaggerate the impact of events, especially when they are happening.  Be honest about what the effect really was.

Column 4: The Damage

Example Inventory:

Name	Cause	Effect	Damage
My Boss	My boss told me that my work on a project had to be redone because it was not good enough	I lost sleep because I was worried about my job	Self-esteem, ambition
My Ex	My ex hid money they were spending	I ended up declaring bankruptcy because of all of the debt they accumulated	Financial security, personal relationship

In the fourth column we are going to list out what the damage was.  We all have some basic instincts that can be injured:

• Social/Relationships
• Security – Physical or Financial
• Sexual
• Personal (Ambition, self-esteem)

In this column we are going to analyze which of these basic instincts was hurt because of the event in Column 2.  In the examples above, having your work criticized can impact your self-esteem since most people want to believe they do good work.  If you were looking for a promotion knowing that your boss has not been happy with your work can also be a blow to your ambition.  In the second example, having to declare bankruptcy and digging your way out of debt can impact your financial security, and having a marriage break up because of this is an example of losing a personal relationship.

Column 5: My Part

In Column 5 we are going to switch things around completely!  Up to this point we’ve been focusing on the other person and what they did – now we are going to look at this from another angle and see what our part was in developing this resentment or fear.  It can help to think of the seven deadly sins (pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and sloth) and see which of those may have played a part in developing the resentment.

Example Inventory:

Name	Cause	Effect	Damage	My Part
My Boss	My boss told me that my work on a project had to be redone because it was not good enough	I lost sleep because I was worried about my job	Self-esteem, ambition	Sloth – waited until the last minute to start my assignment
My Ex	My ex hid money they were spending	I ended up declaring bankruptcy because of all of the debt they accumulated	Financial security, personal relationship	Fear – suspicious but too afraid to ask questions

In the examples above, owning up to the fact that you waited until the last second to start the assignment resulting in its poor quality can be related back to the sin sloth.  For the second example, perhaps you saw signs that there could be an issue but chose not to investigate for fear of starting a fight or fear of what you might uncover.

Keep in mind that we are discussing our part in the resentment, not just our part in what happened in column 2.  There may be events in your life in which you had no part in the cause in Column 2, but you still had a part in the resentment.  For example, I was bullied early on in high school.  I never did anything to the people that did this to me, but I still had a part in the resentment.  Every time I would think back to what they had done I would get angry and think of how I could one day get back at them instead of embracing forgiveness.  Instead of dealing with my anger I allowed it to turn into a deep-seeded resentment, thus my part in the resentment was wrath.  A phrase that has helped me out when in doubt is, “when I am disturbed, no matter the cause, there is something wrong with me.”  If I have lost my serenity there is something wrong that I need to address, so I need to find my part in losing my serenity to get it back.

NOTE – One exception that CR accounts for in Column 5 is for abusive relationships.  If you have been the victim of abuse then put “None” or “Not Guilty” in Column 5 to avoid misplaced shame or guilt.

Column 5: People I Have Hurt

To help in preparing for the future steps that will deal with making amends, take the time now to list out people you have hurt while it is fresh in your mind.

Example Inventory:

Name	Cause	Effect	Damage	My Part
My Boss	My boss told me that my work on a project had to be redone because it was not good enough	I lost sleep because I was worried about my job	Self-esteem, ambition	Sloth – waited until the last minute to start my assignment
My Ex	My ex hid money they were spending	I ended up declaring bankruptcy because of all of the debt they accumulated	Financial security, personal relationship	Fear – suspicious but too afraid to ask questions
				People I have hurt
				My boss – actively sabotaged next project as revenge
				My ex – deliberately sought items I didn’t want in the divorce to hurt them

In the examples above, getting back at your boss by sabotaging a future project could be an example of a way you hurt them.  For the ex that hid money, trying to hurt them by going after items you had no interest in during the divorce knowing they wanted those items would be another example.

Other Thoughts

Working the 4^th Step has been the most effective way I have found to resolve resentments, and it has shown me how to prevent them as well.  In Alcoholics Anonymous I was taught to say a simple prayer for fourteen days straight for every person on my resentments list: “This is a sick man.  How can I be helpful to him?  God save me from being angry.  Thy will be done.” (Alcoholics Anonymous page 67).  I was surprised how effective saying this prayer was at resolving resentments.  Moreover, this prayer has really shown me the way to prevent resentments.  When somebody harms me, my natural reaction is to focus on me.  I focus on my hurt feelings, I focus on what the other person’s actions were.  After a while of focusing on this I get angry, and because I’ve never been able to resolve this anger it eventually turns into a resentment that I can carry around for the rest of my life.  Studying this prayer has helped me to break this chain.

From the beginning the prayer tells me to stop focusing on myself, instead focus on the other person.  It tells me to realize that there are other people that are hurt, and that sometimes these hurt people intentionally hurt others.  Sometimes people even hurt us without realizing it or intending to do so.  The prayer reminds me that instead of focusing on my hurt feelings or how I can get back at the other person, instead focus on the fact that other people have hurt and pain in their lives.  If I can focus on the hurt and pain in other people instead of my own hurt feelings, then I can find compassion for that person.  The prayer then takes this even a step further.  Not only should I show this person compassion, but I should also try to find a way to be helpful to them.  For me, if I can honestly want to help somebody that has hurt me then I believe that I have shown them forgiveness, which is the second thing I have learned from this prayer.  All my life I have focused on my hurt feelings and my anger which has led to resentments.  If I can instead focus on the pain in other people’s lives and genuinely want to be helpful to them I can get past my own feelings and my resentments will never form.

My final note is to remember to keep your inventory balanced.  I know we have focused on resentments and fears but don’t forget to write down the good things you have done.  You can use the flip side of your paper to do this.  Record the person you helped, what you did and what effect this had on the person (and yourself).  Facing our past should not be an entirely negative experience, record the good you have done as well!

Lesson 8 – Step 4: Moral

Lesson 8 – Step 4: Moral

Chances are if you are in recovery you have baggage from your past that you are carrying around.  Some of this baggage may be self-inflicted, some of it may have been forced on you.  Sometimes our baggage can become more than we can handle, other times we get so used to carrying it around we can even forget it is there.  If you’re like I was then perhaps you don’t have a way of effectively dealing with these issues.  My experience was that resentments kept piling up and that fears and guilt continued to build up over time.  The good news is that the 12 Steps provide what I have found is a very effective way of dealing with this baggage, and it starts with building a moral (or honest) inventory of our past.

Our acrostic for this lesson is MORAL:

M – Make Time

O – Open

R – Rely

A – Analyze

L – List

Let’s look at each one in more detail:

Make Time

Building an inventory will take some time, and it is best if you can find some place to go where you will not be interrupted.  The process of building this inventory will require taking a deep look into your past and analyzing those events.  This will be very difficult to do if you are getting interrupted constantly or are otherwise distracted.  If you have already setup some daily time for study or meditation this would be an excellent time to incorporate this work, if you have not then perhaps this can be the beginning of some habits that will serve you well in recovery.

