I start this thread to share my experience, but would also like to hear more about how the rest of you came to believe in a higher power or your God and how that process unfolded for you.
I had so many confused ideas about what would happen and the steps when I first came into AA. Regarding step 2, I thought a lightning bolt was supposed to come down and suddenly God would be real to me and all my insanity would disappear. What has actually happened has been a year long journey in having my faith deepen and it happened because my eyes, ears, and mind were open to it and I was sober. This journey started with a drunken car crash which jolted me into action. I now realize that God gave me the greatest gift that day and I am so grateful. This week has been trying at work. I had typed here that it was one of the places I achieved serenity first...After typing that on Monday morning, I go into work, they tell me they are shifting everyones' offices around, moving the kids to different units, a lightning bolt hit right in front of the facility knocking power out for 2 days. Nobody could get work done. Everyone was screaming and arguing. 2 women at work started spreading rumors about me because they wanted to be in an office alone with each other and made it so by making up some BS about why they couldn't possibly have me in their office with them....and they went to my boss with those stupid rumors. The head administrator quit out of nowhere and we are 1 week away from a major audit. Okay...yeah such craziness. I would have drank hard to get through this cruddy week a year ago. I copped resentment towards the women who were talking about me behind my back for about a day and then was able to hand it over and totally not care about it the next day. I have been able to pray and look for what I am supposed to learn from this chaos, which is that God truly can work through me to help me accept and deal with any problem I have today. Had I bowed in and stayed crazy over all of this, what good would I be to the kids on my caseload who are also affected by all changes and the adults around them going crazy and acting like children? A lightning bolt had to come down and hit the building I work in for me to see mass insanity in others and how going to my higher power could help me emerge with calmness, acceptance, and some serenity once again. It was the lightning bolt I talked about early on when I didn't understand and wasn't open to spiritual experiences and their meaning. It actually happened, but in a way I never expected.
In addition, I need to go to intergroup this week to pick up medallions to prepare for an anniversary meeting which is at the end of this month. I needed directions to the intergroup office to buy the medallions and also newcomers packets which we are running out of. I googled intergroup in my county and was hit with the same website that I found when searching for help before I stopped drinking. I'd forgotten. The site that flashed in front of my eyes on the screen was the very same one that I'd gone to to find the AA helpline number and that I'd called 2 times in the months prior to AA before I had the courage or enough desperation to actually go to meetings. I knew I had a problem way before going to AA. Seeing that screen made me immediately start crying because I remembered how scared to death I was and how I felt there was no solution to my drinking at that time because I just couldn't stop. I felt so grateful that the hotline was there and for everything....I mean EVERYTHING that has happened leading me up to this point which is so different than the one I was at when I made those calls to the AA hotline. I felt so grateful people answered that phone for me, so grateful people were there in AA for my first meeting and all those after, so grateful for this site, so grateful that events conspired this way and that without a doubt, God did for me what I couldn't do for myself. It is still an ongoing journey and there is much to learn, but I feel I am no longer a victim to anything (I can go back to thinking that way, but I move away from it faster and faster these days) and pretty much all things good and bad that happen to me are done for me by God and they are done so I can learn. I refused to be open to a higher power before. I was defiant of God and what he might be able to do for me. I just didn't get it. I have come to believe more and more as time has passed by.
I also went to a Step meeting yesterday. It was nicely convenient that the step meeting was on step 2 which I have now actually worked and understand a lot better. Such a spiritual and uplifting meaning. One of the oldtimers talked about how coming to believe was a process for him that took time and it happened through going to meetings and observing change and miracles with an open mind. That is exactly what I would have said and what has been going on with me and I didn't have to open my mouth at all because it was already shared (this happens a lot in meetings these days by the way). Halfway through the meeting, I realized I was sitting next to a person that I talked to almost every night for the first 2 months of sobriety. That person moved back to new york and I hadn't really talked to him in months. The friendship faded somewhat due to distance, but also due to me being so so needy at that time and only talking about my own crap and not listening to him at all. After the meeting we chatted and I got the updates on his life. I started talking about what has gone on with me and what has occured in a more broad sense, rather than the daily bitch session I used to give to him. He said I was inspiring and a miracle. I started crying again and said that AA has given me all I have today. Then I paused and stated that this was because, pretty much from the start, I gave AA just about all I had. So...thanks for letting me share this and thank all of you for walking this path with me as I keep learning and growing. Also, very much open to hearing about how some of you came to believe as well.
