God doesn’t give you more than you can bear.
This spiritual truism has guided me in difficult times, but never more so than in the first 90 days of recovery. Cunning, baffling, powerful! Alcoholism is the one disease that tells you don’t have a disease. It will befriend you when you’re riding high, it will call to you when you’re in the depths of despair. While seated at a meeting, it will cool its heels in the parking lot. It will allow you to think you’ve got this thing licked, then when you least expect will swoop down upon you like a bird of prey, carrying you off in its talons. I don’t know how many times I got this close to letting go, giving in, buckling under.
It is in Chapter Five of the book, Alcoholic Anonymous, where the 12 Step Program is first revealed. Early in the evolution of AA, there were but six steps. In essence it can understood in just three – trust God, clean house, help others. That’s it, nothing more, nothing less. AA is at its core a simple program for complex people. All you really have to change is… everything. Rigorous honesty is at the foundation of the program. Unless you are willing and able to be honest with yourself, recovery will forever remain elusive.
So, there it was. Fear. I was afraid of what was on the other side. I knew I was powerless over alcohol and that life had become unmanageable. The 1st Step was realizable, but when I looked at what was expected of me in the next eleven, I just couldn’t go through with it. It was way too much!
The excerpt below, which immediately follows AA’s suggested program for recovery, became my bridge to the unknown:
Many of us exclaimed, “What an order! I can’t go through with it.” Do not be discouraged. No one among us has been able to maintain anything like perfect adherence to these principles. We are not saints. The point is, that we are willing to grow along spiritual lines. The principles we have set down are guides to progress. We claim spiritual progress rather than spiritual perfection.
Our description of the alcoholic, the chapter to the agnostic, and our personal adventure before and after make clear three pertinent ideas:
(a) That we were alcoholic and could not manage our own lives.
(b) That probably no human power could have relieved our alcoholism.
(c) That God could and would if He were sought.
As one of my fellows pointed out in their share, it isn’t required that God be found; only that an attempt be made to seek him out.
In doing so, this drunk found salvation.
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