ISBC 12 - Hope Accepts and Refuses to Accept
Chapter 12 of Hope: A User's Manual
Every Wednesday night, well over 100 people gather in this basement fellowship hall of the congregation I serve for their AA meeting. Their meeting is an “open” meeting so anyone can attend, even if they are not in recovery. I attend the meetings on a somewhat regular basis because I love what takes place in that room. I love the community, the honesty, the transparency, but most of all, I love the stories. I love the stories of how each one of those individuals have turned their lives in new directions through the 12-step program. I have learned so much from them and I am so so so grateful that our congregation opens up these doors every single Wednesday for these 100+ people to gather and find the community and support they continue to need in their healing journeys.
In this chapter, MaryAnn isn’t writing about 12 step groups but I heard the steps throughout this chapter especially in these words:
When we feel we have no options, the clarity of the serenity prayer, of acceptance and nonacceptance, allows us to choose … something. To choose to look for hope. To choose not to give up. To choose to make the most of a bad situation. To choose to allow ourselves to be heartbroken. To choose to do what’s ours to do and leave the outcome to someone or something else, or fate, or God.1
I hadn’t gone deep with the 12 step process until I read Richard Rohr’s book, Breathing Under Water: Spirituality and the Twelve Steps (highly recommended) and I saw the ways that those twelve steps of recovery form the basis of a deep, healthy, and honest spirituality. The process recognizes that we need a power greater than ourselves, that we need each other, that we need to right wrongs that we have caused, and that we need to seek to live in new ways. It recognizes that we come to places where we may feel powerless (aka rock-bottom) but that we can take steps forward from that place. There is a beautiful recognition that we take the steps we are able to take and we allow that to be enough.
The steps aren’t easy but when you put them all together, they point towards a hopeful future of transformation and new beginnings. Here are the twelve (referring in this case to alcohol)2
We admitted we were powerless over alcohol — that our lives had become unmanageable.
Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
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.
Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
I wonder where you might find yourself in these steps today about your life as a whole? I know that I have experienced or tried all twelve of these in my journey with Jesus, but I also know that I still fall back on each at times as well. The journey continues. But referring back to the title of this chapter, I accept that I will regularly fall short, but I also don’t accept that I want to stay that way. How about you?
Grace, Peace, Love, and Joy,
Ed
McKibben Dana, MaryAnn. Hope: A User's Manual (p. 61). Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.. Kindle Edition.
Copied from the Alcoholics Anonymous website
Reading this helped me to understand the essentialness of hope, of “resetting” and restoring myself. As MaryAnn said, “To choose to do what’s ours to do and leave the outcome to someone or something else, or fate, or God.” I will routinely return to this post to keep moving forward with clarity.
I, too appreciate the wisdom and practical guidance of the 12 steps. My first year of attending Al-Anon, for friends and families of alcoholics, I participated in 362 meetings out of 365 opportunities! I think I learned to be much more honest with myself during the 3 years that I practiced letting go of those things O had NO control over.