Open

When it comes to building a “searching and fearless moral inventory,” this for me is the most crucial piece.  I know it was easy for me to say to myself, “you can leave that off your inventory, after all who’s going to know.”  I remember thinking to myself, “I don’t have an inventory problem, I have a drinking problem, how is this going to help me stay sober?”  This was my denial telling me that it was fine for me to keep doing what I had been doing, that it wasn’t important for me to listen to the experience of others that I had found what I hadn’t – long-term sobriety.  I found that this denial was rooted in fear and pride.  My fear told me that I dare not open the door to some of the events of my past, that these events were too painful or too embarrassing to deal with.  My pride told me that I didn’t need to open the door to past events.  After all I told myself, my resentments were created because I was wronged and all of my actions were justified.  In order to build my inventory, I had to get past my denial telling me I didn’t need to take this exercise seriously and I had to get past the fear and the pride that wanted to keep me from doing it thoroughly.

In order to help with triggering your memories there are several questions you can ask yourself.  First of all, are there any items from your past you feel guilty about?  Guilt can be an indication that there is something you need to take a closer look at.  The next question is do you have any resentments?  Personally, I was shocked at how many resentments had piled up in my life – in fact I had resentments reaching all the way back to high school (which was decades before I did my first inventory).  I never had a way of dealing with resentments so the list just kept growing and growing.  In addition to resentments, are there any fears that you have?  Are there fears of people or places from your past that you carry with you?  Do you have fears such as fear of failure or fear of not getting your way?  If so, list those in your inventory.  Finally, do you have any self-pity, alibis or other dishonest thinking going on in your life.  I know for me I thought that as long as I didn’t start something or if I believed the other person had done me worse, I was justified in my actions.  I had to learn to own my actions and focus on what I had done and not my false justifications.

Rely

Taking a hard look at our past can be very difficult to do.  There are good reasons why we haven’t done this already, there may be pain from past abuses or embarrassment from our own past behavior.  When things get tough it is important to go back to where we can draw our strength – our relationship with God and the relationships we build in recovery.  God is of course the ultimate source of strength for us in our recovery, and when things get tough this is always the first place I recommend you turn.  The group can also help when we have doubts or need encouragement to continue.  I used to think that I was so unique, that I was the only person on the planet who had ever done the terrible things I had done.  The shame I felt made exercises like doing a moral inventory difficult because each memory brought more regret and embarrassment.  After being in recovery for several years now I have come to realize that I am not so unique, that there are others who have had the same thoughts and experiences that I have.  I don’t have to hide myself from others for fear of being ostracized by the group, chances are somebody has done the exact thing I have done or can readily relate to it.  That is why I know I can bring things up to the group and use their encouragement.

Analyze

I found this part of the moral inventory to be particularly useful.  I am an analytical person by nature so this part came naturally to me, but I was amazed by what I found.  In my experience it was not enough to just fill the inventory out, it was also important to look closely at individual events and also to look at my inventory as a whole.  Doing so allowed me to discern truths I would not have and to see trends in my life.  One of the most unexpected outcomes of doing the inventory was how my view of the past changed.  When I began the inventory there were people that I had justified resentments against that later ended up on my amends list.  By analyzing the scenario without rationalizing my own behavior I realized the mistakes I had made and the hurt that I had caused.  Going from resentment to amends was a 180-degree switch for me!

Looking at my inventory from a high level also proved beneficial.  There was a defect of character that I saw repeated over and over again that I never would have thought was an issue.  But there in black and white, over and over again in my life was this same issue.  I began to realize that this was something that I needed to take to God and to be aware of because it was causing resentments to happen repeatedly throughout my life.  I also found some behavior trends I did not expect to see.  For example, I found that I had done a really terrible job of dealing with conflict in my life.  I saw that whenever there was conflict I consistently either retaliated or ran away from the problem rather than resolving it in a healthy way.  This method of dealing with conflict was causing resentments and broken relationships throughout my life, but I would have never seen this had I not put together a thorough summary of my life’s events and analyzed it.

List

It may seem like building an inventory can be a depressing process, so it is important to keep your inventory balanced.  Include the good things you have done in your life to keep this balance.  All of us have done things to help others and we should remember and include those things when building our inventory.

Other Thoughts

Robert Frost is quoted as saying, “the only way around is through.”  I have found this to be true when it comes to facing my guilt, fears, resentments and dishonest thinking.  I have of course tried other techniques.  I have tried to ignore the past in the hopes that if I never thought of these things again it was like they never happened, but that of course was not true.  I have tried to rationalize my own bad behavior in order to justify my actions, but that just led to more bad behavior.  I have tried to just live with the burden of my baggage, but periodically it seemed like there was something that would remind me of the load I was carrying around.  Working Steps 4 and 5 are the most effective way I have ever found of dealing with my past and getting closure on it.  Like Frost alluded to, the best way to deal with my past was to face it and go through it, trying to find ways to go around it did no good.

In Alcoholics Anonymous it is said that resentments are the number one offender, meaning that resentments are the number one reason people go out and drink again.  I can certainly understand that idea.  I have used my resentments to justify all manner of bad behavior, especially drinking.  For example, if I didn’t think my employer was treating me right, why should I care if I show up to work with a hangover, after all I’m the one they’re not treating well enough.  My resentments can also lead me to act out in defiance.  In treatment I learned the phrase, “I’ll show you, I’ll hurt me.”  This alcoholic perfectly understood what that meant.  If my wife made me mad, I’d retaliate by getting drunk.  But who was I really hurting?  I was the one on the verge of losing my family, I was the one who was ruining good jobs, and I was the one who was experiencing body rot from all the drinking I was doing.  I may have thought I was getting back at her, but in reality I was the one that was being hurt by my actions.  I know that if I don’t deal with my resentments I am just giving the enemy more ways to get to me.  Whether it is using resentments to justify drinking again or acting defiantly by hurting myself, resentments are an opportunity the enemy has to sabotage my recovery.  That is why I am so glad that the steps provide a healthy way of dealing with my resentments so they can’t be used against me.

Lesson 7 – Step 4: Sponsor

In our last lesson we talked about how critical it was that we establish a lasting relationship with Jesus Christ and accept Him as our Lord and Savior if we are to continue on with our recovery.  This week we will talk about the most important human relationship in our recovery – our sponsor.  Finding a sponsor will be key to moving forward as working the 4^th and 5^th Steps will require guidance and aid from your sponsor.  In our lesson this week we will discuss key questions you may have around sponsors to help you in finding one.

1. Why do you need a sponsor?

Our first question is perhaps the most obvious, why do we even need a sponsor?  There are several reasons having a sponsor will be important to your recovery.  First of all recovery, like our Christian walk, is not meant to be done alone.  I have never heard someone be told to go and work the steps on their own and then report back on how things went, the steps should be worked with somebody with experience that can guide you.  The concept of working with others is also based on scripture.  In Proverbs 27:17 we are told that “…iron sharpens iron…” and in Ecclesiastes 12:4 we are told that “Two are better than one…”.  There’s good reason to follow these Biblical principles and involve somebody more experienced in your recovery.  Your sponsor will act as your mentor as you navigate your recovery journey.  They will use their experience and their perspective to help you to find your way.

