Thoughts on Control…

Hey NSC Blog followers!

I’m going to spend some time revisiting some old blog posts and updating based on how I see things today. I’m not sure if it’ll be interesting or not- but I tend to think it’s a good thing to be willing to change our minds about things and be open to new ideas. So I’m going to start each day of this series with my old post and follow them up with some thoughts based on how I think about things now:

Control, as a concept, arises time and again in recovery and it's no secret why:  the 12 Steps suggest that the path towards healing and wellness begins with a release of control.  This is an unintuitive act in our culture where we're told that the secret to success in life is to exercise as much control as we can over as much stuff as possible.  In recovery we're told that the only path forward begins with letting go.  

Largely this is because, prior to entering recovery, we've been living under the illusion that we maintain control over something that, in point of fact, exercises quite a lot of control over us.  The ultimate problem, though, is not how much we do or do not control but how deeply self-deceived we've become.  Denial completely obscures our relationship to "control." 

Scott’s response to Scott:

I actually don’t believe much of this last paragraph anymore. We are self-deceived a lot of the time, I’m sure. And yes, we do spin our wheels often trying to control things we can’t control. But I no longer see that as a control “issue”- as if this is the sole problem that needs fixing- I see it as our attempt to adapt to hardship in the absence of a better plan (which is perfectly natural).

Control issues might come up for a variety of reasons- there might be an absence of collaboration in a given area (home, work, etc.). Or we may be really frustrated with something we are struggling to accept. Either way, the work, in my opinion, is not to become less self-deceived- it might be to become more accepting. Or it might be that we have difficult emotions we need to name and process. Or it might be to add joy to our lives somehow some way. 

Let’s see where I go from here- I honestly don’t remember writing these posts in the slightest.

Applying Step 11 to Your Everyday Life

In the 12-Step tradition, it is Step 11 that invites us to pray and meditate. “We sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.”

My friends sometimes question the completeness of the eleventh step.

“My grandmother has cancer! Does Step 11 prevent me from praying for her?”

Imagine my speech bubble of sarcasm rising up to reply, “Really? You think there is someone on this planet or beyond that is asking you to pray LESS?” If I am in a good space, I do not say this. Here’s what I hope a more mature me might say:

The Step 11 is quite specific and is part of the 12-Step process; it is not intended to limit our prayers. It suggests (for the purpose of one’s recovery journey) that we keep two objectives in mind.

1. One goal is to improve our conscious contact with God (as we understand him).

2. We pray ONLY for the knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.

Today, try that. No pleas or requests or petitions or instructions to God. Just this simple prayer:

God, here I am. I am ready to listen.

Amen.

Powerlessness and Limitations

If someone tested us on our capacity for carrying the 12-steps anywhere, much less to someone in trouble, how would they measure our competency? I measure my strength by how much I can deadlift; my endurance by how far I can run without keeling over. I measure the state of my marriage through a convoluted and mostly intuitive set of data points honed through decades of marital trial and error. How do I measure my recovery? In AA, the only qualification for attending a meeting is a desire to stop drinking. Each mutual aid group has its own particular dependency it hopes to eradicate. But is “stopping” the only criteria for measuring progress and fidelity to the principles the program teaches? Is the “desire to stop” our only necessary decision?

Remember Step 1 when we had to wrestle with powerlessness and unmanageability? Powerlessness over ______. Hopefully by Step 12, we are not misled by the common misperception that the 12-steps require us to renounce all our power (whatever that means). Powerlessness as a principle is really saying that whenever we do _______, we cannot do it safely. I cannot go on a diet safely. Others cannot drink alcohol safely. Some struggle with using opioids safely. We are not powerless in every dimension of our lives. But the principle here requires that we have the capacity to know where we are truly powerless.

Our powerlessness reveals itself via a particular kind of symptoms and dis-ease. In the first step we tied our powerlessness to our unmanageability. We identify unmanageability often as external factors - DUIs, divorce, debt, loss of jobs. But the heart of unmanageability is the internal emotional state of restlessness, irritability and discontentment.

The twelfth step is not about getting powerful and leading a manageable life. Qualifications do not include a perpetual state of bliss. It is about allowing the process of recovery to alter us in a way that grants us the capacity to give a restless, irritable and discontent person a little compassion. How does that happen? We practice our principles and we learn that compassion is the most sacred expression of any principle worth applying.

I think about the people who have helped me in my life; they were never the loudest voices in the room. They were the ones who showed up with a presence that radiated trustworthiness. They did not present me with answers or suggestions, they offered me compassion and empathy.

Progress

For those who make it through all the 12-steps, we give thanks. This is no small matter. We admitted things along the way that NO ONE in their right mind wants to admit. We are forced to face our powerlessness over our dependencies; we are encouraged to accept the fact that we need restoring to sanity; we stand in place until we trust God, as we understand him with not only our lives but our wills; we inventory, confess, ask, and admit; we make amends; we practice a daily examen; we choose to draw near to God...and now this: we notice our own spiritual awakening, carry the message and continue to practice the principles that got us here in all our affairs. Whew!

Still - I have questions. What is a spiritual awakening? To whom and how do I carry a message? Why me? Why not me? How does working this program qualify me to speak to anyone? Although I think I understand the principles we are to practice (more on that later), I wonder: have I ever done anything as thoroughly in all my affairs as Step Twelve suggests?

As we ponder these questions and more...let’s not forget to notice and celebrate that we have earned our questions, confusions and anxieties about this step because we were willing to walk through the first eleven. Let’s explore these questions together! Stay tuned.

Trust is work

My husband’s willingness to trust me with his color choices seems like a silly, small matter. But his struggle was real and I often think about how hard it was for him to admit this one true thing about himself - he mixes up black and blue. How hard should that be? It isn’t like he was copping to being a serial killer! If I think a bit longer, I realize that I too have trouble with small truths.

Is it any wonder that, if we struggle with realistically assessing ourselves in areas where the results really are no big deal, we will struggle in the arena of trusting God with our WILL and our LIFE? For decades I did not have much hope that I would ever understand God enough to trust him. My vision of who God is was impaired. One day I came across these verses:

So, my very dear friends, don’t get thrown off course. Every desirable and beneficial gift comes out of heaven. The gifts are rivers of light cascading down from the Father of Light. There is nothing deceitful in God, nothing two-faced, nothing fickle. He brought us to life using the true Word, showing us off as the crown of all his creatures.

~ James 1:16-18, The Message

I had a moment of receiving “light cascading down” as a series of new thoughts. (I did not realize at the time that this was my experience; it is only in hindsight that I understand that this is what happened to me.) Here is a list of what eventually became a new way of seeing for me. (Kind of like having my own spiritual form of color blindness taken from me.)

* I am off course; how much more off course can I get? I’m dying from my disease.

* What if I am off course in part because I have been wrong and blinded by my own faulty way of seeing and understanding the world?

* What if the book of James is right, and I am wrong?

* What do I have to lose?

* What if I choose to believe in this God who is not deceitful, not two-faced, not fickle?

* What if God really believes that we humans are the crown of all his creatures?

* What if God believes in me?

In the AA Big Book, and in meeting rooms, there are talks about having a moment of clarity. This was one of mine. In some ways it felt like I had been in a dark, airless, windowless room for a long, long time and someone had swept in, turned on a light, thrown back the curtains and opened the windows. Fresh air blew in and cleared away the stench of stagnation. I do not believe I could have “done this” on my own. I believe that God was doing for me what I absolutely could not do for myself - giving me, a blind beggar, sight. How about you? Is it time for a good Spring cleaning of old ways?