Recovery Reflections: September 20, 2017
Hello everyone! My name is Christian and I would like to give you all a warm welcome to Detox to Rehab’s Recovery Reflection. Please join Megan, Madison, Patrick, and Joey as they talk about the experience, strength, and hope that comes with being in recovery.
We will pre-record readings from the book Daily Reflections. Every week, they express how this reading has impacted and helped them on their journey through recovery. We thank you and hope that we can inspire you in your recovery journey as well.
Alcoholics Anonymous
September 20, 2017: Higher Power as Guide
See to it that your relationship with Him is right, and great events will come to pass for you and countless others. This is the Great Fact for us.
Alcoholics Anonymous, p. 164.
Having a right relationship with God seemed to be an impossible order. My chaotic past had left me filled with guilt and remorse and I wondered how this “God business” could work. A.A. told me that I must turn my will and my life over to the care of God, as I understand Him. With nowhere else to turn, I went down on my knees and cried, “God, I can’t do this. Please help me!” It was when I admitted my powerlessness, that a glimmer of light began to touch my soul, and then a willingness emerged to let God control my life. With Him as my guide, great events began to happen, and I found the beginning of sobriety.
Before Your Understanding
“I was living vicariously through the people in the program. I wasn’t sober, but I hit a point where I got on my knees and prayed,” Madison says.
Everyone hits a point in their life where they understand they need help. The same thing can be said for those who are suffering in active addiction. Like Madison, many want a better life, but they don’t know how. They see what others are doing and how their lives are better for it, and try to do exactly what they are, but somehow it doesn’t work.
As Madison points out, she didn’t truly believe as she was praying. She didn’t believe in God and the idea of a Higher Power at the time, and so it couldn’t help her. Believing in something more than yourself is one of the key aspects of recovery. Doing that will allow you the relief and the reprieve of the life that active addiction will throw you at.
“I’m not given a relief- I’m given a reprieve based on my spiritual condition,” Patrick explains
Understanding that going into the program saves your life is important in furthering your journey in recovery. As Patrick said, going into the program grants a reprieve to you, but a reprieve isn’t just something that happens. A reprieve is granted to those who show the willingness and readiness to change. Those who show the proof through their actions are granted the gift we all receive: life and free will.
Having a reprieve isn’t just a relaxation: it’s a relief from death, a postponing of the inevitable outcome that awaits you if you do nothing to change your ways. The willingness to pray, the wanting of a better situation shows that there is always a possibility of change, and that your higher power, be it whatever you want it to be, is already helping better your life. When you are willing to change, everything, your mental, spiritual and physical self will be change for the better.
Changing Your View for the Better
“I would get super loaded and find all the faults in your religious beliefs,” Megan shares, going on to explain how she didn’t understand the idea of a higher power.
Knowing and understanding are two completely different aspects of life. Knowing means that you acknowledge something exists to an extent, whereas understanding means that you have the ability to let it affect your life. The same thing is said about having a higher power. Understanding the higher power, and in many cases, it’s God, means that you are able to accept that change that it can do for you.
As Megan says, explaining the higher power is difficult for one to so, as it is something so much bigger than ourselves, but that’s not a bad thing. Letting your higher power come into your life, and surrendering yourself to it cannot be defined; it’s something that has to be experienced. Once you have done it, you too will understand and let it help you find the help you need.
Joey laments on his life, saying,
“I was out there and I praised Alcohol; I praised drugs; I praised everything that came along with the fast life. That was my God.”
Having an understanding of what a higher power means that while in active addiction, your higher power, that thing you surrender to, is the substance you abuse, whether it be Heroin or Alcohol or some other substance. At that time, those were his Higher Power.
Having a Higher Power, a true Higher Power, allows you to do something that you may have never thought possible: be thankful for what you have. In recovery, your eyes are open to gifts that you are provided. It allows you to understand that, although your past may be something you can’t change, your future, with your Higher Power by your side, is something that cannot compare to your life, before.