Having a sponsor is also the best guard against relapse.  When you develop a close relationship with your sponsor they will get to know your habits and patterns and will be able to see changes in your life or your recovery journey.  Your sponsor will help you to see when you are starting to get off track and provide suggestions on how to make sure you don’t end up relapsing.  Your sponsor will be able to provide you advice from their own experiences or from the experiences they have heard others share.  This advice can help you to maneuver through both crises and your daily struggles without derailing all the work you have done.

2. What are the qualities of a sponsor?

Now that we’ve established why we need a sponsor, let’s talk about some of the qualities we can look for in a sponsor.  Foremost you are going to want to find somebody that is “walking the talk” and has a growing relationship with Jesus Christ.  These are critical aspects to a thriving recovery and you want somebody that has them.  Obviously since you are going to be asking this person to help you it will be important to find somebody that is interested in helping others.  This person should be able to show compassion and care but not pity.  Having compassion for someone is important for a sponsor but you don’t want someone to show you pity.  A sponsor is there to help you to find a better way of life, not to stand there with their arms folded feeling sorry for you.

You are also going to want somebody that is a good listener, after all you are going to be spending a lot of time talking to this person so being a good listener will be important.  Your sponsor will also need to be somebody that’s not afraid to confront your denial or procrastination.  Previously we mentioned the Bible verse that “iron sharpens iron,” and this is one of the ways your sponsor will do this in your life.  If your denial is blocking you from seeing the truth or if you are unnecessarily delaying important parts of your recovery process your sponsor should not be afraid to point these things out to you.  Although it’s not always easy to listen to advice you may not want to hear, as the Bible says in Ecclesiastes 7:5, “It is better to be criticized by a wise man than praised by a fool!”  As such, your sponsor should be somebody that is willing to offer you suggestions based on their experience to help you in your recovery.  In addition to the qualities listed above, a sponsor should be willing to admit their own struggles.  After all, if somebody does not believe there is anything wrong in their own life they are probably facing denial of their own.

3. What is the role of a sponsor?

Once you’ve found a sponsor you will want to use that person to help in your recovery.  A sponsor can be there to discuss items that are too personal or take too long to discuss in a meeting.  There are things that may come up in your life that may not be appropriate or may be too sensitive to bring up with your small group.  In the same way, since sharing in the small group is meant to be kept short, items that will take too long should be discussed with your sponsor.  Your sponsor will also be there during times of crisis or threat of relapse.  There may not always be a meeting available or you may not always be able to get to a meeting when your face a crisis in your life or are close to relapsing.  If this happens your sponsor should be your go to person to help you through these moments until you can get to a meeting.

Your sponsor will also act as a sounding board for your thoughts and ideas.  Your sponsor will provide you with objective feedback for ideas or questions you may have and will not be afraid to challenge your thinking or tell you when you are in denial.  They will also help you to work the steps at your own speed.  They will make sure you don’t move onto to the next step until you are finished with the current one.  If you are working the steps with a study group they may not be able to slow down for you, but if you are working them one-on-one with your sponsor you can go at the pace you need to.  In addition to helping you work through the eight principles, your sponsor will model the lifestyle that results from working the steps.

4. How do I find a sponsor?

We have already talked about the qualities a sponsor should have, let’s talk about finding a sponsor.  First off you will want to find someone that is the same sex as you.  You will need this when you work Step 5 and discuss private areas of your life, but you will also find that having a sponsor of the same sex will help as the struggles men and women go through can be quite different so having a sponsor that has been through the same kinds of struggles will be useful.  Many times you may find yourself drawn to a sponsor that has a similar story to yours; even if their hurt, habit or hang-up is not the same as yours.  Of course you’re going to have to actually meet people in recovery to find a sponsor, and the best way to do that is to go to meetings.  You can raise your hand in small groups and let people know you are looking for a sponsor, or if somebody impresses you with what they have to say you can ask them to be your sponsor.  As with any decision this important to your recovery, seek God’s help in finding the right person for you.

5. What is the difference between a sponsor and an accountability partner?

You have perhaps heard of accountability partners and may be wondering the difference between sponsors and accountability partners.  In sports terms, your sponsor can be compared to the coach of a team or a trainer in the gym.  They are meant to guide and mentor you and push you to grow and face the truth in your life.  An accountability partner on the other hand would be more like a cheerleader or “gym buddy” to keep with the sports analogy.  They are there to celebrate your successes, commiserate with you on issues in your life, and walk the program with you.  For sponsors, the absolute minimum requirement for somebody to serve is that they have completed working the steps.  An accountability partner on the other hand can be at any stage of recovery.  Another difference is that a sponsor can also have any hurt, habit or hang-up while you may find it more helpful to find accountability partners with similar issues to your own.  Finally, a sponsor should meet the sponsor qualifications listed above.

Other Thoughts

I have a friend who once said that he tells his sponsee’s, “if you have a good idea call me, if you have a great idea come see me.”  I know for me before I had been restored to sanity through the recovery process, I had some great ideas.  I thought it would be a great idea to get drunk when my wife was 8 ½ months pregnant.  I thought it would be a great idea to get drunk while my wife was at work and I was supposed to be taking care of our 2-year-old daughter.  If I would have had a sponsor at that point in my life and would have called that person up and told them what my great idea was, I am sure they would have set me straight on just how bad these ideas were.

Sponsors are a powerful tool in recovery, but they only help if you actually use them.  I wonder how many people die each year because their cell phone is too heavy to pick up.  How many people get drunk and then drive, how many people overdose on drugs — and if you look into the contacts of their cell phone you would find the number of their sponsor.  If they had only called their sponsor there’s a good chance they would not have made the same decision, but they decided not to pick up that phone and call.  A sponsor can’t be of help to you in your recovery if you don’t use them, but you have to make that choice.

A final note on sponsorship and picking a sponsor.  Some people think that picking a sponsor is like picking a home, you keep shopping around until you find the perfect one.  For me picking a sponsor would be more analogous to picking a retirement plan, the most important thing is to find one quickly.  The longer you wait to start saving for retirement the more opportunity you lose for your money to start making returns.  In the same way, if you are delaying selecting a sponsor because you can’t find the perfect one, you may delay too long and end up relapsing before you find that “perfect fit.”  I would say this is especially true if you’re waiting to find somebody that agrees with everything you are doing and doesn’t challenge you in your recovery.  A good sponsor is not going to tell you what you want to hear, they are going to tell you what you need to hear.  My advice is that if you find somebody that is willing to work the steps with you, grab hold of that person and begin your recovery journey!

Lesson 6 – Step 3: Action

You may not have realized it, but you have reached a critical juncture in your recovery.  Up to this point your recovery journey has not required a lot of work.  In Step 1 we faced our denial and accepted our powerlessness.  In Step 2 we began to change our thinking to precede changing our actions.  Even in our last lesson we focused on finding the willingness to begin to turn our lives over to God.  While each of these is critical in our recovery, they do not really require any work on our part.  That is going to change now.  Your recovery will require you to take action if you are going to continue, and that is the title of today’s lesson.

