A couple friends of mine in the program were talking today about their character defects. I could relate to what they were saying. We all have them. And we all can get tied up with our struggles with them. So tied up, that we can’t seem at times to get away from these things which seem to plague our lives.
I thought about that this evening, after these two conversations. How sometimes I find, as they did, that I’m doing nothing but fighting them and sometimes being overwhelmed with these defects. That, I said to myself, was exactly what I did with alcohol. I fought it for years. Yet I never won those battles. It wasn’t until I hit bottom and stopped fighting and surrendered that I found sobriety and peace at last.
Today, I don’t fight alcohol any longer. I never struggle with it. I don’t have to. If I’m confronted with it, I simply step aside and let it go by me. The rest is up to this Higher Power I’ve accepted into my life. I accept that I’m powerless over alcohol. I can’t fight it and I can’t control it. It’s more powerful than I am and I’m empowered by my Higher Power to just walk past it.
The same with my character defects. There are many of them that I am powerless over. I’ve leaned that I have to do the same with them as I did with my alcohol. Anger is one which comes to mind immediately. Someplace in the BB, it says that we are as powerless over our anger as we are over alcohol. By myself, I won’t win that fight. I don’t have to. Yet, I did struggle with that defect for years after I came in. I finally stopped the struggle and gave up. I surrendered it to my Higher Power. But, just like alcoholism, it is still there. I have to be aware of its presence in my life on a daily basis. If I fall into sleepwalking, it can creep up on me and sandbag me. Bill talks about that eternal vigilance we need to practice.
As I was talking to one of these men tonight, I recalled a prayer of a very sprititual man from the past. He said something to the effect, “Look at what I’m doing, God. If you don’t stop me, I’ll continue to do it.” A variation of the seventh step prayer. A confession of being powerless. A cry for help.
At some point I’m going to have to let go so that I can think of others and not myself. I can get so wrapped up in myself that I find I’m all tangled up with this stuff, like a fly in a spider web. That’s how it was with alcohol. I was obsessed with it to the point of madness. With God’s help and talking to others, I can find a way out of myself and my character defects for this day, so that I can reach out to someone else, who is also suffering.
Anyway, I was just thinking about this.