Step 2: Came to believe that a power greater than myself could restore me to sanity. I was never going to take the first step if the second step wasn’t there to give me hope. My life was such a mess and I felt very insane. The promise and hope allowed me to take a chance…
And then there was that third step:Made a decision to turn my will and my life over to the CARE of God as I understood God.
I was stumped—I knew I had some idea of God, but it wasn’t a very good one. I had a secret when I got sober. I worked for the church; I didn’t really have any connection with God by the time I stopped drinking. I hit my bottom after my dearest friend died when she was only 33 years old. Between 12 and 21 years old, 20 relatives died including my father when I was 12. My God was gone from me with all that grief and pain.
My sponsor suggested that I do a sort of 4th step on my spiritually. My first memory of an insight, or the experience of God, or a higher power, was when my grandfather died. I could see myself sitting on the screen porch tying my shoes. My grandfather had taught me how to tie my shoes just a year before. In those days you had to be able to tie your shoes to show that you were mature enough to go to kindergarten. Everyone was so sad, but I knew he was still with me. Then the gentle sense of a grandfatherly God left me. I got busy with life and school and drinking and lost any real connection to God. I studied theology in the hopes of finding God again.
Raised a Roman Catholic, the church either boggled me or I found hypocrisy in every area of the church. As a child I rushed through confession making up sins, didn’t understand the Latin mass, and was freaked out by the corpus on the crucifix. That God was a punishing one—no thanks.
I spent time trying to know God. I walked a lot and I often noticed that the wind was the only thing that I could feel as a power greater than me. I couldn’t turn my will and my life over to the care of the wind! I searched back into my life to see what I could connect with.
I remembered that as a kid we had a babysitter named Miss Connie. She was British and had a big lap and gave big hugs. As I remembered her in early sobriety, I used her as my image of a loving power greater than me. She had looked a lot like Queen Elizabeth II’s mother. I cut out a picture of the woman and had it on my bureau.
My daughter was almost three when I got sober. She loved Mr. Rogers. As I cleaned up the kitchen, I often stopped to watch with her and felt such love and support from Fred Rogers that I thought I’d use him as a higher power. It was a bit odd since he was a living person but what he said and how I felt gave me such peace. I knew a God like Mr. Rogers was a God I could depend on to care for me. I had a picture of him on my bureau as well.
As time and sober years passed, I have found comfort in other images—Mary the mother of Jesus and Quan Yin, the goddess of holding sorrows in the Buddhist tradition. I watched songbirds at my feeder and saw that they soared on the wind and trusted the wind to help them find food and water. Maybe I could do that too. Each image or experience of something greater and deeper than me has helped me find a way to hold that true connection that I am loved, and that I could turn over to the care of God all my life and will. When friends say, “I can take care of that for you” I trust it more and more. I know God will do the same. I don’t second guess the people closest in my life that answer my request for help—so I have learned not to question that God would be there if I asked. The challenge is to ASK and then turn it over to God’s care. God could and would if sought.