Journey through the 12 steps: Courage

Last night I finally got a chance to start on step 4 while my boyfriend was at a meeting.  The theme of this step is courage.  It reads as such:

Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves

And so begins my personal moral inventory.  The workbook made it clear not to do the fourth step with the fifth in mind, because I should be as open and honest as possible.  The areas that I looked at first were honesty, responsibility, money and procrastination.  I will be honest, going into this I thought that I was going to feel shameful and embarrassed and realize what a shitty human I am.  In all actuality, there are a lot of good things about me.

I’m pretty honest and responsible in many aspects of my life and I’ve made leaps and bounds with money.  Procrastination has always been a weakness of mine but I was able to fairly easily identify my weaknesses in all of these areas.  Honesty may have been the most difficult.  As an alcoholic, you spend a lot of time being dishonest.  Not just hiding the alcohol from loved ones but making excuses for terrible behavior or lying about the things you did when you were drunk and didn’t care.

The problem is that honesty has always been an important value for me.  One of the questions asked if I had ever stolen money and my answer was absolutely not.  I would always say that I’ve done a lot of awful things in my life but one thing I will never do is steal.  To me, stealing is extra terrible (this is irrational–I’ve done many things just as unforgivable–I am aware of this).

One thing that made me feel kind of ashamed is that I was not raised to have these issues.  The questionnaire asked a great deal about my family values and, from my assessment thus far, my parents were pretty stellar.  My mother was a physician and my dad quit his job to stay home with me and later helped her manage her practice.  They were very hard working and intelligent people who never made excuses and always did what they needed to do.  I had great examples growing up but somehow made so many mistakes.  My guess is that further work on my inventory may reveal some of the reasons for this.

Responsibility was an interesting topic as well.  Questions related to what responsibility means to me and if I consider myself to be a responsible person.  It also asked about my level of responsibility as a child and how that changed as I became a teenager and then an adult.  I wasn’t a child who was burdened with a great deal of responsibility growing up but I always wanted more.  My problem just came in proving that I could handle it.  My guess is that I used alcohol as a way of coping with the parts that I didn’t want to, or couldn’t handle as an adult.  Physically, I can do almost anything.  Emotionally and mentally I dreadfully overexert myself.  Hard-working entrepreneurs for parents can teach you that.

Actually re-reading that now it has a whole new level of clarity.  Maybe my problem is trying to lift 100 pounds emotionally when I’m only equipped for 20?  That’s hard to recognize and often comes out in a variety of other ways (drinking?  cheating?  depression?).  Hmm.  Something to think about.

 

Journey through the 12 steps: Faith

While my boyfriend was out of town, I decided to move forward with step 3 in my 12 step journey:

Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood God

In the last step, we realized that only our Higher Power could restore us to sanity.  In this step, we are actually TURNING OVER our will and lives to God.  I’ll be honest.  I was happy to have a workbook for this step because I wouldn’t really know how to start looking at this step.  I know that I’ve trusted God and that knowing He is with me has brought me peace time after time.  But what else is there?

Turning over our will and lives means more than just trusting God.  It means actually LISTENING to Him and doing what He says even when we don’t want to.  Even when it is painful.  I attended church on Sunday (something I have been doing pretty consistently since becoming sober) and the sermon was exactly in line with everything I’ve been working on in my recovery up to this point (funny how God does that–can I get an AMEN?).

The recent series has been titled “You’ve Got What It Takes” and it is about fulfilling God’s will in your life and listening to His call.  One of our staff pastors taught the message and it was so fantastic I can’t even do it justice by trying to paraphrase but I’m going to try anyway.

