Am I willing to go to any length?

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

I found myself fully confronted with this question back when I started working the Steps in earnest with a sponsor. Up until that time, I had been willing to settle for periodic "lengths" of sobriety. Because I'm an addict and quite insane when I'm lusting, I had figured that was good enough. Proving I could make progress in my fight against lust meant I would stay in the addiction a lot longer than I would have if I had just admitted from the start that I couldn't do this.

So having failed yet again after a really good stretch of sobriety, I was smacked in the face once again with the reality that I was truly hopeless if left to my own ideas and effort, and I didn't know what to do about that. It must be that enough "enlightened self-interest" kicked in, and I finally went looking for a sponsor who could tell me what to do. That was the first good choice I made in the process of becoming "willing to go to any length".

I remember upon receiving my sponsor's offer of sponsorship that I prayed to God and said, "I will do whatever he tells me, even if it kills me." Granted that I was pretty sure he wouldn't tell me to do something that actually killed me, but that was the second good choice I made in the process of becoming "willing to go to any length".

As my sponsor started directing me through working the Steps, he told me that when I was ready, I should write in the front of my AA book the date and the words, "I am willing to go to any length to stay sober." That was the third good choice I made.

When he led me through Step 3, he told me that Step 3 was a commitment to work the rest of the Steps. That was the fourth good choice I made along the path of being "willing to go to any length" to connect rightly with God and others, and to be given freedom from lust and the obsessions and compulsions.

So for me the SA program of going to any length to work the Steps as a path to connect rightly with God really has worked. And I'm very confident at this point that if I stay in that path and continue to grow along spiritual lines through a life that is progressively surrendered to God, I will continue to receive God's gracious gift of sobriety, recovery and freedom.

Step Two experience

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

I spent years unable and unwilling to take Step Three. I believe now that was because I hadn't fully taken Step Two. (It also was because I kept trying to make the Steps into what I wanted them to be and to work them without surrendering to a sponsor, but that's another topic.)

The crucial change happened for me when I "came to believe"... "that God could and would if He were sought." (AABB p. 59 & 60) Up until that point, the God that I had believed in "could" restore me to sanity, but He would not until I had done enough of the right things myself to earn His favor and deserved His help. That didn't work; I couldn't do it.

In actuality, my Step One experience was not yet complete either. I still believed that I could overcome lust in my own power, and therefore I had never admitted that I was truly powerless over lust. But when the powerlessness of Step One was finally fully accepted and fully embraced, I not only was given the grace to live with that pain, but I was given the grace to believe that there was no other hope for me than to fully trust and fall into the hands of a loving God who not only could, but surely would restore me to sanity. And that meant that He alone had to be the Power that was willing to keep me sober, even if I could not do it myself or ever earn it.

My understanding of God had to change before I could and would turn my will and life over to His care.

Taking the Steps

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

I heard someone at a meeting share an analogy about taking a flight of steps in order to get through a door at the top. That image got me thinking.

Looking back at my history with SA, I can see that I spent years with the "crowd" that was milling around at the bottom of the steps. We went to meetings and participated in the sharing, but we didn't take the steps. We stayed below the doors just looking up the steps at the people who actually were walking up the steps. We saw people going through those doors, doors that opened to a new way of life, doors that led to serenity, peace, and freedom. But we weren't even sitting on the steps yet; we hadn't even started to trudge up those steps.

I felt good going to meetings in those early years. There was a sense of companionship being part of the crowd not yet taking the "Steps". It felt good to be with others who understood me and my obsessions and compulsions. People would listen to me as I shared about my latest failure to stay sober. In that crowd, failing to stay sober was the norm, so I felt right at home.

But it did me no good whatsoever to remain in the crowd at the bottom of the Steps and to not listen to the voice of someone who had reached the top and was offering to tell me how to take those Steps like he had. And until the pain of being me became a great enough motivator, I wasn't ready to leave the crowd. I wouldn't listen, and I wouldn't start taking those simple but hard Steps that led to freedom.

But thank God, the pain become enough, and I finally did take those Steps!