Love, Mark
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For me, believing in a higher power came fairly easily. I like to believe in something bigger than myself. When things get tough. I just remember that there is something bigger than myself and I let that the universe will work things out for me. I just kind of let all m stress go and stayed positive and thought things were going to be ok.
-- Edited by kkotz401 on Thursday 27th of August 2009 10:09:42 AM
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You have to live life to the fullest because you don't know what you got till it's gone.
With me there was no lightning bolt moment, more a slow and steady realisation, helped along by people in AA, a sponsor and of all things a radio show and a song.
let me go back to October 06. That's when the consequences of my drinking came home, when I found that I couldn't stop if I wanted to and was told that I was heading for an early death, one way or another. I spent the first few months in AA faking it to make it. I had got the first half of step 1 but wouldn't accept the second half, until it had been explained to me repeatedly and gradually I started to identify with other people.
Step 2 - came to believe in a power much greater than I - well that wasn't for me 'cos I could run my own life pretty well? However, i realised that there always had been a power greater than I - the bottle! But for every negative there is a positive, so if there is a power for ill, the must be a power for good. I remember my dad, a lifelong non believer, saying to me in hospital a few days before he died that there are no atheists on a battlefield and he felt that this was his last battle. people in AA told me about their faith in a higher power. a friend at work told me that without his faith he couldn't have got through the death of his wife, then told me that his HP had put me and my alcoholism in his path to show him that he was sailing close to the wind with his drinking and he was able to turn back to normal social drinking after talking to me about my alcoholism. (Hat's off to him!) The radio show featured a priest who used to be a policeman, he said when he stopped believing, coincidences stopped happening. Finally I bought a johnny cash CD and listened to his version of Came to Believe over and over again.
I couldn't manage the problems I laid on myself and it just made it worse when i laid them on somebody else So i finally surrended it all brought down in despair I cried out for help and I found a warm comforter there
I came to believe in a power much higher than I I came to believe that i needed help to get by in childlike faith I gave in and gave Him a try and i came to believe in a power much higher than I
Nothing worked out when i handled it all on my own and each time I failed it made me feel twice as alone then I cried out 'Lord, there must be a surer and easier way, for it just cannot be that a man should lose hope every day.'
and I came to believe in a power much higher than I I came to believe that i needed help to get by in childlike faith I gave in and gave him a try and i came to believe in a power much higher than I (from memory, always get's me choked up just to remember it)
anyway, that summed me up. faced wih all the evidence I gave in and gave it a try.
And somehow or other that's how I came to believe in a power greater than I. Which brought me to step 3, which led me to a couple of years of God shopping before I realised that it's God as i understand Him. Not Christian God, not presbyterian God, not Church of the New Testament God, not islamic God, not Buddhist God, not standing naked on a hilltop at dawn God, not catholic God, not monastic God, not native american God, not pagan God, not any living person God, but God as I understand Him.
any and all of the Gods I mention above work for people (except living person God - what do you do when they die?). I believe that there may be one ultimate God but there are as many paths to God as there are people on earth. (That's religion.) I get to choose my own path to God and that God is God as i understand Him - which is not necessarily as anyone else understands Him.
Great, great topic.
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It's not having what you want, it's wanting what you got. BB
Pray for those cruddy people with the rumour mongering, they are sicker than what we will ever know I hope. I had the same situation in work a few weeks ago and boy is it trying, it too turned it over and failed to react in the requested manner, feel great about it now, it puts it in perspective. well done, you've handled this well, I too would usually have drank my way through these times and it would have made things worse and made me an easier target than what I am now.
Wonderful stories, and its a blessing to be able to read them. I know a higher power is always there, even when things go so wrong, you start to wonder, but when you really look at it, the good things that do happen, always over throw the bad, even if you cant see it sometimes. Keeping the faith everyday, and not looking back!
i've always had a faith life ... and i realized early on that faith is a JOURNEY ... it's the highs and lows, it's the process of coming to know (REALLY KNOW) God (and in my case, Christ). It's not a mountaintop where you stand and proclaim "I HAVE FAITH" but rather the experience of climbing the mountain. The hiking boots, the compass, the map ... the hiking companions are all aspects of FAITH. They are what God gives you to experience the JOURNEY ... the mountaintop is your reward after your time here is done.
