|
Home
|
Step One: We admitted we were powerless over _____, and that our lives had become unmanageable.
A story goes around church circles about a child who was asked what Bible story he learned in Sunday School.
“Baseball,” he responded, and his parents looked at each other with serious doubt that the child was telling the truth. The parents began to probe for more information.
“You know," the little boy said. "We learned about The Big Inning.”
To a child’s ears, it’s not a far leap from “in the beginning” to “in the big inning.”
To a person poised on the edge of making a major, life-changing, transformative journey from chaos to serenity, it is an enormous thing to take this First Step.
Recovery is the Big Inning, for sure. And a beginning.
As my first recovering friend told me, “Every day can be the first day of the rest of your life, no matter what time it is when you begin.”
So, here I am again, starting over with the Step One, and it may take me a few blog posts to write about how important this Step is. It’s so important and so powerful, in fact, that some people can’t even take it for a long time. For some, it is so threatening to the ego-position he/she has chosen or is committed to that it’s just too much to begin.
Others, like me, are so relieved that we plunge in, almost breathless with relief and gratitude that finally, there is a plan to follow, a path to take, a way out of the hole we find ourselves in.
***
“I’m not powerless,” a powerful man said to someone who was trying to urge him to work the Steps for his addiction to work, an addiction that got him lots of praise and ego-gratification.
It’s harder for some of us to admit powerlessness over anything, especially if that behavior that is the problem has some big pay-offs. It’s hard to give up codependency, religious addiction, people-pleasing and work addiction, but the truth is that those behaviors carried too far can suck the marrow out of your life.
It’s also hard to give up addictions to feeling states – like worry, fear, anger, rage, insecurity and the like. Like all addictions, those states of being can become so familiar and necessary to our daily life that we don’t feel normal if we aren’t feeling anxious or guilty, resentful or ashamed. And, like all addictions, over time you have to get more of the drug of choice to get the buzz you need to feel “like yourself.”
(Is it possible that in this culture today, we are collectively addicted to bad news? to hate? to the need to be afraid?)
|
|
|
March 25, 2013
Sometimes, all it takes is a song to re-connect you with something important, and during this Holy Week, as I contemplate the theme of practicing resurrection, particularly as that theme relates to working the Twelve Steps, I keep thinking about the importance of having a sponsor and choosing the right sponsor for the holy path of recovery.
(Here's the premise of this whole series on the Twelve Steps: I am convinced that the path of recovery can be seen as practicing resurrection.)
When I was young, the song “The Impossible Dream” from the stage musical Man of La Mancha ignited minds and hearts with Don Quixote’s quest to make the world a better place.
I was a dreamer then, too, and an idealist and a romantic, so the song became my personal anthem. Young and optimistic, I believed in infinite possibilities of life and love, and so it was that fortified by that song and “Climb Every Mountain” from The Sound of Music, I set out into the adult world to make my dreams come true. I had Maria von Trapp's confidence in sunshine and rain, my family's belief in me and a fledgling faith in God. What more did I need?
Over time, life tempered that youthful spirit, balancing my idealism with realism and pragmatism. With some losses and heartbreaks along the way, I have worked to maintain my optimism, but now and then, I’ve felt the grunge of cynicism and skepticism.
I don’t like the feelings and states of mind that accompany cynicism and skepticism. You know what they are: resentment, bitterness, jealousy, envy on good days, and disappointment, despair, depression and hopelessness on the bad days.
Those feelings, you see, are indicative that I am betraying the truths that I know to be – well, true. When I am in those awful pits, I know that I am betraying the True Self that I am, and worse, I know that in those states, I am choosing to be distant from the Life-giver and the Source of unconditional love and unrelenting hope.
|
|
Saturday, March 9, 2013
Now and then, someone will come up to me after a speech I’ve given or a lesson I’ve taught and ask, hesitantly, “Are you an alcoholic?”
Sometimes that amuses me, and sometimes I want to ask, “What if I say yes?”
I am not an alcoholic, but I have “worked” the Twelve Steps for codependency since before that dis-ease was a word, so it is natural for a reference to the Twelve Steps is a natural part of my speaking or teaching
I’ve gotten rewarded for care-giving and care-taking, but I soon learned about “the disease” to please, and how far from authenticity I was, when acting out of that disease.
I’ve been praised for putting others first, but when I began looking at how I’d made idols out of other people, how I’d given my own power and authority away and how I’d allowed fear to control me, I began to see how that much of my people-pleasing, care-taking and codependency issues were all habits, attitudes and behaviors that were more about my surviving in my world then they were authentic caring for others.
I wasn’t proud of that.
In truth, codependency is a defense mechanism. It is a half-lived life, and it has a whole lot of manipulation, deception, control and duplicity in it.
I’m not proud of that, either.
What I wanted was real love between myself and others, instead of love that was tainted with my own self-concern and fear. I still want that.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