I find myself to be slow to commit to things many times, and I certainly started my recovery journey this way.  When I first started coming to meetings I thought to myself, “I’ll start off slowly and then when I finally feel the urge to I’ll jump into this thing.”  I have heard getting into recovery is a lot like getting into a row boat.  When you are getting in a small boat you don’t take baby steps and work your way in from the edge, you have to jump right into the middle with both feet.  I tried starting my recovery by taking baby steps from the edge to disastrous results because I was not willing to take action.  By deciding to wait to do any of the work, I was really deciding “no,” and I paid consequences for that decision.

Our acrostic for tonight is ACTION:

A – Accept

C – Commit

T – Turn it Over

I – It’s Only the Beginning

O – One Day at a Time

N – New Life

Let’s look at each one in more detail:

Accept

If you have not accepted Jesus as your personal savior now is the time to focus on that, all of the rest of our work in the steps will be based on that life-changing decision.  Likewise, if you are not sure of where you stand in your salvation work with your sponsor, other people in your Celebrate Recovery group, or a spiritual leader in the church.  If you are like me, perhaps you were saved at an early age.  I have found that accepting Jesus as my personal savior has taken on a much greater meaning in recovery.

I was initially saved when I was 7 years old.  Back then Jesus being my savior just meant that when I died I was going to go to heaven.  I didn’t see my relationship with God as being much more than an insurance policy for the afterlife.  Fast forward almost thirty years later when I started recovery and I began to see things very differently.  Jesus wasn’t just going to be there for me when I died, He was here for me now to help me through my alcoholism.  Recovery made me realize that accepting Jesus as my savior meant that I needed to rely on Him daily for His strength.

Commit

When it came to committing my life and my will over to God I had quite a bit of work to do.  For me this was one of the most profound changes in thinking I experienced in early sobriety.  When I began to really consider my life and my relationship with God, I realized that I had never been willing to commit my life over to God.  In fact, I had spent almost all of my prayer time trying to get God to commit to helping me achieve my own selfish goals!  I never prayed to God and asked Him to reveal what His plan for me was, for Him to give me acceptance of His plan for me, or for Him to give me the strength I would need to see His plan through.  Rather I would pray and ask Him to help me get into this college, or help me get this job I wanted, or resolve this problem or that problem exactly how I wanted it resolved.  I realized I was never willing to commit my life to God because I was too scared God’s plan for me was different from my own.  Working Step 3 helped me reshape that thinking, a process I continue to grow with.

Turn it Over

In our last lesson, we talked about becoming willing to turn things over to God, now we actually have to take action and do it.  For me this is where “the rubber meets the road” in Step 3.  I know in my own life there are times when I know what the right thing to do is, sometimes I’m even willing to do the right thing, but that doesn’t mean I actually do it.  This is especially true when it comes to turning things over to God.  It’s not enough to know I need to and be willing to do it, I actually have to take action and turn these items over to God.  I have to pray for His will to be done, I have to focus on accepting the outcome rather than trying to manipulate things, and I have to stop worrying about whether the outcome will be what I want and trust in His plan for me.

It’s Only the Beginning

One of the things that has made recovery different for me than other things in my life is that this is a journey rather than a destination.  All my life it has always been about the destination: your worked in school to get your diploma, take a course and get your certification, work on this project until it is completed and then move on to the next.  Recovery is not like that, we won’t be handing out any diplomas when we finish with Step 12 later this year.  Your sponsor is not going to declare you cured when you finish working the steps with them.  This path we are on is a spiritual path that allows for a lifetime of growth.

One Day at a Time

One of the things I have learned to try to do in recovery is to stay in the present.  I find it easy to get bogged down with things that happened in my past and to become fearful of what may happen in the future.  Early in recovery especially, I found myself trapped in my past.  I was so full of shame and regret over the things I had done, over what I had put my family through, that I found it almost impossible to live that down.  I couldn’t look my family in the eyes and I didn’t feel like an equal party in my own marriage.  It took a while but I realized that there was absolutely nothing I could do that would change the past.  Moreover, living in this remorse was an opening the enemy could exploit to sabotage my recovery.  I realized that the greatest thing I could do was to work the best recovery program I could and keep trying to do the next right thing for the sake of my family.

Even more than living in the past, I find myself susceptible now to worrying about the future.  I will find myself worrying about what kind of choices my daughters will make when they get older or how I’m going to stay sober when I retire and I have so much spare time on my hands.  If I allow them to, these thoughts will start to bounce around in my head until I truly become afraid of the future, and then I will start trying all kinds of ways to control everyone and everything around me.  One of the things I’ve been told in recovery is that fear and faith can’t occupy the same space, and when I start getting scared about the future I have to remind myself of this.  After all, what can I really do about events five days, five months or twenty-five years from now at this very moment?  If I am allowing myself to become afraid am I really trusting that everything is going to turn out the way God wants it to, or am I focused on things not turning out the way I want them to?  When I start to put my trust back into God and His plan I find my fear quickly dissolves away.

New Life

There is a new life that exists out there for us, and it starts with accepting Jesus as our personal savior.  If you have not done this (or if you need to re-commit yourself to God), ask yourself these questions:
Do you:

Believe Jesus Christ died on the cross and showed He was God by coming back to life (1 Corinthians 15:2-4)

Accept God’s free forgiveness of your sins (Romans 3:22)

Switch to God’s plan for your life (Mark 1:16-18, Romans 12:2)

Express your desire for Christ to be the director of your life (Romans 10:9)

If you answer yes to these questions you are ready to accept God into your life and to begin taking action and truly working Step 3.

Other Thoughts

When I began working a step study program early in sobriety I remember the leader of the program telling us that this was a “spiritual program of action.”  I remember when he said this it stood out to me.  I have been involved in spiritual programs since birth.  I went to church most of my life, I was in Sunday School through high school, and I was involved in Vacation Bible School in my early years.  However, I had never been told point blank that these were programs of action.  I thought it was okay if I sat in my pew and listened intently and occasionally was inspired by what I had heard.  The 12 Steps aren’t like that.  Just like watching a workout video isn’t going to get you in shape, listening to instructions on how to do the steps isn’t going to get you any benefits.  You can listen to someone describe a wonderful meal they’ve had, but that isn’t going to get rid of the rumble in your stomach.  In the same way, listening to somebody’s testimony isn’t going to get rid of the resentments, guilt, denial and pain in your own life.  This is a spiritual program of action, action that starts with this lesson in turning things over to God and will continue on through the remainder of the steps.  As I was told many times in early recovery, if I wanted what other people had I needed to do what they did – and that meant taking action!

Lesson 5 – Step 3: Turn

If your recovery journey is anything like mine, when you first showed up a lot of things probably felt like they were out of control.  My drinking was out of control, I could not stop no matter how hard I tried.  My personal life was out of control, I was on the verge of losing my family.  That’s where today’s lesson fits in.  One of the paradoxes I heard was that I had to give up control in order to gain control.  I had to learn to turn control of my life and problems over to God in order for them to be resolved and to feel like my life was back in control.

