Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity." What does this Step mean to me, a woman with just nine months of sobriety in AA behind her? What was my process of "coming to believe," and in what way do I feel I am being "restored"?
At first I had to take this Step on faith alone. I knew I believed; but I did not begin to understand. Why would God bother with someone who had misused her energies, squandered opportunities, bruised the hearts of loved ones and ridden alcohol like a runaway horse to the gates of insanity and the brink of death?
Slowly I began to realize that "why" was the wrong question. One day when I was about three months sober, a quiet gentleman spoke up at my noon meeting and delivered a message which seemed to have my name written all over it. He said that we need only ask ourselves "how"--and that this question could be answered by three simple words: "honesty, open-mindedness, and willingness."
I was desperate enough to try anything--even follow directions. I began to share at meetings as honestly as I was able. The pain and ugliness that poured forth from those dark recesses within appalled me: but to my amazement, no one judged. My worst confessions were received with tenderness and even a certain reassuring humor. I began to see that all of us had suffered in many different ways, and that I was hardly unique in experiencing that terrible sense of being "in disgrace."
But wasn't "dis-grace" the opposite of God's grace, God's blessing, God's love? As I strove to keep an open mind, or at least to prevent the door from completely slamming shut, more things were revealed to me. My own active role in forsaking God became all too apparent. It seemed that I had "disgraced" myself, not so much through the recklessly hurtful actions I committed in my drunkenness, but in closing myself off from the infinite, mysterious How of divine love.
In opening my mind to new ways of loving and being (and sometimes, in my willingness, I could only manage the merest crack), I felt the gentle infusion of an indescribable benevolence. It was as if, in spite of myself, unconditional love insisted on streaming in through that crack in the door and filling the aching void, the God-shaped space in my heart. I felt his love in the embraces of fellow AA members, I witnessed his grace in the serenity shining from their eyes, and in the rollicking laughter which sometimes threatens to lift the roof at my home group meetings; I heard the music of recovery.
Willingness was simply given to me. I began to feel that my feet were keeping me sober; they unfailingly took me to a meeting even when the rest of me screamed in protest. As this willingness was planted in me and slowly, haltingly grew, I began to feel the subtle dawning of an amazing inner light: a sense that I was being restored.
How could God do this? Had I ever really been sane--and if I hadn't, where was the model for this restoration? Surely he had nothing to go on, no plan to follow. I began to doubt again, to wonder whether I even had enough inherent worthiness to warrant this miraculous process.
Then I began to realize, through other people's loving messages, that no one is entirely self-made. A woman in my Step group expressed it this way: "Who we are is God's gift to us. Who we become is our gift to God." It began to dawn on me that recovery is something like the restoration of a very old painting, covered over by layers and layers of darkening, distorted varnish. This process of restoration is so precious in God's eyes and is undertaken with such infinite care that not all of the underlying pattern can be revealed at one time. What is uncovered, bit by bit and layer by slow, careful layer, are the things which are necessary and appropriate for me to know about myself right now.
Moreover, no painting paints itself; we are masterworks, all lovingly created by God's hands. Whether our colors are vivid or subtle, whether the design is boldly abstract or serenely pastoral is not our choice. Ours is only to accept this work of art as given--to strive to reveal our true colors and the beauty of our true design in everything we say and think and do.
I do not begin to understand the miracle of this restoration in my own life. I only know that it is happening, and that it is not a mistake. A sense of my own worthiness is restored only very slowly; it is as if God knows I must be responsible for past damage and be more careful in the future if I am able to feel truly worthy. Though God loves me unconditionally, I will have to live my own faith, cherish each day of my recovery, and practice unconditional love to the best of my limited ability before I can whole-heartedly love myself.
The process is slow and often painful, and sometimes I feel I have barely begun. But when frustration or impatience overtake me, or when ego threatens to override all the progress I have made, I try to remember that God is the master painter--the spirit which inspired the works of Michelangelo, Renoir, and Van Gogh--the loving force which is even at this moment restoring the damaged painting of my life to its original luster and irreplaceable design.
Who better to carry out this loving and painstaking restoration than the master himself?
Margaret G.
Port Coquitlam, British Columbia
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