He said that we can hear the voice of God in three places

1.  Our past. The enemy puts our past in front of us and tries to use it against us because it is fertile soil for God’s grace.  WHAT?  To hear God, we must confront our past.  So many of us want to build a bridge and “get over” our past hurts and mistakes, but God wants us to face our past and make peace with it (foreshadow to steps 4 and 5 possibly??).  This may mean forgiving others or asking for forgiveness.  Our past is a powerful conduit for us to find God’s mercy and grace that we can only hear if we go back and work through it.
2. Our pain.  Pain makes us weak and weakness brings us closer to hearing the voice of God.  Our pastor cited my absolute favoritest (yes it’s a word) verse in the whole Bible:  “But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong. -2 Corinthians 12:9-11″.  God doesn’t speak to those who are living high and on top of the world.  It is those of us that are on our faces begging for Him that so clearly hear His voice and direction.  When we can experience that pain–that raw vulnerability, He will guide us and ask us to surrender to Him.
3. Our potential.  We only need to be willing…He will make us able.  Get off the sidelines and get in the game.  We need to be able to trust in His view of our potential.  The Scripture makes it vibrantly clear that we all have spiritual gifts and abilities, some we may not even know.  If we are willing to let go of our need to control everything, we can follow Him to a life that is more than anything we could imagine making for ourselves.  “ow to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us.  -Ephesians 3:20.”

Tell me my pastor didn’t hit it right there are the head???  Here is the link if you want to watch the sermon in its entirety:  https://newspring.cc/sermons/youve-got-what-it-takes/youve-got-what-it-takes-to-hear-from-god

It’s totally worth your time.

Anyway, this isn’t about a plug for my church I just really thought the message fitting and it helped me really understand more about turning my will and my life over to God.  You see, “turning” is a verb, not an adjective.  That means we have to DO SOMETHING.  Saying “I trust You” isn’t enough.  We need to take action.  Find God’s will for us.  Act on faith.

I’m not sure what God wants me to do right now, or maybe He just wants me to wait.  I do know that being sober is a part of His plan and I know that He knows how hard that is for me right now.  But I’m taking the only steps I know how…I’m continuing my job of trying to help those in need, I’m going to church and learning and growing, and I’m developing positive relationships and new coping skills.  The rest is still to come.  🙂

Day 63 and counting!

Journey through the 12 steps: Powerlessness

Yesterday I started working on a 12 step guide to go along with the AA big book that I am currently reading.  Because this is top priority in my recovery right now, I figured I would share some of my experiences while I am going on this journey.  I am hoping that others may have some pertinent thoughts or feedback that I can incorporate into my own recovery and add something to what I am already learning.

Yesterday I worked on Step 1, which is:

We admitted we were powerless over alcohol – that our lives had become unmanageable.

I’m not exactly sure if this is a hard or easy “step” for me, because on the one hand, I definitely admit that I have a problem with alcohol but on the other hand, I continue to drink because I feel like the drink is some kind of weapon against all of my hardships and stressors, so there must be some false sense of control there.

In any case, the thing that sucked the most about this step was actually sitting down and listing all of the things I had done while drinking that I was ashamed of.  All of the times I put myself or others in danger.  All the times that I caused abuse, verbal and physical.  All of the times I thought I could control my drinking but didn’t.  I guess that’s why it was easy…these events came to mind readily.  I know how bad they were.  I would never have wanted my mother or boyfriend or friends to know how disgusting I could really be when intoxicated.  I thought about the times I got drunk at my mom’s bridal shower and my best friend’s wedding and how I embarrassed myself.  About the times I drove home drunk because “Nah, I’m good”.  It sucks to think about being that selfish.

Yes, I am powerless over alcohol and my life was really unmanageable.  Yes, I did go to work everyday, getting promotions each year.  I took my kids to daycare, had a few hobbies, maintained friendships and relationships.  But looking back I just lived each moment to make it to the next drink.  Get through the day…then you get to drink.  My whole life was teetering on the thin edge of a fragile glass that was just waiting on someone or something to upturn it and send my whole world crashing to the ground.

How do you sustain this life for an entire decade or longer?  I am honest when I say I’ve forgotten more of my free time over the past 10 years than I remember.  My life was work, school, the day to day.  Everything else was just a boozy haze.

What I must remember is this:  I will ALWAYS be powerless to alcohol.  I cannot control my drinking and the only feasible solution is complete abstinence.  This is difficult in a society that is so accepting of alcohol.  My boyfriend even said “You can drink, I just don’t like you getting drunk,” as if those two things are mutually exclusive.  I’m an alcoholic.  Drinking IS getting drunk.

Most days are easy now.  Friday will be 2 months into my sober journey.  Still, some days are not so easy.  Learning to accept that this is now my life is still pretty terrifying.  The thought of never drinking again is so foreign.

But I have accepted what alcohol does to me and the damage it has caused.  Step 1.  One day at a time. 🙂