In my journey i've gone off the path several times. i've sat and sulked, refusing to look at the map and compass - thinking myself able to traverse the path without them. Of course, i ended up drunk and lost. I've also hiked ahead of my fellow hikers (my family, my friends, my pastor), thinking i knew better than them and found myself alone and lost.
In AA, i'm coming to learn to take the tools and people that God is putting in my life into good use. i am nurturing the SPIRITUAL side of my faith life - listening to the little things and THANKING God for them.
That was awesome joelo. I relate to that and it was very well written and though out. That is the way I interpret step 2 now as well...it is a process we take daily to connect to our higher power so that we stay less insane. Of course, it links directly to step 11 and also 3...It's good to hear others posting because I think I might be understanding things with more clarity than I was before in that you guys are sharing similar thoughts now, whereas I didn't relate about the steps all together before.
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First, on Coming to Believe, it was in my first year that I had a pretty intense struggle with a transitioning of trading in my Religious believes, that had only confused and baffled me. I was from a big Italian family, and was baptised as a Catholic. I spend most of my life fearing the Church from the beginnings of just the little bit of attending Catholic school teachings, before my grade school years, I had a wonderful Aunt that was more of a Mother to me, as my own Mother was very mentally ill, never went to church a day in her life, other that to get married to my father.
Going back to my Auntie, who was a very Religious person, all of her life, I loved her very much, and would put up with these Catholic classes for her.
And because I did not have a drinking problem until my mid thirties, I spent many many years, searching and seaching for another faith, that had more tolerance, never did find one that felt like it fit me, althought I found I loved a lot of the other organized religions themselves.
On my shelves in my living room I still have all those Books I studied, on Buddha, Greek Orthodox, Islamic Teachings, you name it, I studied it. And I found that when I really studied the Teachings of Christ, all those words seemed to feel right, in the Beatitudes, The Sermon on the Mount, the translations of the Lord's Prayer. It is only in this tread that I would mention, that yes I am a Christian, I call myself a very Private Christian, never really ever speak of it. That keeps it more Sacred, well for me that works.
And those teachings came in after I had begun to start living in the Teachings of Alcoholics Anoymous. and the Twelve Steps of Recovery. I needed desparately to find a HP, the was endlessly benevolent, and full of unconditional Love.
It was at my first 1 year Birthday, that after I celebrated with my wondeful homegroup at that time, I came home and many tears began to flow. For yes I did have a loving HP, that I choose to call God in my life now. The struggling was over, and I have great respect for all religions, even the old strict Catholic one, they all have as Joseph Campbell, once wrote, "at the heart of all Religions, you will find God, but it is getting through the Dogma of each church that is so very difficult".
I think it was Bill that said, you will find you HP at the top of the Mountain, and so many different roads to travel to that top.
Now on to your second topic. Are you not happy that you have to tools to detach from the nastiness of those woman. Look around you, your side of the street is clean, and when you said that you had a resentment, my take is that resentments only (for me) hide very hurt feelings. And remember Mark, when ever anyone hurts us, yes we feel the sting intially, but it is really on them. And man oh man do they have a mess on their side to the street to clean up.
Hugs to you, and thanks for a great topic, or two.
Aloha Mark and the rest of this family of recovering alcoholics!! My recovering head goes off with my own personal experiences of my coming to believe. I believe right now that God can and does use whatever God decides to reach our spirit with so that we can become mirrors of God. A lightening strike throws a group of people into fear but not the recoverying alcoholic and while they mirror fear the recovering alcoholic mirrors peace of mind and serenity or for me the presence of God and this is what I know from my own recovery that when I've overcome fear I exist with love and "God is love" is one of my awarenesses of HP's presence in my life today.
Ours is not an 11 step program. If we work our miracle well we always arrive at the 12th step...always. Having had...a spiritual awakening...as a result of these steps...we carry this message to others (not only alcoholics)...and practice these principals...in all our affairs. In your share Mark I see that in stark contrast to how I use to live before getting into the program. It wasn't only lightening that could take me into fear and have me running around the cage with all the other scared gerbils. I was affraid period, my default emotional condition. You imaged the most powerful image, the lack of fear and the presence of God. Had you done it any other way?
When I was being led on my own personal journey the question was never one about God but about my relationship to God in mind, body, spirit and emotions. I wanted the proper alignment and after praying for it got it; A vertical alignment straight thru the middle head to feet. I asked my HP how my HP saw me and was given the image of a grain of sand on the coast of California. I am only a part of not the all and as a part of the program can do much much more than I alone tried on my own.
