It's The Little Things - A Personal Story

(The following is a personal post from a group member.)

I got up this morning, and looked on my smartphone at the list of email I had received overnight.  There were some important emails that I would need to take care of later today.  I started to think about them.  I started to think about how to answer particular ones.  I started to forget that I need to begin every day with a time of prayer and reading to connect with God first thing in the morning. And even when I turned around and went back to where I kneel for prayer, my mind was already distracted with many things.  It was much harder to "connect" with God this morning. 

It's usually the little things that set me up for the big things to knock me down.

Just One Bad Choice - A Personal Story

(The following is a personal story from one of our members.)

I always remember that I am just one bad choice away from acting out again sexually. But that's an OK place for me to be at this point in my life. And that's because my choice is actually not what I previously thought it was.

I used to think that I could choose to not lust or act out. But I lost the ability to make that choice somewhere on my way to becoming a sexaholic. Since I am a sexaholic, I am powerless to fight lust and sexual acting out. And since I am a sexaholic, I can't be strong when it comes to lust and sexual acting out. I am weaker than lust; it beats me every time.

But what I do still seem to have the "strength" to do is to just give up and surrender. In my powerlessness, I just ask God to accept the lust that is starting to form in my mind as I let go of it and surrender it to Him. I then go and do the next right thing, or to ask God what His will is for me and then go and do that.

I used to try to fight the battle against lust in my own strength.  But when I failed at that enough times to finally give up trying to fight and trying be strong, then I was finally ready for the SA solution: surrender (including surrendering to work the 12 Steps as directed by my sponsor).

So my potential "one bad choice" would be to choose to try to fight lust instead of surrendering lust to God and surrendering myself to His will. As long as I'm surrendered to Him, I really don't have anything to worry about, because I will stay sober.

As the AA literature reminds me, "God could and would if He were sought."