God's Will

Well, I certainly couldn’t bring myself to turn my will and life over to the care of the God that so many people in organized religion seem to believe in and promote! I had a hard time believing in the punishing, destroying, vengeful creature I had heard about in church and at home. Even my adoptive mother was fond of saying that “God will punish you for….” Blah blah blah – fill in the blank…. I used to always believe in two versions of God – one was the fiery brimstone spouting punisher that many church people talked about, and the other one was the one that said words of comfort to me. I just couldn’t reconcile the two for many many years. It made no sense to me. I think I even told several acquaintances and friends that I suspected God and the devil (you know the Hollywood gambling, card-playing trickster style devil) were the same person.

I heard about the concept of having my own Higher Power long before I ever really waded into the waters of recovery. And I heard about it from recovery literature. I took a very long vacation from Christian churches, although I am wading back in that direction to some degree with a firm grip on my own concept of God. Not every Christian believes in the punisher…. I’m certain of that.

My recovery started with step three. My recovery started before I quit, I think. It started when I was very frightened of the devil and having my soul stolen. You see, I have paranoid schizophrenia in addition to addiction, and was very paranoid at the time I did step three. My mental illnesses were untreated and undiagnosed. Things changed. God took me away from all the addicts and alkies, and predatory types I was hanging around with at the time. I also lost my place to live, however, it was necessary to make a change of scenery and people to really desire change for me. Not that I am promoting geographical cures, mind you, things did not change until I was ready, and had lived somewhere for a few years. It was not the change in scenery so much as the change in associations that did it for me.

A couple years after sobriety was forced upon me, I received a bookmark that said God is love. It was a Christian bookmark, and that is a Bible quote. But, I have made love my higher power. My God, my Spirit, is love. I finally had the ammunition to throw out the punishing domineering image of God I had in my head. If the Bible said that God is love, then that would give me the insight I needed to weed out all the opinions and blame in the Bible and find the truth. I really believed that bookmark. The God I knew had always loved me, and I knew it. I could feel love coming from outside of me. God had always been there, and was indeed, everywhere. Love made the world go round, I realized and had fun thinking about that often in jail….

And it became okay with me if God took my side (with predatory men, for example) and punished them! I had my reconciliation finally. Love sometimes means taking sides….

Things make a lot more sense nowadays because of that bookmark.

I honestly believe that God’s will for me is to be happy and healthy. Ultimately I believe God’s will for me is to become one with Him and/or Her. Not the same as… but become one with. Like the U2 song “We are one, but we are not the same…” God wants me to stick close by Him (or Her) and let Him rub off on me. I try to live in love. I show love to people. I love almost everyone I know. Having a Higher Power of love makes things very simple for me. If I am acting in love, then I am doing God’s will and I don’t get lost in worries and troubles and double-think. I don’t really have doubts. I love myself when I am troubled. I take care of me. They say when you are in an airplane crash, you must first put the oxygen on yourself before you can help anyone else…. So, I apply that.

I wrote a letter to the person who was my best friend when I first became addicted. She herself, is an untreated addict, and does not deserve to be one. In this letter, it was suggested I write to one person about my decision to turn my will and life over to the care of a Higher Power. The letter I wrote was lengthy. She finally broke the silence (silent treatment) with me to tell me to leave her alone, finally, because of that letter…

I explained to her that I have learned to trust my higher power. I explained how difficult it was for me to trust someone I really wasn’t sure I knew anything about. I went into great detail of my experience with step three with her.

The reason I actually sent the letter – or rather, one of the reasons, was to show her that step three is not as scarey or detrimental as she might think it is. One of my ulterior motives was to hopefully nudge her toward recovery by sharing my ESH with her in a very personal way….

Now I’m not perfect, by any stretch of the imagination. Sometimes I still have selfish motives or whatever. I have been known to still chase instant gratification and become irritated and impatient when I don’t get it. However I’ve found that acting in a loving way is a sure fire way for me to do the will of my Higher Power. I don’t have to dwell on anything negative. I don’t fight much of anything any more, although I have been known to argue with newcomers. Saving a life is worth a battle sometimes….

I don’t actually have to say a prayer or think much about it at all when I do it that way. I am more then willing to act out of love…. So I rarely make conscious decisions throughout the day to “do the will of God,” but in acting out of love, I have the security of knowing I am doing just that.