A Power greater than myself ...

Bring it on......!
Originally uploaded by Nicolas Valentin

After working a 10.5 hr day, I arrived home exhausted. I told myself that perhaps I didn't need to go to a meeting tonight. And, that thought was followed with "when you least want to go to a meeting, you MOST need to go to a meeting". So, within a half hour of arriving home, I was back out the door and on my way.

And the miracle is that we always, always get what we need. Particularly, if we trust that it is not OUR plan but rather it is G-d's plan for us. My own thoughts about not going to a meeting was about imposing my will; the thought that followed reminding me I need to go, was G-d's will.

So what is the chapter we read tonight from the Big Book ? "We Agnostics". It is the 2nd step in its full glory. It is about our willingness to believe that there is indeed a power greater than ourselves. Whether you want to refer to that power as G-d is up to each one of us and what works.

It has only been since my return to the rooms of AA that I can honestly say I have opened my heart and have come to believe in a power greater than me. My entry into AA and my subsequent leaving AA two plus years later, found me believing that I was the only one who caused my drinking to cease. It was my hard work in therapy and my willpower. What arrogance ! Which, under close inspection and as I am aware today, is simply a guise for fear. To recognize that a power greater than me was the reason I could put down the booze would mean that I would have to let go of my own need for control. I wasn't willing to do that back then.

In the past couple of months, my relationship with G-d has widened and deepened. I am coming to understand that I don't have to understand, but rather just trust. Have faith. Believe. To be able to do this, it means surrendering and turning over my will. In EVERY aspect of my life. Which means that I have to acknowledge first that I am powerless over each situation in order to come to believe in a power greater than me.

When it was my turn to read, I was so moved and stirred by the lines in the following paragraph: "We found that God does not make too hard terms with those who seek Him. To us, the realm of Spirit is broad, roomy, all-inclusive; never exclusive or forbidding to those who earnestly seek. It is open, we believe, to all men."

What hit me about these lines is the aspect of simply needing to seek and that G-d is here and accessible and available when we do so, without judgment or criteria or standards for having contact. And what I now have some insight about my early rejection of G-d when I first entered AA and the many years out of the rooms is this: I did not seek G-d. I, in fact, resisted G-d. Believed that I defied G-d. And separated myself from G-d. Hence, the separation from AA and the half-baked notion I had that I "got this" , I don't need any of those people. I was, in essence, rejecting G-d and G-d's existence.
I was also interjecting the idea that I could do this alone. I realize now what a fearful, isolating place it was to live like this.

Where I reside within myself today, in relationship with G-d, is a much more peaceful existence. It is not free of fear; what I understand now is that when I have fear, I can ask G-d to help me let it go or even hold it for me. What leaves me in awe is this thought: G-d has always been with me, has never left me. I refused to see. I did the leaving.

Now, all I need to do is seek. And I am met with broad, open arms. And in this embrace, I meet myself over and over again.