I find that Step 3 is also important when it comes to my continued spiritual growth.  I’ve learned that Step 1 is the only step I have to do perfectly, which means that for the rest my goal is progress rather than perfection.  For me Step 3 is probably the best example of this.  When I first went through the steps I didn’t give this step much thought.  But as I began to read more and understand what this really meant I realized that throughout the course of my life I had never been willing to turn control over to God and that I had a lot to learn.  I still find myself learning more on this subject and I doubt I will ever stop.

Our acrostic for tonight is TURN:

T – Trust

U – Understand

R – Repent

N – New Life

Let’s look at each one in more detail:

Trust

For me learning to trust God is the willingness stage to turning my life over to Him.  After all, it is highly unlikely that I’m ever going to be willing to turn something completely over to somebody unless I completely trust them.  This is where I have learned I have to put faith into action.  I can’t just say I believe God is all-powerful, I have to trust He can find a way even when I can’t see an Earthly solution to a problem.  I can’t just say that God is all-knowing, I have to actually put my trust in Him and turn over my problems to Him and know that the solution He has is better than one I could have come up with.  Once I am willing to trust I can become willing to turn.

Understand

This part of turning things over to God has definitely been a hindrance for me.  I’m the kind of person that wants to know every detail from God before I turn something over to Him.  I want to know how he is going to accomplish something, what each step along the way is, exactly what the outcome will be, and how long it’s going to take.  Then if I agree with every part of this I will finally be willing to turn something over to God.  Unfortunately it doesn’t work like that, God doesn’t usually explain things to us in such detail.  I have had to humble myself and realize that God is not my employee, He does not have to offer me an explanation for everything He has done or is about to do.  I have also had to acknowledge that God has quite a different perspective on the universe than I do.  He was there at the beginning of creation and knows the furthest boundaries of His creation.  I on the other hand have been here for a short sliver of time and have barely seen a speck of the universe.  God sees a much bigger picture than I do which is why His plans turn out better than the selfish ones I come up with.

What really drove this home for me was looking back at “bad” events that happened in my life and realizing that these were really blessings in disguise.  Take for example my sobriety date.  This was by far the worst day of my life, in fact it was so bad it was the only day in my life I actually thought seriously about taking my own life.  But today my perspective on that day is quite different.  In fact I am thankful to God every day for that terrible day.  It took that experience to make me willing to do whatever it was going to take to get sober, and that has made all the difference in my life.  Whenever I talk about something “bad” that happens to me today, I have to put the word “bad” in air quotes.  After all, who knows how my perspective on this “bad” event will be 6 months or 6 years from now.  It may just be another blessing in disguise, something I would have never come up with on my own but God did because He sees a much bigger picture than me.

Repent

The leader’s guide lists two steps to repenting: turning away from our sins and turning towards God.  My experience getting sober definitely taught me a lot about turning away from my sins.  Most of my life I’ve never really wanted to turn away from my sins, I just wanted the consequences of those sins to go away.  I know this was certainly true when it came to my drinking.  I wanted my family to get off my back, I wanted the health problems my drinking was causing to go away, and I wanted the work problems my drinking was causing to go away.  Wanting my consequences to go away and turning away from my sin was quite different, something I learned on my sobriety date.  On this day it was no longer about getting rid of consequences, I truly wanted to change, I truly wanted to be a different person.  This was something I had never felt before about my drinking.  It’s not enough though to just want a new life, we also have to accept the forgiveness of Jesus Christ.  We have to take our sins and put them at His feet and accept His gift to us and have those sins washed away, the second step in repenting.

One thing to note is that there is a difference between self-loathing and repenting.  There are times when I actually enjoy beating myself up mentally, reminding myself of all the bad things I have done and ridiculing myself for all of my perceived short-comings.  Although it may seem like I am acknowledging my mistakes and moving towards repentance, the reality is that I am not.  Rather than truly wanting to turn away from my sin and lead a different life, my self-loathing is borne from a perverse desire to wallow in misery and self-contempt.  When I am in this mode I am not seeking forgiveness from God, in fact I usually am wrapped up in my own little world.

New Life

Here is a quick summary pointed out in the leader’s guide on our Old Life versus our New Life:

Old You	New You	Scripture
Get, get, get	Give, and it will be given to you	Luke 6:38
Lead, at all costs	Serve	John 13:12
Lie, the truth only complicates things	Speak the truth in love	Ephesians 4:15
Hate your enemy	Love your enemy	Matthew 5:44

 

Other Thoughts

One of the things I’ve heard repeatedly said about the 12 Steps is that it is a simple program.  One of the things I’ve learned not to do though is to mix simple with easy.  None of the concepts we have discussed are particularly complicated.  Powerlessness is not a complicated subject, and it doesn’t take four years of seminary to understand the concept of turning one’s life over to the care of God.  Unfortunately it can take a lifetime to truly learn how to do these things.  I know for me turning things over to God can be particularly difficult.  First of all my pride gets in the way.  After all, I’m a smart and capable person, why do I need God – I’ll just run my own life.  If it’s not my pride it’s my fear.  How can I turn the outcome of life’s major situations over to God, what if His outcome is different than the one I want?  Sometimes it can literally seem impossible for me to turn things over to God.  When I get in this mode of thinking I have to remind myself, is there something physically preventing me from turning this over to God or is it all in my mind?  Invariably every time I have asked myself this question the answer has always been the same, it is always mental.  The fact is that I’m the one that makes this simple program difficult to follow.

Lesson 4 – Step 2: Sanity

Today we will discuss the second part of Step 2, our Higher Power restoring us to sanity.   This lesson is an important one for recovery.  If you are like me you came to Celebrate Recovery because you are looking to change some behavior in your life.  In my experience, the mind precedes the body in these kinds of changes, meaning that if we are going to have a change in behavior we are first going to need to have a change in our thinking.  Our lesson today discusses the changes we need in our thinking to start the process of changing our behavior.

I have to admit that when I first started my recovery journey I most likely mentally skipped over this part of Step 2 when reading the steps.  I probably envisioned this only applying to people who were so far gone they were forced to live under bridges drinking cheap alcohol out of paper bags.  As I learned more about the steps though I began to realize that this perception was completely wrong.  First of all, this step does not mention the word insanity.  This is not saying that our Higher Power will cure some kind of mental illness, but rather that our Higher Power will help to restore our thinking.  As I looked back at my thinking and my decision making when I was actively drinking, I began to realize how wrong some of my thinking had been and that I did need help to get to where I could think more clearly.

Our acrostic for tonight is SANITY:

S – Strength

A – Acceptance

N – New Life

I – Integrity

T – Trust

Y – Your Higher Power

Let’s look at each one in more detail:

Strength

This was an area that I certainly had to make some changes in my mindset.  Going into recovery I believed that I had to solve all of my problems.  In fact, I would go so far as to say I thought it was a sign of weakness to trust in God instead of solving something for myself.  One of the things that I learned in recovery though was that this kind of self-reliance was a liability.  I had to change my mindset and learn to stop relying on my own strength and rely on God’s.  As long as I was trying to do everything myself I was always going to be getting in the way of my own recovery, which is the essence of “Let go and let God” to me.

