“Our human resources, as marshalled by the will, were not sufficient; they failed utterly.”
“Faced with alcoholic destruction, we soon became as open minded on spiritual matters as we had tried to be on other questions. In this respect alcohol was a great persuader. It finally beat us into a state of reasonableness.”
-Alcoholics Anonymous pp. 47-48 (“We Agnostics” Step Two)
No matter what your current relationship status, sometimes it is so hard to figure out the right course of action to take. I know that I have a bad habit (in my self-will and self-reliance) of trying to figure it all out for myself instead of asking God for his help and his guidance. No wonder this is the one area of my continuing recovery where I struggle.
I am not alone in this. Single people struggle. People in committed relationships struggle. People married to alcoholics struggle. We all have this in common: relationships are difficult. For some people who have an intense fear of real intimacy, relationships are so scary that their fear of intimacy overrides their desire for love.
Why are relationships, starting them, sustaining them, enduring them, and ending them, such a problem for alcoholics and alanonics? Because there are a couple of different things going on here. First, we all have character defects that we have been unwilling to have God remove. When I am on my own, just coming home to my little dog, my fish, and my empty house each day, my character defects stay somewhat buried. However, put me in a relationship, and these same qualities that have stayed safely hidden become glaring shortcomings. Why? Because of the second reason: selfishness. We are mostly concerned about ourselves. What I want is paramount. What I perceive that I need is my goal. I may consider you, but as an alcoholic, it really always comes back to me. Also, the fear becomes real. I fear I am going to lose what I now have. That is a terrifying feeling.
In fact, many alcoholics find actually loving another person extremely difficult. And why? Because of the failure to love themselves. We cannot really love another person until we have fully accepted ourselves. We cannot fully love ourselves until we get a program and work the Steps, especially the middle inventory and amends steps. These are the steps where we make peace with all other people. We continue practicing this peace in Steps Ten, Eleven, and Twelve. The bottom line is this: if I have a problem with you, usually an old or current resentment, then I cannot possibly be at peace with me. If I cannot have peace within me, then I am probably blocked from God, and then seeing you for the amazing and loving person God created will be impossible.
But what about loving our children? Even the worst alcoholic still has that kind of love, which proves his or her ability to love another person. The problem is that when an alcoholic has no real love for him or herself, he or she is still caught up in selfishness and self-centeredness. I was like this with my son. I would have told you that I loved him, but most of this was my ego. I loved him because it served me. When he didn’t do what I needed him to do to be okay within myself, I would feel like I didn’t really love him in that moment. That is not what love is. That is using the love of my child to actually feed my ego. So even this kind of love is self-centered.
This is certainly not how God loves us, but even here more fierce misunderstanding exists. We may say that we believe God loves us unconditionally, but then we still act like we have to earn his approval. Or we act like God is disappointed in us. Or if we say or think or do the wrong thing, that he will cease loving us. In this way I have actually made God in my image. I am broken and weak, and so therefore my God must be as well. I cannot forgive, so God cannot possibly forgive everything I have done. I have hurt so many people—so many that I cannot even live with myself without a drink or a drug or a man or a woman—something to fill that God-sized hole.
I cannot trust a God who is weak like me.
So therefore I do not really trust God at all. Instead I end up acting on my own power, which almost always leads to a self-will disaster. Now we all do have moments where we get those glimpses of God really working in our lives. We sense his amazing power and truth. This usually happens with those miracles that come when we are newly sober and see through sober eyes for the first time in years. It often comes when we are working the Steps with a sponsor and see something we had been missing about ourselves—and how God sustained us through all of it.
I went through a really low period last fall after a breakup where I honestly thought that God was really disappointed in me. I couldn’t put my finger on why, but I just knew it. I knew that I was just wrong. Not that I was doing things that were wrong, but I as a human being was wrong in my existence. What I failed to realize until I began to work Al-Anon steps with my sponsor last month is that I was blocked from God. And why? Because I was simply trying to act on my own power—to manage and control the end of the relationship because I was terrified to let go and just see what happened. I did not want to continue to feel the loss and the pain. Anything but that! I could not anesthetize myself with drugs and alcohol and so I was left in deep despair. I believed in God but had no faith in his power. The only power I believed in was my own, and that power was failing me.
I wish I could tell you that I decided to go to my sponsor and suggest we work steps on this right then, but I did not. I carried on for several more months in this state, doing what I thought was right by going to many meetings, talking to both of my sponsors, and doing some piecemeal inventory step work, but nothing was giving me freedom. I only had temporary relief and then I was off to the races again with the alcoholic who I refused to let go of.
At the end of Chapter 5: “How It Works,” where it is talking about having finished our Fourth Step Inventory, it states: “We hope you are convinced now that God can remove whatever self-will has blocked you off from Him.” (p. 71).
I am convinced now that this process works when it comes to problems other than alcohol. It works with obsession. It works to clarify the confusion that comes when faced with the active disease. It works.
God can and is removing whatever it is that I am blocked off from due to my insane behavior in response to a disease I have no power over.
My sponsor asked me my Step Two question last night: “Do you now believe, or are you even willing to believe, that there is a power greater than yourself?” (p. 47)
My answer was yes.