I was an utter failure my first year in recovery because while I really wanted, for the first time in my life, to truly get better, I was doing it wrong. Again. Yes, I was doing the steps, but I was attempting to do them as quickly as possible, in my own strength, and it was all out of order. With my usual extremism, I jumped into recovery like a kid jumping into the deep end of the pool with no floaties on and no life guard on duty. Looking back, I can see that I was totally overwhelmed with all the bad things I had avoided looking at for so long. I had been running from the truth my entire life, never looking in the mirror for fear of what I might see looking back at me. I was in complete denial about who I really was, and as a result, I was quite delusional. When I began to accept the truth from God's perspective, and really see myself the way He saw me, I didn't like it one bit! I'd been telling myself what a good person I was for so long and doing it so well that I had started to believe my own hype. (Not a good idea, ya know? Don't believe everything you think!)
Since the biggest lies we hear are usually the ones we tell ourselves, I'd told myself some doozies just to sleep better at night. So when I put the denial down and the proverbial gloves came off, and I was standing there with no excuses or justifications to hide behind, well… I must admit I wigged out a little bit. As the full truth of my life and my true self outside of Christ crashed over me like a tidal wave, I felt SO bad and I was scared! I got antsy about "fixing it." If all this yucky stuff was really true about me, then I had a TON of work to do and I had no clue where to start. I kept hearing "easy does it" in recovery but I didn't understand… How could I possibly chill out when there was so much work to be done?
We all know that change is a process and that no one can live a certain way for decades of his or her life and then expect to turn it all around overnight. Yet this is exactly what I tried to do at first. As I review that first year, it's quite comical to me now to see how I tried to do with recovery what I'd done with everything else in my life. I was, once again, trying to do it my way, even though the mere fact that I was in recovery should have been a giant clue that my way doesn't work. Thank goodness Jesus has a highly-developed sense of humor! Anyone who doesn't think God can take a joke isn't looking hard enough. I'm sure He got quite a kick watching me run around, playing hopscotch with the steps and doing what felt right to me. I'm actually laughing out loud right now as I write this because it really is funny on this side of it, knowing what I know now. Like so many who are rookies in recovery, I let the guilt over my mistakes overtake me. I jumped right to amends, as so many do. Which is why it all went to hell in a handbasket, and quick! Snowballs falling in the desert last longer than my lame attempt at changing according to what I thought was best!
An entire year of this ridiculous routine passed before I hit bottom again (and thank the Lord that He only let it go for a year this time, yeah?) and I had to re-evaluate things. I mean, how embarrassing! It's one thing to be living like an idiot and hit rock bottom. But to hit bottom in recovery? Really?!? How is that even possible?!? (Well, YEAH, really, and it's VERY possible, as I learned the hard way.) But that was one of the clearest lessons that stand out to me now from that first year—recovery is about SURRENDER, not survival.
Success in life is totally and completely, 150 percent and then some, based on how you think. Even when you believe you are reacting based on emotion, you are really going off of how you think about how you feel rather than your feelings. (I know, sounds ridiculous, doesn't it?) But just chew on that for a second… When we knee-jerk react, we can't even always give a good reason why until we think about it. Only after meditating and mulling over it can we even identify by name what our feelings were. And that is when we start to make excuses and rewrite history because evaluating why we did something usually doesn't say anything good about us.
At the end of the day, we all ultimately do what we WANT to do. It doesn't matter if it is a good thing or a bad thing—said action was what you WANTED to do. Why? Because you made a choice about how to act. In any given situation, you can choose to act from emotion or from a higher plane in spite of your emotion. Or you can choose to do nothing. Any way you slice it, though, you are still making a CHOICE. And that requires thought. It's a head thing, not a heart thing! Don't believe me? Then just think for a second about a time when you overreacted to something or were feeling very strongly and allowed that to dictate how you spoke or acted. (And don't even try to front here, ok? Because no one with a pulse can honestly say there's never been a time that they were aware of their mouth moving at the same time they were even more aware they should shut it.)
Ergo, the only true way to act differently is to change your wants, or how you feel. How do you do that, you ask? By effecting a true heart change, which can only be accomplished by CHANGING YOUR MIND.
The Bible says, "Do not conform any longer to the patterns of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is—His good, pleasing and perfect will." Personally, I wish God would have included a footnote after this verse that read: "INVASIVE SURGERY REQUIRED." My understanding of this verse was pretty benign compared to how I now understand it. Having your mind transformed is not some little scrape that you rinse off with peroxide and slap a bandaid on. Mind transformation is more like real-life brain surgery. It's painful, it takes time and Jesus Christ is the only real brain surgeon!
When you allow your mind to be transformed, you undergo a fundamental change in how you think, which affects how you feel and how you act. The more you open your heart and mind to Christ, over time you will start to notice that how you feel or what you want has changed. Why? Because you think differently than you used to. Unless you go through a mind transformation under the scalpel of Christ, your mind is BROKEN, which means your logic, your emotions and your instincts are all off kilter. So it's a mistake to go by so-called gut instinct or what "feels right" until you allow Him to change your mind. You'll know He's making progress with you when you start to notice that you are able to think more clearly and make better, wiser choices in spite of the feelings that would have dictated your actions in the past.
Having said all that, when I realized about a year into recovery that despite my efforts to change, things were still turning out the same, I sat down with the Lord and had a little meeting. I wanted to know what the problem was. He gently reminded me that doing things my way is what put me in this position in the first place. He pretty much said, relax, child, and let Me handle things. Through my quiet time with God and the accountability of my CR group, I was able to relax. "Easy does it" became more palatable to me as I decided to just start over at the beginning and work the steps, only I did it in order this time.
Amazing things occurred as a result. I'd been journaling, of course, so I was able to go back and make lists and notes as I moved along, and I could see how, when I put it all in the hands of Christ with a willing heart and obeyed Him when He prompted me to do something, things had a way of working themselves out.
I've said before and I'll say again: everything in our lives is ordained, and the steps of recovery (just like the Ten Commandments) are in order for a reason. God set the universe up with a certain order to things, and the principles of truth and obedience have consequences in direct proportion with our willingness or unwillingness to abide by them. When we go our way, even when we try to do right we fail. When we go HIS way, we succeed, even when things don't go like we planned or thought they should.
You might ask yourself now: In what ways are you trying to do right but going about it all wrong? Where are the areas where you need to surrender to His will? Furthermore, in what areas have you gained victory because you left it in His hands and obeyed Him instead of doing what you might always have done? How might you apply what you learned in those victories to the areas where you are seeing constant defeat?
Whatever the answers to these questions, just remember: easy does it.
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