Acceptance

I had to change my thinking when it came to acceptance as well.  It can be very difficult for me to accept when things don’t go my way.  When people don’t act the way I expect them to, when things don’t turn out how I predicted they would, when life throws me those unexpected curve balls it always seems to, I can get very upset.  I have had to learn to accept that things are not always going to go the way I expect them to or want them to.  I think the author of the serenity prayer knows how I feel.  In his prayer I am told to “accept the things I cannot change” and that I must take “this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it.”  In short I must learn to live life on life’s terms rather than expecting everything to be on my terms.  Rather than trying to make the world conform to me and then getting upset when it does not, I have had to change my mindset to accept that things will not go my way and trust in my faith and God’s strength to get me through.

My mindset has also been forced to change when it comes to laying blame for my alcoholism.  I think that finding blame is a natural instinct for humans.  I know at work when we run into a problem, invariably early on somebody asks the question of who’s fault this problem is.  While learning from mistakes is important, I’ve never seen a problem solved while trying to find out who is to blame for it.  It’s not until we focus on figuring out the steps to solve the problem and then implement those that I’ve seen problems get solved.  I have seen the same thing with my sobriety.  Before I got in recovery I tended to focus on who’s fault it was that I was an alcoholic.  Trying to figure out if it was my fault or somebody else’s never did help me stay sober.  It wasn’t until I began focusing on the solution that I actually saw any change in my life.  I had to learn to stop focusing my mind on finding fault and instead focus it on the solution.

New Life

I can remember times when I was drinking that I didn’t know if a new life was possible for me.  I didn’t know if I could ever stop drinking.  I really thought my situation might be hopeless.  I had to snap out of that thinking and believe that my life could change for me to commit to working a sobriety program.  As long as I stayed in a mindset that nothing could ever change for me, nothing was.  Luckily when I got into recovery I met people with the same kind of struggles I have that have been able to maintain long-term sobriety.  If this program worked for them, I believed that it could work for me as well.

Integrity

Integrity was definitely a change I had to make in my thinking.  For so long I lied to myself and everyone else that this was truly a struggle to be honest.  Early in sobriety I kept a journal and my sole rule for that journal was that I had to be 100% honest in what I wrote.  Even though this journal was never going to be read by anyone else I still found myself struggling to tell the truth.  I found that I would minimize my actions or their impact to make myself feel better without even thinking about doing so.  I would write excuses or shift blame to others to cover up for my actions when there really was no excuse for my behavior.  I had to teach my mind to start taking accountability for my actions and be honest with myself for what I had done.  The good news is that working the steps helps with changing this thinking.  Starting with Step 5 where I had to be honest with my sponsor over what I had done in the past and continuing on with Steps 9 and 10 where I have to take honest accountability for my actions I learned to start being honest with myself and others and regain the trust that I had lost.

Trust

Trust was another area that I had to make some changes in my thinking.  I had a very difficult time believing that a spiritual solution could be the answer to my drinking problem.  I had a difficult time believing that prayer could have any power over my cravings for alcohol.  It wasn’t until I saw that this was working for other people that I began to change my thinking and trust that this program could work.  In the same way, I also had a tough time trusting other people in the group.  I didn’t want to open up to them and be honest about what I had done for fear of judgement or condemnation. As time went on though, I saw how honest people would be when they shared and I realized that rather than judging each other the group would instead focus on the similarities in their own lives and strive to learn from each other.  I learned that the people in the group were people I could trust to be completely honest with.

Your Higher Power

I had troubles believing that my higher power could or would help me.  As I mentioned previously, I had a difficult time believing that God could be the answer to my problems.  In addition to this though, because I had so much guilt and remorse when I started recovery I doubted that God would ever bother to help me.  I certainly did not feel like I deserved it.  The thing that I had to be reminded of is that God does not always give us what we deserve, he also shows us mercy.  Even though I did not feel like I deserved it, I had to learn to reach out to God and ask for His mercy and trust that He would help me if He were sought.

Summary

Here is a quick summary pointed out in the leader’s guide on our Old Thinking versus our New Thinking:

	Old Way of Thinking	New Way of Thinking
Strength	I can solve my problems on my own	Rely on a higher power
Acceptance	Angry at the world when things don’t go my way; focus on blaming myself/others for my problems	Accept what happens in life; focusing on the solution
New life	Nothing will ever change, I’m stuck	My life can completely change
Integrity	Denial, minimizing, lying to cover	Being honest with ourselves and others
Trust	Nobody cares about me; I can’t let others see the real me	Trusting the group, using the group as a source of strength and learning
Your higher power	God can’t or won’t help me	God loves me and will help me

 

Other Thoughts

One of the phrases I heard when I started going to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings was, “you don’t have a drinking problem you have a thinking problem.”  To me this pointed to the importance of changing my mindset if I ever wanted to stop drinking.  After all, if my thinking never changed what are the chances that my actions were ever going to change?  One line of thinking I had to abandon quickly when I started recovery was the notion that I was on the verge of discovering the solution to my drinking problem.  I really thought that all I needed was one or two good tips or techniques on how to deal with my cravings for alcohol and that I was going to be ready to beat my drinking problem.  Unfortunately, I was told that I needed to abandon that entire line of thinking.  This was tough for me, and it was very humbling for me.  What really convinced me of this was a reminder that all my best ideas on how to stay sober had gotten me drunk every time.  I wished I could have argued with this statement, but I had to admit it was completely true.  If it wasn’t true I wouldn’t have needed to start a recovery program, I’d already be sober.  It was at this point that I realized that I needed to start listening to other people’s ideas on how to stay sober, no matter how crazy I thought they were.  After all, if I wanted what they had I was going to have to do what they did.

Lesson 3 – Step 2: Hope

Today we start on Step 2, and for many of us that is a welcome thing!  Step 1 had us deal with some very difficult topics.  Facing reality after being in denial for so long can be very difficult.  Admitting that we are powerless over something in our life and that there is nothing we can do to control it can be very humbling.  That’s why I love the fact that this lesson is entitled “Hope.”  This is after all why we are all here.  There is something in our life, some hurt, habit or hang-up that we are hoping to be free of, and that is the promise of recovery.

Our acrostic for tonight is HOPE:

H – Higher Power

O – Openness to Change

P – Power to Change

E – Expect to Change

Let’s look at each one in more detail:

Higher Power

In Step 1 we came to believe we were powerless over something in our life, and if we are going to find victory over something we are powerless over we are going to have to find a higher power to rely on.  For me that’s what the Steps are all about – building this relationship with a Higher Power.  If you look at the 12 Steps you’ll see that hurt, habits and hang-ups is only mentioned once, in the first step.  The 12 Steps aren’t focused on fixing our problems, they’re focused on fixing our relationships, and the most important relationship we have is with God.  For me my sobriety is a by-product of this newfound relationship I have with God and not the other way around.