I am a "double" winner with membership in both the Al-Anon Family Groups (the door to AA) and AA (the door to sobriety). In the AFG there is a pamphlet titled "Just for Today". It is one of the most powerful tools I've received to keep me in the program of recovery and right living that I have ever used. On the back of that pamphlet I found the "mirror" that reflects the image of my HP as I under stand my HP to be. It starts out "Lord make me an instrument of thy peace..."
I like to look at your lightening experience as HP giving you an opportunity to mirror that prayer and you came thru with it a well done 12th step. You were rewarded with a look at the album that contains the start of your journey.
I'm grateful for your thread and all the feedback. I can't but be better or more hopeful as a result.
- I am not my thoughts - I am made of the same matter as everything I can see, from everything around me to Pluto and beyond. I am even made of the same matter that occupies the "space" between me and things around me. - why then, should there be a separate "God", separate from everything I just mentioned? Maybe "God" is the sum of all matter. Am I then, God?
Like Arsenio Hall used to say.....things that make you go "hmmmm"
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Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned. ~Buddha
Subtle differences in the way I think and act. I went to a meeting and tried to relate some of this and felt it came out wrong based on an oldtimer's reaction which was basically that my journey was still at it's beginning and just don't rush to think that I was fully understanding everything because it would take even more time. Also that this first year is learning to live without alcohol, the second year is learning about yourself, and the third year is learning to live with others. I was like WTF? I've been learning about myself this whole year and who say's I can't live with others? Am I still some kind of freak or something? So rather than mull over it and possibly build up another resentment. I called the oldtimer and asked for more explanation and said I felt like I put my foot in my mouth as the designated "baby" somewhat of this group that I go to (the only one that is not a "gay" meeting and 1 of 2 that I go to which is not a beginners meeting. Everyone in this meeting other than me and 1 other person has over double digit sobriety). Making that call helped me understand that this journey will be full of many moments of enlightenment and to keep letting it unfold as time goes by. Basically, "easy does it" and stop analyzing the crap out of everything. I have part of what I need to know and more will be revealed i guess. I'm content with that for now.
-- Edited by pinkchip on Friday 28th of August 2009 09:54:39 PM
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Keep coming back. It works if you work it. So work it. You're worth it!
I came to believe that there is some kind of power out there that can restore me to sanity, buy going to lead meetings, where it was made evident that this power exists, as "it" has saved so many other people from alcoholic doom. There is no way all these people stopped drinking for good on their own. "I became convinced".
Don't try to put a name, a face, characteristics on Higher Power.... if you do, you may be taking Step 2 too far. It is really a very simple step, and it is one that we tend to complicate the most. We don't really get into a sort of "relationship" with a higher power until we work ALL the steps ("Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these Steps).... Don't put the cart before the horse. It is especially easy to complicate Step 2 if we are of the "intellectual" variety. :o) We have to be satisfied with just BELIEVING, and not neccesarily understanding or explaining, or figuring out. If you believe that something unknown beyond yourself has enabled you to gain some sense of sanity so far, you have already done Step 2. You are done. Move on. Don't dangle about in intellectual mire.
Have you read Step 2 in the 12 and 12? (I haven't for awhile, maybe I will do so tonight).
So nice to see you, Pink. Have a great week!
Joni
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~Your Higher Power has not given you a longing to do that which you have no ability to do.
I don't think that I ever lost my faith, only that HP wasn't having an impact in my life. I "came to believe" around 6 months when, after praying daily to have the obsession to drink and drug be removed, I no longer thought about drinking. It all came together just after I finished my 5th step with a Priest and then my sponsor. I felt like I was walking about 4 feet off of the ground. Like I'd had the flu for years and then suddenly felt well and overwhelmingly good all over. I was glowing. I knew that I had not a lot to do with it and could only have attributed it to HP working in my life. I believed in the promises and that they were coming true for me.
Yes Joni, I read the 12 and 12 step 2 and I do know which type I am...that over intellectual type that comes up an all time loser in the end. Yah...I identified with every word of that. Every belief I ever had about God was rationalized and based on some sort of scientific reasoning. Why I ever thought there should be a rational explanation for the spiritual is beyond me. I suspect it has to do with that 3 letter word I dread so much...ego. Basically, God couldn't be caring because children starve and all these bad things happen...blah blah. Much more comfortable with just don't ask why and keep an open mind. It was worked OK thus far. I'm open to changing my beliefs as clearly the old ones did not work...
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