How Spirituality Does or Does Not Work in My Life
and what can be done about it either way!
Having the advantage of 20/20 hindsight, I can see where, before I finally knew that there was a God in my life, my life was just about totally unmanageable.
And I was powerless over a lot of things including alcohol. Actually because of alcohol. I had always thought that God was a being in human form sitting on some type of throne “up there” in the sky/heaven.
He was judging and punishing people who He judged to be sinners. Of course, the labeling of sinners was placed on people by other human beings who may or may not have had an agenda of their own.
AA taught me immediately that my Higher Power was not “up there” somewhere but inside each and every one of us ready, able, and willing to love and help me any time that I reached out.
The only thing that I discovered that I must do is believe and ask. It says in the Big Book that God “Could and would if he were sought.” I only had one requirement — that I was willing to humble myself to this Power and ask.
How much simpler could this be? Being probably an agnostic when I came in, to put a label on it, I don’t recall ever surrendering to any power, human or mystic.
Once I got over this hurdle and said “God help me,” my life became much more manageable and alcohol seemed to have a lot less power over me. I was actually enjoying my new life of freedom from myself.
I was trying to spread this new-found knowledge to anyone who was willing to listen. To this day, I still am. Life has become such a simple thing to deal with.
Things once bothered me or scared me (yes, although unwilling to admit fear of anything before, I learned that fear was the root of all of our character defects).
No longer was fear a problem because I discovered that I was not dealing with it alone anymore. I was able to tap into the help from my “new-found” Higher Power who seemed to be working through the people in my life.
Now, since my life has taken a total 180-degree turn, I only want the lives of others to be as good or even better than I have. Life and sobriety are like love, we can’t keep it unless we give it away.
Now, every time I see or hear someone become sober, I get the feeling that I, too, am truly too blessed to be stressed. So, I guess my answer to today’s question of how spirituality works in my life is “very well, thank you.” I would not willingly have it any other way.
Thank you, God!
If you like this, please share it on Facebook and Twitter.
