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OK so I’ve not posted on here for a little while. The main reason is that I’ve been in a relationship, the first in recovery.
Wow, any illusions I had that it would all be easy have long gone. It’s been hard. Is this because the relationship isn’t right? What does God want me to do? How do I cope with boundaries? I don’t have answers to these questions yet, and I’m not sure I will. I’m learning that part of handing over my will is to accept that I will not have answers to all my questions.
For others in the same position, I’d recommend Pia Mellody’s books, especially ‘The intimacy factor’ and ‘facing love addiction’. I re-read the latter and it became much more real while in a relationship. I also discovered, I’m an avoidant more than I’m an addict.
I’m also finding that Al-anon and S-anon is sometimes more helpful for me at the moment than SLAA, with the focus on how to have healthy relationships and handle other people’s imperfections.
This is a big one for me and particularly in my love addiction, I was seeking a man to ‘fix’ me. However when I used to pray and pray for a husband, I found that God was gradually leading me in the direction that eventually showed me what the obstacles are that prevented me from having an intimate relationship that is healthy and genuinely loving. I have become more and more aware of these barriers, and have had some difficulty with the idea of opening up and even committing at all. But I needed a long time to work through difficulties and become aware of what needs to be done. So it is no surprise that I have not had my earlier prayers answered about a husband – God loved me too much to let me make what would have been a mistake at the time. Instead he is helping me prepare for possibly being ready in the future. But now I trust God enough that if a husband never arrives, I feel confident enough that this is for a good purpose and that God knows better what I need than I know myself.
As a postscript, I found that I was looking for a guy to satisfy longings that can only be satisfied in God.
As I said yesterday, I’m going to give some examples of how I work step 3 out in my life. I’d be interested to hear how others do theirs.
I argued with my boss the other day. It’s a disagreement about a point so fundamental that I could lose my job over it. I did some step 10 work to look for how my character flaws were affecting the situation… however I was also worrying about the implications of what happened. I felt anxious and my mind was racing. When I drilled down, there were a number of things that bothered me. One was that I could lose a job of some kind of status, and what would my friends think? What would I do for money? What about coming to the city where I have my fellowship meetings – I might not be able to do that anymore? What if people at work now think I’m really difficult and awful and don’t like me?
Well a lot of this is plain old anxiety. However when we have fully done step 3 (handing our will over to God) – or if we are wishing to work it in our lives – then I must give these concerns over to God. To respond to the worries in my head, I might say to myself: Having a high status job might not be good for me spiritually, I’ll have to trust that God knows what he’s doing as to what sort of job I have, and if I have to leave that’s the right thing. Also, this argument could this might be about my own pride and ego. In reality, my friends won’t mind – and I’d rather care more about what God thinks than worry about what others think. My income may change, but God says He will provide what I need if I seek the Kingdom – that’s a promise in the Bible. I can go to other fellowship meetings if absolutely necessary. I can also pray and ask God what the right thing to do is, and seek His will, and ensure I’m keeping myself accountable, not causing harm and not holding onto resentments.
Basically, the whole situation is either something that God can take care of, or something that God is doing for a good reason, or my worries are based on character flaws and therefore I need to ask God to remove them.
Before I was in recovery, I didn’t know what trusting God meant. I’d hear irritating suggestions from people such as ‘you need to have more faith’ and ‘God will give you the desires of your heart’, which seemed to dismiss my feelings and imply that I was doing something wrong. Well in some ways they were right, but what they didn’t tell me is that the root of all of this – and the serenity of 12 step programs – comes from trusting God.
I’m not sure I really knew what trust was in any case. Significant others had rarely been trustworthy in my life, and I’d not let friends in deep enough to trust them. The men I’d chosen to be romantically involved with were deeply troubled and certainly not trustworthy. I spent my whole life hiding my real self from others and depending on my own abilities for all my needs. This hadn’t got me very far, but I felt a lot safer. And as I chose not to respect myself and got hurt, my ability to trust lessened and lessened.
When I became a Christian the challenge was about believing whether or not God is there or not, and whether what it says in the Bible is true. This is important stuff, but rarely did I let the implications of what I believed affect my day to day life. OK so I started to try and not have sex with people and behave a bit nicer. However this didn’t really work as I still did these things despite my best efforts. I was a lot happier and felt I had meaning and direction in my life. But the fundamentals were not there, and my relationship with God was pretty superficial.
What changed was hitting rock bottom in a disastrous romantic relationship and coming into 12 step recovery. Finally I realised that I couldn’t go on as I was – it wasn’t getting better. I’d tried to make things right on my own steam, and failed. I became open and willing, and honest to people about the craziness in my head for the first time in my life.
When I got to step 3 I thought that I knew all about this. I knew about doing God’s will. There’s lots about it in the Bible. But in reality, I knew nothing. The starting point was making a decision to do God’s will, as the step says, and then daily praying for God’s will to be done and also the willingness to do this.
Step 3 for me is not worrying, but trusting that God will work in each part of my life and letting Him get on with it. It’s about wanting to do His will more than my own. It’s about letting go of all my hopes and dreams and instead asking God what He hopes and dreams for me. It’s about trust.
In the next couple of days, I’m gonna do some posts with some practical examples of what handing my will over to God was like for me. Before recovery, I couldn’t really comprehend what letting someone else care for me was all about. I am helped with practical examples of these kinds of abstract concepts, so I hope these will help you too.
I found this really helpful in Step 3 of the twelve steps. For me, this step was a lot about trust. Could I trust God? Could I let go of control? During meditation, I’d imagine the scenes from the gospels – such as in Matthew 14, Mark 6 and John 6 – and imagine that I was in the scene. Then I’d imagine myself as if I was about to walk on water – particularly from Matthew 14 – and going to walk towards Jesus. Sometimes it was easier to imagine this if it was a swimming pool that I was walking on. I imagined that I stepped out and walked on the water – developing the faith and trust in Jesus that I’d be able to do this.
Handing over the will requires a lot of trust, I think. I used to find it very difficult to trust anyone, whether people or God. Now I feel trust and faith in God, and my trust in others is increasing. I guess that’s been due to practice, and willingness, as well as getting to know God better. The more I know of God, the more I learn how trustworthy He is.
Finding the Way 