Honestly, I am not sure that I have ever humbly asked anyone for anything, much less humbly ask God to help me with anything. As my last post was about my connection with God, and my character defects or shortcomings so is this one. I am still right here in the middle of identifying them and asking God to remove them and realizing that even though I THINK I am entirely ready to have all these removed from me.
When I first read that sometimes we exult in some of our character defects really loving them I just couldn't believe it. I mean who would love to be controlling, angry, jealous, and prideful? Well...apparently me. When I think about this it really makes me a bit sick on the inside.
I want to be different. It is hard to explain that how it is that I want to be different, but find it almost impossible to change. And it seems the harder I seem to work at it the worse it gets. The more I struggle against my shortcomings the worse they seem to get. At least that is the way it seems.
HOWEVER, it was suggested to me last night after a couple of days of really exulting in these few character defects that MAYBE just MAYBE the action that is needed here has to do with just NOT doing them. UNDER.ANY.CIRCUMSTANCES. UMMM....okay.
So as I was thinking about this suggestion I had some intuitive thoughts. Well...thoughts anyway. The first was that is fing hard. I MEAN really hard....I feel pretty sure that it would take a lot of work for this to happen. The second thought that came to my mind was a little more productive and probably the intuitive kind. This sounds ALOT like being powerless and my life being unmanageable. This suggestion sounds a lot like what I was told to do when I first came in the program with alcohol. DO NOT DRINK UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES...even if your ass is going to fall off.
I remember the humility that I had to have in order to take this step 100%. It was a humility that was born out of repeated humiliations and a sincere desire to do something different. I think maybe I need to go back to this in order to take the action mentioned above. I have to admit that I am powerless over my character defects. I am powerless over the change or removal of these things. Once I can admit complete and total defeat as I did with the compulsion to drink then maybe I can practice some humility without humiliation with these shortcomings.
So today I am admitting that I am powerless over these shortcomings. I am powerless in changing my controlling behavior. I am powerless over my anger. I am powerless over my jealousy, and my pride.
I am coming to believe that a power greater than me can restore me to sanity with regards to my drinking. Now I think that I need to transfer this belief to my shortcomings. I believe that a power greater than me can restore me to sanity, or in my case maybe actually give me some.
Now I need to make a decision to turn this stuff over to God as I understand Him, OR....humbly ask him to remove my shortcomings.
This is my understanding today. One day at a time I am walking through recovery. Tomorrow might be different, but all I really have is today and I have walked further down the road than yesterday. That's a little bit of progress.
