“Step 1: Admitted that we were powerless over alcohol and that our lives were unmanageable.”   I had hit such a bottom that admitting “I’m powerless over alcohol” wasn’t a problem.   Alcohol had disabled me in such a way that I could no longer manage my marriage, my relationships with extended family, friends or my kids.  I couldn’t manage keeping the house clean.  If I had a job at that point in my life it’s safe to say that I wouldn’t have been able to manage that either.  My drinking had taken over everything I loved and had created this monster inside of me.  I had thought the whole world was out to get me and that no one understood who I was or what I was going through and I was getting a bad rap.  I was a self-proclaimed victim.  My life was unmanageable.

When we first get sober and the steps are new we sometimes revel in the new information and wonder why we couldn’t see it before.  I realized working steps 4 and 5 that I had created my own hell, so then it made sense that I could create my own heaven.  I set out to create the life that I wanted and after a decade achieved all that I had set out to do.  Sometimes I forget the years of hell.  Sometimes I forget I was a drunk.  Sometimes I forget I’m an alcoholic and I forget about my program of recovery.

Gradually, life happens and I become irritated at work, I’m irritated with my grandchildren, I’m trying to control my children and the things I want to achieve look like they’re never going to happen.  I gradually put myself back into the victims chair and begin to feel sorry for myself because that is my nature.  When feeling sorry for myself becomes too painful I wake up out of the daze I’m in and go back to the basics.  First I start keeping a gratitude journal and go back to Step 1.  I am powerless.  My job is to do the footwork.  The results are up to my higher power.  Trying to get the results on my own gives me chronic anxiety, so I need to turn it over to the universe and its eternal wisdom.

What I learned in the program is to suit up and show up.  When you do that, the results eventually come “sometimes quickly sometimes slowly.  They always materialize if we work for them.”  It’s true of the promises.  It’s true of everything else in life, but the vision must be clear or we forget and stop working.

Our 12 step program gave us the vision of the promises of living “happy, joyous and free” and gave us a road map to attain it.  The key for me was to give up control of the whens and hows of life.  I start with gratitude for what I have and a clear picture of what I want.  Then I do the next right thing, the work.  I’ve found when I take the first step the next step is revealed, so I let my higher power dictate the hows.  And “I came to believe that God could restore me to sanity.”  Sanity is knowing that it will all work out without having the chronic anxiety and fear that it won’t.

Just for today I will turn my will and my life over to the care of God as I understand him knowing that when I do the work, the achievement is imminent.