Reluctant Recovery

Tomorrow I will be celebrating 90 days of sobriety (Yay!), and I’ve just recently completed the third step.

Step 3: Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him.

Sounds simple enough, right? The third step even comes with its own nifty little prayer to help you out, on page 63 of the big book (please not that I’ve updated the language as all the thees and thys confuse me):

“God, I offer myself to you–to build with me and do with me as you will. Relieve me of the bondage of self, that I may better do your will. Take away my difficulties, that victory over them may bear witness to those I would help of your power, your love, and your way of life. May I do your will always!”

There’s a huge problem here, however, for people like me who don’t really have any understanding at all of a God. As a teenager I attended church youth group, and would have identified myself as a Christian if you’d asked, but mostly I just went because I liked the people and the activities. For years after that, I considered myself an atheist which was for me–and I mean no disrespect to atheists, I know many who believe (for lack of a better word) very strongly in their atheism–a knee jerk reaction to realizing the whole Jesus business made absolutely no logical sense to me beyond being a nice, if inconsistent, mythology.

In the last couple of years, I’ve come back around to the idea of a higher power, that there’s something out there. My best friend, J, who is very spiritual, calls her higher power “Source.” I think her idea is closer to what my own beliefs are; God is the source of all things, the source of love, the source of kindness and wisdom. It’s not particularly well-defined, but at least it’s something.

So, that brings us up to the past week past week when, after a few weeks of holding on to my sobriety an hour (and sometimes even a minute) at a time, I began to pray. At first, it felt dishonest because I had not even been able to grasp step two yet. How can I be praying when I don’t even believe that there’s a power greater than myself who can restore me to sanity? How can I be praying when I don’t even know who or what I’m praying to? It was with a “fake it till ya make it” attitude that I incorporated prayer, and it was only because in my desperation not to drink, I decided to try what seems to work so well for all of those people filling up my meetings.

So, I’ve been praying. And I’m still sober. And some oddly synchronicitous things have been happening. I’ve been praying for God to make me useful again, because I feel like such a failure these days, and I want a purpose. Two days ago I was asked to chair a meeting five minutes before it started and despite my protests, the many ways as I said “no” and their accompanying excuses wouldn’t be accepted. Yesterday after a meeting, a man my age in our fellowship, T, introduced me a woman my age, C, who after a month of sobriety went back out, and has just come back in. Today I got a call from an old boss to do some freelance work this weekend. It just so happens I’ve also been praying for God to help me work hard with honestly and integrity to get myself out of the enormous financial mess I’ve gotten myself into.

These things are great, but I think the best part is that praying has helped me to accept step two, so that I am now able to embrace step three. And it only took three months!