Openness to Change

Open mindedness has been labeled one of the keys to recovery.  If your recovery journey has been anything like mine you have probably tried more than a few of your own solutions to fix the hurts, habits and hang-ups in your life.  Chances are though, none of the solutions you tried involved admitting you couldn’t solve this problem on your own and relying on a Higher Power to get you through.  This was far different from anything I had tried before, and I know I certainly had some fear associated with this solution.  It is keeping an open mind and not letting that fear prevent us from beginning the journey that is key.  As I stated above, the 12 Steps is not about solving a particular problem in our life, it is about transforming our relationship with God.  Because of this, we should expect that the changes that will happen will impact every aspect of our life.  Being open to change means being open to all of the changes that will occur in our life.

Power to Change

For me Power to Change is “where the rubber meets the road” in Step 2.  Most of my life I believed in God.  I believed that God created the universe and that God was all-powerful and I would have gladly attested to these beliefs.  But despite that, I never handed anything of importance in my life over to the One I believed was all-powerful until I get sober.  It wasn’t until I believed I was powerless over alcohol and that I had no choice but to turn this over to my higher power that I truly ever began to rely on God’s power.  At this point I was no longer paying lip service to His power, I was actually tapping into it.

Expect to Change

I think that doubt can certainly be a natural part of any kind of journey like this, but we can’t let that sabotage our recovery.  I have seen two types of journeys where doubt has halted people’s recovery.  The first group are those who are relying on some kind of miracle in their life to fix their problems rather than working the steps.  I have never heard somebody tell a sobriety story that involved going to a couple of meetings and then somehow being “miracled” sober by God.  Instead, the story I hear over and over is that somebody starts by going to meetings, then gets a sponsor, then works the steps, and then before they even realize it the days have become weeks, the weeks have become months, and the months have become years of sobriety.  Your new relationship with God is going to take work on your part.   The other group, those who are already working the steps who are feeling that things are not changing quickly enough, please don’t give up before the miracle happens.  Even if it doesn’t feel like anything is changing, keep persevering.  The 12 Steps have helped millions of people for over 75 years, they can work for you too.

Other Thoughts

For me Step 2 has been an on-going journey just like the rest of my recovery program.  At first I believed that the steps had worked for other folks, even though I wasn’t completely convinced they would work for me.  As time went on and I was staying sober longer than I ever had using my own willpower I began to have faith in the program.  I had no doubts that if I kept working my program I would stay sober.  Then later as other problems would pop up in my life I was reminded how putting my sobriety in God’s hands had worked out better than I could have ever imagined.  I realized that I could put any problem in God’s hands and trust in the outcome even if it was not my will.  My journey had gone from belief to faith to trust.

Don’t feel like you have to be at this point in your relationship with God to continue on with the steps.  Looking at Principle 2 I realize that I was zero for three when it came to this Principle when I started recovery:

Principle 2: Earnestly believe that God exists, that I matter to Him, and that He has the power to help me recover.

When I started, I didn’t believe any of those three things.  I was basically an agnostic when I started my recovery journey so I didn’t earnestly believe that God existed.  I reasoned that if God did exist he certainly wasn’t doing anything for anyone lately – especially me, so I didn’t believe that I mattered to Him.  When somebody advised me early in recovery that God would be a big part of my recovery journey I literally laughed out loud.  I thought it was ridiculous that God would have any part of this.  As you can see I believed in zero of the three parts of Principle 2 when I started my journey.  When I was working the steps and I got to two Step 2 I hadn’t completely changed all of my views but I do remember that there were three things I believed.  First of all I believed that the steps had worked for other people.  If I didn’t believe this I don’t think I would have found the motivation to keep working them.  Secondly I believed that there was a God, and lastly I believed that I was not God.  I found that this was enough for me to continue my journey through the steps that first time.

Step 1-Lesson 2: Powerless

Our second lesson dealing with Step 1 is on powerlessness.  This concept was very difficult for me to learn but was key to my recovery.  I really thought I could accomplish anything I put my mind to, until I tried to quit drinking.  My cravings for alcohol were so strong they literally brought me to my knees.  I didn’t realize it at the time, but what I was experiencing was powerlessness.  When I got in recovery I realized that my inability to quit drinking wasn’t an indication of my own personal weakness, but a manifestation of the powerlessness I have over alcohol.  Without fully embracing this powerlessness I think there would always be a part of me that would be thinking that I could do this on my own without having to work the steps, that I could succeed if I only tried hard enough.  The difficult lessons I learned trying to quit on my own were vital to me seeing that I could not do this on my own and that I needed God’s help.

In the leader’s guide for Celebrate Recovery they list several do’s and don’ts when it comes to powerlessness:

Don’t

• Keep denying the pain
• Keep trying to control

Do

• Stop playing God
• Start admitting your life has become unmanageable

Denying the pain our hurts, habits and hang-ups cause us is a form of denial that we put up so we don’t have the face the reality of our powerlessness.  I know that I tried to convince myself I could stop if I really wanted to because I really thought that I was still in control.  I really thought I could control anything in my life, whether it was my actions or the actions of others.  I had to stop trying to play God and start being honest with myself.  Being honest with myself meant being honest about what effect my drinking was having on my life and the lives of those around me and realizing how unmanageable my life really was.

Coming to believe that I was not in control was a difficult concept for me to accept, but when I am honest with myself there is very little I can control.  Take for example these items, are any of these items things that any of us can really control:

• Whether or not a star 30 million light years from Earth goes supernova?
• Whether a giant asteroid hits Earth two months from now?
• Whether one country decides to invade another?
• Who will win the next presidential election?
• Whether my company will decide to downsize?
• Whether a loved one will have an accident?
• My spouse’s opinion?
• What my children do?

While I certainly may impact the election by my vote or influence my spouse’s opinion, if I’m being honest, I realize that I don’t have absolute control over any of these items.  Perhaps even closer to home, sometimes I can’t even control my own actions.  If you’re honest with yourself are there any items like this where control is also an illusion:

• Whether or not you drink alcohol
• Whether or not you get angry
• Whether or not you feel anxiety/shame/remorse/fear
• Whether or not you make another bet
• Whether or not you look at pornography
• Whether or not you buy something you don’t need
• Whether or not you overeat

One of the things I learned in treatment is that addiction takes away one’s volition (or choice).  When I am powerless over something I have lost the power of choice over my actions.  Although there were times I was able to stop drinking for a few weeks or months at a time, this was not me taking control of this aspect of my life because in the end I still always ended up getting drunk.  I had lost the power of choice over whether I would drink or not.  At this point believing that I still had control over drinking was as foolish as believing I had control over events happening halfway across the universe.

So why is understanding what we can and can’t control so important.  Let’s review Principle 1 and Step 1:

• Principle 1: Realize I am not God. I admit that I am powerless to control my tendency to do the wrong things and that my life is unmanageable.
• Step 1: We admitted we were powerless over our addictions and compulsive behaviors, that our lives had become unmanageable.

