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Monday, September 8, 2008

I am not really working the program

So, I am writing a friend back today about some recovery related issues and something hits me: I am not really working the program.

What! I am on the leadership team of a Mega Church's recovery ministry! How can I not be working a program.

So, I sit down and read through the steps:
  • Step 1 - We admitted we were powerless over our addiction - that our lives had become unmanageable
  • Step 2 - Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity
  • Step 3 - Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood God
  • Step 4 - Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves
  • Step 5 - Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs
  • Step 6 - Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character
  • Step 7 - Humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings
  • Step 8 - Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all
  • Step 9 - Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others
  • Step 10 - Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it
  • Step 11 - Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood God, praying only for knowledge of God's will for us and the power to carry that out
  • Step 12 - Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to other addicts, and to practice these principles in all our affairs
After reading through the steps, guess what I found? I am working my own program. Guess what? It is not working very well.

I adhere to the 'Buffet' style of A.A., "Oh, I will take some of Step 1, a little bit of Step 4, but I am going to pass on Step 5 (I will get some of that on my next trip up). Oh look! They just brought out Step 8! Shoot, it is not prepared the way that I like it. I will just scoop out a smidgen of Step 11 and pass on Step 12 altogether."

I know that it sounds like I am being comical about this, but my heart is very heavy right now. I feel sad.

I emailed my sponsor tonight and told him that it was time to get back to the basics. Start working a program for real and not on my terms, but the way that it was intended to be worked; One day at a time, one step at a time.

Johnny

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Saturday, September 6, 2008

I can't do it on my own

My is wife is going to kill me when she reads this, but I laid my motorcycle down today. It was not a big a deal. I was in a parking lot turning right and a truck with a very large trailer was turning towards me and didn't swing out wide enough...he was cutting off my path. If I had kept going his trailer would have hit me.

So, I hit the brakes, but broke the cardinal rule: Before you brake make sure that your motorcycle is not leaning. Well, the bike was leaning and, sure enough, it went right down.

Now, I have a Honda Shadow 1100. It is not a small bike. The owner's manual lists the bike at 678 pounds production weight. There are probably about 50 pounds of extras on it.

I tried. Lord knows that I tried hard to get that bike back up on two wheels. I am not a small guy, but I had no room to work. I was standing in wet grass just on the other side of a curb. I could not even budge it. The guy got out of the truck to help me. Even with both of us it was not that easy to get it back up on its wheels.

As I finished my ride into the office this morning I thought, "what if nobody had helped me?" Well, I would still be there. I am sure that I would have tried any number of a dozen different ways to try to remedy my situation, but I would have failed. Then it dawned on me that I handle most of my life that way; I do not ask for help. I either try different ways to fix my situation, I give up completely, or I try my best to forget about it.

Would it not be completely ridiculous for me to just leave my motorcycle siting in that parking lot rather than ask for help? However, if I am struggling with something like my emotions or my marriage I will try everything that I know then "walk away" from the problem.

In our recovery ministry meeting this past week we talked about "Hiding". I am a hider. I am the proverbial ostrich with its head stuck in the ground. It is weird. Some things I am as open as possible about and other things I just stay closed up on. I can not even really tell you why.

I believe that most of my problem is relationship based. I keep people pretty far away from me. I do not know why, but I am working on it. I do not have great friendships and part of me really hurts because of it. Plus, I know that I can't do this life on my own. I need your help.

Johnny

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