Let Go or Be Dragged

Last night was a 1-2-3 meeting.  Great meeting.  Nice people.  The meeting starts the same: someone reads the AA Preamble.  We read from the Big Book.  The “Speaker Seeker” has brought someone in to share for 15 to 20 minutes.  Then it dawns on me.  We always read one of the first three steps!  I guess I was warned.  It’s a 1-2-3 meeting.  Now I get it! 

The First Three Steps

But what ARE the first three steps?  They’re the most important ones.  That’s why they come first.  The other reason they come first is that until we complete them, we cannot move forward.  The first three of the Twelve Steps towards recovery are:

#1. Admitting we are powerless over our addiction and that our lives have become unmanageable.
#2. Realizing that a power greater than ourselves can restore our sanity.
#3. Deciding to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God, as we understand Him.

They’re pretty easy to do.  I was told not to overthink them.  Another AA paraphrased them for me:

Step 1: “I can’t.”

Step 2: “He can.”

Step 3: “Let Him.”

But it’s more than just understanding what to do.  And in this case, it’s not about doing.  It’s about NOT doing!  It’s about letting others do what we cannot do for ourselves.  We must learn to embrace these simple principles.  Just let it happen.  We should have seen by now that everything that we were trying to control was out of control.

We tried to control our drinking and failed.  We tried to control our lives and failed. We are powerless over most things, and the sooner we admit it, the sooner we can reach the state of serenity necessary to stay sober.  So, the best thing to do is to let go of trying to control everything and put it in God’s hands. Let go. I always say you can accept something or you can work against it.  Stop fighting.  Stop and take a breath.  Remember the Serenity Prayer.  God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.  Why expend so much energy working against things–even if it’s just thinking through all these things in your head.  Let them go.  Accept them.  You can’t change them.

You can’t change the wind, so adjust your sails.

When you are sailing, you use a sail to give you energy and a rudder to set your course.  With the wind at your back, you can open your sail and run with the wind!  Other than a little drag on your hull from the water, you can race as fast as the wind.  Occasionally, you may need to turn left or right, so you can pull in your sail so it is still perpendicular to the wind and get a great deal of power from the wind as you race along at a right angle to the wind.

Worst possible case: you need to head into the wind.  At this point, you need to tack.  In sailing, “tacking” refers to the maneuver of turning a boat’s bow through the wind to change its direction, allowing the boat to sail upwind or towards a destination closer to the direction of the wind than it can sail directly. By turning by an acute angle into the wind and keeping a tight sail, you can still maintain forward motion!  Of course, this will take much more effort, as you will have to continually switch back and forth, in a zig-zag course, constantly adjusting your sail’s angle to the wind, but steadily moving toward your goal.  It can be done!  

Letting Someone Else

When I first started the AA program, I mentioned to my wife that it’s a 12-step program and she became curious about what the 12 steps entailed.  So I pulled out my Big Book and found pages 83-84.  This is the chapter entitled “How it works”.  We read through the steps together, and her initial reaction was, “Sounds like you just let them get you better.  Don’t you have to do anything?”  My response was, “Well, not exactly, Dear.”

I explained, “You see, it’s like when we got married.  I was living a certain way and doing everything for myself.  But then I made a commitment to you.  I made certain promises out loud in front of others, which we called my “vows”.  In essence, I turned my life and my will over to you.  Now, you make all my decisions and let me know what to do.  You decide what we’re doing and how we are going to do it.  In our marriage, you are my “higher power”.  And, believe it or not, I’m happy with this.  It’s much easier than having to do everything myself.  It’s what I asked for when I asked you to marry me.”

But I’m oversimplifying.  Of course, it’s a partnership.  We trust each other and have each other’s best interests in mind.  I do things for you, and I appreciate that you do things for me as well.  So it is in my relationship with my Higher Power.  I do things that I know He wants done. And when I allow them, He does things for me.  He can do things for me that I cannot do for myself.

And so it is with AA.  I give my life over to my Higher Power.  He decides what I’m doing and how I’m doing it.  I ask him what He needs me to do today in my morning prayers.  When I stop to sit and meditate, it’s me, stopping to listen for His answers.  I just need to accept the wind.  My decisions are based on the direction of the wind.  I accept the power of the wind and just adjust my sail to take full advantage of it to get done what needs doing.

If I consider AA as a higher power, it is the same sort of relationship.  The fellowship gives me power and direction to stay sober.  I get out what I put in.  If I want to win, I need to give up.  But I trust AA to give me the strength and the direction to move forward.  Maybe by doing nothing, I get everything accomplished.

“Pray for potatoes, then pick up a hoe.”

But turning one’s life over to their higher power is not a passive activity!  You can ask him for what you need, but you have to avail yourself of the work.  Some days there is no wind to fill our sails and we must get out an oar.  We have to provide the power to keep moving forward.  We have our destination or goal in sight, so we must work towards it.  If it’s sobriety that you want, pray to God for it!  But then pick up the tools you need to get it done.  Sure, you can pull potatoes by hand, but with the proper tools, you can pick a whole row of potatoes with a modicum of effort!