As you can see, admitting that we are powerless and that we are not in control are key to this step.

So how do we get past this so we can move on.  First we have to get past any denial we have over our control and stop looking inwardly for the solution.  All my solutions prior to recovery always centered around me, and all my best thinking kept getting me drunk.  I had to admit loss of control meant that I wasn’t going to find the solution inside me.  I had to surrender my illusion of control and I had to surrender my drinking over to God.

Unfortunately for most of us, it takes some kind of negative event in our life to get us past our denial of control.  For me it took almost losing my family to realize that things could not continue on as they had.  I had believed that the only person my drinking was really impacting was me.  I either could not see or just plain ignored all of the negative impacts it was having on my life and my family.  When I was finally honest with myself I realized that it impacted every aspect of my life: spiritual, volition, social, emotional, mental and physical.  These negative impacts meant my life was unmanageable when I was drinking.

Here is the acrostic for this lesson:

• P – Pride
• O – Only if’s
• W – Worry
• E – Escape
• R – Resentments
• L – Loneliness
• E – Emptiness
• S – Selfishness
• S – Separation

 

Let’s look at each of these in more detail:

Pride

Pride was a major barrier to my recovery.  As I mentioned, I really thought I could solve any problem in my life if I tried hard enough.  It was very difficult and painful when I finally found out I could not.  This feeling of failure also kept me from reaching out for help.  I felt like a failure because I couldn’t solve this problem in my life and was too embarrassed to ask for help because of my pride.

Only If’s

The “only if’s” have had a negative impact on my recovery in a couple of ways.  I have spent a lot of time wondering how things would have turned out if things had gone differently in my life.  For example, I spent a lot of time wondering how my life would be different “only if” my parents had taught me the “right” way to drink.  Maybe I wouldn’t have been an alcoholic if this happened.  Not only was this not true, this thinking only served to make me develop a resentment against my parents and it pointed me away from my own powerlessness and my need for God.

Worry

I am certainly guilty of spending time worrying about things.  I’ve found that most of my worrying is based on a fear that things won’t go the way I want them to.  Worrying is a symptom of my desire to control my life and what happens around me.  When I am engaging in worry I am not focused on my faith in God but rather my fear of not having control.  I have to remind myself that the only things I can control are what I say and what I do and that God is in control of the rest.  I have to put my faith in God that He will give me the strength to get through any situation in my life, even if things don’t turn out the way I want them to.

Escape

For those of us with addictions and compulsive behaviors, escape can become a normal part of our lives.  Rather than face our situation, face the reality that we may be powerless we instead turn to food or drugs or pornography to keep from having to think about our problems, even if only for a little while.  Unfortunately, as I found, my problems were always there waiting for me the next day, and I had a hangover to boot.

Resentments

Resentments have certainly impacted my recovery journey.  It was easy for me to blame my problems on others, to live in denial that my behaviors were solely the result of something somebody else did to me.  I would blame my drinking on my perception that my employer was not treating me the way I should be treated.  I found that blaming somebody else was far easier than facing the reality that I might be powerless over alcohol.  I would also use these resentments to justify all kinds of bad behavior, especially drinking.  If my company didn’t treat me the way I thought they should then why should I show up for work fully rested without a hangover.  I would justify giving less than my best effort because of resentments I had from perceived slights from them.  This only delayed my recovery journey because it kept me focused on others rather than myself.

Loneliness

Loneliness can also prevent us from discovering our powerlessness.  In addition to the isolation that our hurt, habits and hang-ups can lead us to, we may also fall into the trap of believing that our problems are unique.  I have heard this described as “terminal uniqueness”, and I certainly went through this.  I really believed I was the worst alcoholic out there, that nobody had done the things I had done.  This caused me to be even more embarrassed about my situation and kept me from seeking help.  When I was able to get past this, I realized that there are people out there just like me.  The details of our lives may not be the same, but we share the same powerlessness over our hurts, habits and hang-ups.  It served to remind me that Satan hasn’t created any new sins for any of us, he has just recycled the same ones throughout history.

Emptiness

A life centered around hurts, habits and hang-ups can begin to feel empty and meaningless.  As someone once told me, addiction is trying to fill a hole in our lives that only God can fill.  Whether we are trying to fill this hole with shopping, alcohol or gambling, we find that at best we can achieve only a temporary fix, if even that.  The good news is that by admitting we are powerless and getting into recovery we can let God begin to fill that hole and we can begin to pursue activities that can lead to a life of meaning.

Selfishness

For me selfishness was a big part of my drinking problem.  I knew getting drunk was a selfish endeavor – I was never thinking about how I could help other people or how I can fit myself into God’s plan for me when I was drinking.  In fact, one of the most shocking statements that I found in early recovery was from the book Alcoholics Anonymous on this subject.  In it they flatly state that alcohol is not the enemy of the alcoholic, it is selfishness and self-centeredness that are the root cause of this addiction.  This was completely contrary to anything I had thought, but highlighted how important getting past selfishness is.

Separation

I felt very separated from God when I began my recovery journey.  Although I realize now that God never went anywhere, I felt like there was a huge gulf between us.  My selfish pursuits had kept me from growing spiritually and the guilt I felt over how I was living my life kept me from wanting to reach out to Him.  The Twelve Steps led me back to God and helped me to create a relationship that has made me feel closer to God than at any other time in my life.  For me admitting my own powerlessness was an essential beginning of that journey.

Other Thoughts

In AA we say that Step 1 is the only one you have to do perfectly, and I have certainly found that to be true.  I have found that I have to be completely convinced that I am powerless and that my life is unmanageable to continue on my recovery journey.  After all, if I believe that I am powerless over something but my life is not unmanageable, what is my motivation to quit?  Sure, I may not be able to stop, but I can keep the status quo going as long as I need to.  In the same vain, if my life is unmanageable but I don’t believe I am powerless, why would I stay motivated to continue to work the steps.  Sure, I know I can’t continue doing what I’ve been doing, but I can solve this problem on my own without having to commit to doing a recovery program.  For me, to stay focused and convinced that I need to continue working my program I have to believe that I am both powerless and that my life is unmanageable.

If any of you are having the same recovery journey I had you may have experienced relapses and setbacks.  I know for me these “failures” were certainly frustrating.  I put failures in quotes because I have come to see these as necessary lessons in my recovery journey.  I needed to try to quit drinking on my own and fail miserably to convince myself that I am powerless.  As I have been told, it took me every drink to get me where I am at today.  If you have experienced “failures” in your recovery journey, learn from them but keep coming back.  You may find that these “failures” were the necessary lessons for you to discover your own powerlessness.

Finally, I will leave you with a quote that I read out of one of the stories in the book Alcoholics Anonymous.  In this story the person relates something their sponsor said to them about their drinking – anything that has to be controlled is already out of control.  This is an interesting quote and certainly thought provoking for me.  Sometimes we may wonder if our problems truly are that bad, but keeping this quote in my mind certainly helps give me a means to measure whether things in my life truly are out of control.