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

Stumble It!

Step 2: God, I don't know if you are up there....

We have all seen where the big hero of the movie is desperate. He, or someone that he loves, faces certain doom. On his knees, all sweaty, beaten, and bloodied he looks up and says, "Look, God or whoever you are, if you get me out of this I will never___________."

Here is something that you do not hear everyday about Hollywood: They got it right on this one!

Step 2 for you and I is no different from our humbled hero. He does not really acknowledge God; he does not even know who God is. He simply looks up and says if you are there please help me. That is Step 2.

You see, we have already tried everything that we can think of. Undoubtedly, our movie hero tried to shoot the bad guys, was probably in a car chase with the bad guys, tried his best karate moves on 6 or 7 of the bad guys at once, and still he came up short. He needed help. "I don't know if you are there, but if you are I need your help." I wonder how God feels when he hears that. I believe that my God is almost overwhelmed with joy when one of his kids says that.

Step 2 reads like this: Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity

People, there is no conversion here. There is no religion. There is no judgment. There is no punishment. This is just a person that has come to the end of a long rope and believes that if there is not a power greater than themselves out there, then they are screwed anyways, so they might as well give it a shot. The wonderful thing about desperate people is that when they give "something a shot" they typically go all out.

Don't kid yourself, A.A. is firmly rooted in Christianity, but you won't hear it talked about much in those rooms. Why not? The relationship is personal and unique. The relationship begins with a simple, "I don't know if you really exist..." Is that not how most relationships start out? First you get to know someone, then you start to trust them, then the love comes. It is no different with God.

So, it does not really matter where you are at with your Hurt, or your Habit, or your Hangup. According to Step 2, all that really matters is that you concede to the fact that there is something greater than you that can help you with these things. Whether you have a name for that "something greater" or not really does not matter.

We have tried to fix things ourselves, just like our movie hero, and we all end up in the same exact position; on our knees, bruised, and bloodied asking for help.

Johnny

Step 1: How can it help me? I'm not an alcoholic.

Step 1:
We admitted we were powerless over our Hurts, our Habits, and our Hang-ups,
that our lives had become unmanageable.

Is it not interesting that when you replace the word "alcohol" with the 3Hs (Hurts, Habits, and Hang-ups) that meaning of the 1st Step starts to hit home?

We are all broken. The moment Eve took a bite of that apple everything changed. Now, we just try our best to get through it, but life has a way of throwing things at us that make it difficult to cope.

Most of us are raised in a fairly dysfunctional home, or maybe we went through some traumatic event when we were younger. During that time we found what worked for us; what got us through it all. A fair amount of the time, what got us through was not healthy, nor was it affective.

As we grew, we hung on to this coping method. We may have modified it some, but it is still recognizable. You may have the same exact way of dealing with things as you did when you were a kid. However, as I got older, I found something that worked better for me: Alcohol.

What most people don't realize is that had I chose something else, I'd be no better off. I might not have lost 5 years of my life to blackouts and poor decisions, but I still would have been coping instead of dealing.

Drinking was one of my Hurts, Habits, and Hang-ups. What is yours? Anger? Laziness? Maybe you deal with everything by taking nothing seriously. Maybe spending money takes away the bad feelings you have after you get in a fight with your husband. Maybe you don't know how to handle the feeling of being overweight. I could go on a name an endless amount of things that you could be doing to deal with life. Things that are not healthy.

So, what are you powerless over? What has made your life unmanageable?

Fear not my fellow messed up brethren! There are 11 more steps helps you get your life back!

Johnny

Live Life on Life's Terms

My wife and I have been in a custody battle for her 11 year old son, Bailey. Kiley, my wife, gave up custody of her son while she was having a drug induced breakdown. She has regretted that decision ever since.

This past March we decided to go for custody because Bailey told us that he wanted to live with us. It is something that we had talked about for quite a while, but this pushed us over the edge. We hired a lawyer and started the process...the long, painful process.

I am not going to go through all the details and this certainly is not all about me, but I want share what I learned about myself through this: I can live life on life's terms.

It really only hit me about 3 weeks ago. I was thinking about how horrible the stress of this was. How worried I was about Kiley and how much I felt for Bailey. I have had a lot of sleepless nights. I have had a lot of bad days at work. I have been short with people. I have not eaten well. I missed too much church. However, not once did I think that I would be better off taking a drink.

Before sobriety, I simply was not cut out for living life. I could not cope with anything. The most mundane thing would stress me out and make me crave the feeling of cheap whiskey on my tongue. Since I stopped drinking and adopted a program for my life, I have gone through a divorce, had many financial hardships, had a brother in Afghanistan, and dealt with the loss of a custody trial. I never did drink. I don't even really recall struggling with it. My life may or may not suck right now, but it sucks much more when I drink.

We do not control life, but we can't let life control us either. I do not necessarily believe in, "If life gives you lemons, make lemonade." I would rather say, "If life gives you lemon, don't get drunk."

No, we did not win the custody hearing, but I have to believe that God has a plan for Bailey's life that did not include him living with us right now. I am good with that.