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greater than myself has always been a tricky proposition for this addict, ever since i went to my first meeting, all those days ago. i knew right form the start that IF i was to buy-in on the entire HIGHER POWER notion, it could not and would not be the Christian version and yet for the first fifteen or so years of my recovery, it was just that. oh, i used all sorts of semantic tricks to fool myself into thinking i had found my own way, but the reality was, i was too scared to be unacceptable to my peers, that my version looked exactly like what i thought their version did. to my great dismay, prayer and meditation was simply going through the motions. when i finally let go of what i thought the POWER that fuels my recovery “should” be, i finally found one that actually worked for me. that POWER looks and acts nothing like the GOD of my youth and as a result, i have gained a new sense of FREEDOM from the chains of religion.
since i have come to see a POWER that lacks any human feelings, motivations or appearance, i see a HUGE irony here. i once had a sponsee who was adamantly Christian. when we were working the second step and i asked him to tell me what attributes he thought GOD had, he was totally stumped. over and over again he insisted that GOD was GOD and required no explanations or descriptions. since i was in a state of tiptoeing around the fact that i was living a spiritual lie and i had to shade the truth with all sorts of anthropomorphic characteristics of a POWER i did not believe in, i thought that he, too, had to describe GOD in his own words. needless to say, the irony here, is that the POWER that fuels my recovery these days, just is and lacks any need to be described in any sense by me. that may sound unsatisfactory to my peers, but today, i no longer care what they think any sort of HIGHER POWER needs to be, for me. just as i no longer will press any of them to describe or stop describing how they see the POWER that provides for them.
before the front starts moving in, i think it is time to dress out and get out for some miles. one of the many gifts i have received from the POWER that fuels my recovery is my desire to do more than just survive. i have the desire to thrive today and that translates into physical fitness activities. as long as i have the ability to move, i will do just that. if there is a long-term payoff, great, in the short term, however, i feel better, i look better and i have come to believe that i think better as well. what once was one of the most onerous burdens i carried around: a HIGHER POWER that did not fit me, has become one of the biggest blessings in my recovery life, just for today.

∞ DT ∞