An Epiphany

"The whole emphasis of Step Seven is on humility. It is really saying to us that we now ought to be willing to try humility in seeking the removal of our other shortcomings just as we did when we admitted that we were powerless over alcohol, and came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity."

Last night this passage struck out at me as we read it in my Stepsisters meeting. I don' t think I had the correlation between Step 1 and Step 7 before. I think I've discovered my shortcomings...I think there are more that remain undiscovered which is why I am continuing to do a fourth step. I have been willing to have them removed...and humbly asked. Or so I thought. First of all...I said at the beginning and I think if I'm honest I still feel...Hey, God..just remove them Okay? Don't even have to know what they are. In fact don't care to, really. Just take 'em, okay? I understand this is not how it works. I got over it..I think. But as I read that line I realized that the same "innermost defeat" that I felt with alcohol, that brought me to Alcoholics Annonymous, will be required to take this Step. If I desire sloth, gluttony, lust, greed, wrath, envy and pride to be removed from me..then I must be utterly convinced that there is nothing within my power to take them away. That I upon my own will I am not going to be able to "control" myself. The fact that I recognize them is enough...I am no longer in complete denial...just like I am no longer in complete denial that I am an alcoholic. That it is not "normal" to drink the way I did. Once I know they are there, once I see them pop up..once I can put a label on an undesirable behavior...the only thing that will remove this shortcoming, defect, sin, fault..whatever you want to call it is to pray and believe that when it is time for it to go...it will..in God's time.

When I admitted my powerlessness over alcohol I felt like a loser. Why Me? But I have come to see that as a gift. You do not have to be an alcoholic to have a spiritual awakening. But you do need a spiritual awakening to have the obsession for alcohol removed. For me being an alcoholic was my path. When I think of my shortcomings I think I am a loser. Why do I continuously put off until tomorrow what I can do today? Why am I fat? Why do I dream about that guy from the meeting? Why can I be such a hateful beeyotch to my husband? Why does that tall, thin, self possessed woman tick me off for no apparant reason? Why does silent scorn continue to plague me at work? Well, I am merely human...and because I am an alcoholic, because I have done the work and had a spiritual awakening I can ask God to remove these problems. He may not do it right away...or he may have given me the tools and I just can't see them YET in all my humanness. But because I have had a spiritual awakening I KNOW, that as time marches on and if I continue to progress and to work, they will be. I see it happening before my eyes in others hence another purpose for meetings. And not only that..in the KNOWING, comes FAITH. I have that now.

We talked in my morning meeting the other day about evil. I don't believe, or at least I don't think I believe (I try to remain open) that there is a tangible devil out there. What I do believe is there can be an absence of God. In the absence of God, our humanness allows us to create a false self full of all those defects that create war, hunger, disease on the large scale and personal defenses against the world. And without God we cannot dismantle that. I see the work of the 12 steps as dismantling the false self created by our humanness, and not by a Devil. Once we see God, know God...the "evil" begins to disappear.

Blah...I'm going on and on...but this has been rattling around in my head for a few days. Thanks.