submission phase, step 2 continued

Each of us whether we’re aware of it or not, whether we’ll admit it or not, has faith and hope in an idea. What idea? Whatever you want to believe in. If we’re honest with ourselves, we’ll recognize that our driving beliefs were instilled in us from either our upbringing (our parents or guardians), a relative, a friend, mentor, something we’ve seen or heard in society, even something we decided is true because of an experience we went through. All of us are motivated by some idea we carry in our mind.

When I was deep in my addiction, I sought the relief of substances (drugs or alcohol) to bring me peace of mind. I truly believed that when I got drunk or high I could finally feel “like myself”—I felt human again. I refused to believe that anything else could ease my life stresses. And it doesn’t have to be drugs or alcohol that we seek relief in, it could be work, meaningless relationships, cutting, abusing other people, etc. When we’re hurting ourselves or others to seek stress relief from life we are ultimately running from our true humanity.

So what is our true humanity? We are love. No one was born to bring hurt and destruction to life. We were are meant to uplift humanity, meant to bring something beautiful to the world we live in. I get it…some people just seem to be more broken than others. Some people seem like they’ll never get on the right track. I have no real answer as to why some people come into this world seeming to only bring pain, hurt, and destruction. Right now, in this moment, I’m speaking to the person who feels the calling to change. The calling to become different, the calling to not allow themselves to continue to hurt themselves or others. It all begins with hope. Hope in what we believe in. Hope that we can change. And hope that things will be different someday.

It all begins with what you have faith in. We practice faith everyday when we step out into the world and believe we will make it another day. No one knows when they’re time is up on Earth. But we go about living our day with the hope (conscious or not) that we’ll awake tomorrow and start again.

For us “12 steppers”, we put our hope and faith in God. Our minds and hearts turn to Him through prayer to take us through our mess and toward something better. We believe in Him even when things seem bleak and life has turned against us. We believe the power of His love will change the way we live our life.

“Actually we were fooling ourselves, for deep down in every man, woman, and child, is the fundamental idea of God. It may be obscured by calamity, by pomp, by worship of other things, but in some form or other it is there. For faith in a Power greater than ourselves, and miraculous demonstrations of that power in human lives, are facts as old as man himself. We finally saw that faith in some kind of God was part of our make-up, just as much as the feeling we have for a friend. Sometimes we had to search fearlessly, but He was there. He was as much a fact as we were. We found the Great Reality deep down within us. In the last analysis it is only there that he may be found. It was so with us.”

Big Book (Alcoholics Anonymous), p. 55.

#step2recovery #submission