Quote:
Yes, you've got us over the barrel, all right--but where do we go from here?" Let's look first at the case of the one who says he won't believe--the belligerent one. He is in a state of mind which can be described only as savage. His whole philosophy of life, in which he so gloried, is threatened.
It's bad enough, he thinks, to admit alcohol has him down for keeps. But now, still smarting from that admission, he is faced with something really impossible. How he does cherish the thought that man, risen so majestically from a single cell in the primordial ooze, is the spearhead of evolution and therefore the only god that his universe knows! Must he renounce all this to save himself?
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There was an emptiness within me, the loss of what was, and I needed something of a spiritual nature to fill up that void. I was told it was a spiritual program not a religious one and all I had known was religion. What I knew of it in some ways, I could accept and in other areas I could not. I started to religiously go to meetings.
When I got a year sober, I found out I didn't know who God was. I started my spiritual journey. I don't believe I came to a full understanding of my God until I was seven years sober.
I had believed in God, but didn't believe He believed in me. I was told that "Thou shall not..." all my life and I had tried to prove everyone wrong, so therefore I felt that I had been rejected by God and He didn't want a part of me." If He wanted me to act the way I had been told I should, I wasn't too sure I wanted a part of Him.
I didn't like the concept of just picking and choosing the things I liked and reject the rest, just because I didn't like it. That had me back playing God with my life. I liked the concept of practicing the principles of the Steps in my life. Walking my talk, surrendering to a Power that was working in my life and in those of the people I saw around me. I had to learn to respect other people's choices and their beliefs.
I went looking for God and everywhere I looked He was there. Then I realized like when I was using and moved from place to place, I took me. I was the problem. When I moved from place to place, I took me with me too. The difference was that I had surrendered to that Power and it was going with me.
It wasn't so much my concept of who God was, I don't really want to know, because then I might stop looking for Him. If I know who God is, I figure I will have passed from this earthly realm.
...a single cell in the primordial ooze
This is how I felt when I came into recovery. The lowest of the low. Through working this Step, a little as a time as it says, my God raised me up to a Higher level of consciousness and awareness and allowed me to be me and loved me for who I am, not as He would have me be.
I had to renouce the past. What brought me here would take me back out if I didn't work on it and change it. I couldn't continue to act out in my disease if I wanted to heal and recover. No more "I'm an alcoholic you know!" No more "I'm an addict you know!" No more, "I am married to an alcoholic addict, I am the mother of ..., I am a friend of...." I was now responsible for my own recovery and my own well being. I had to stop looking for people, places and things to make me feel better. In today, my Higher Power utilizes people, places and things to show me a better way of living.
To be continued...