Chino

For me it was more like "remembered to believe...".

During the entire first year of my daughter's addiction, I completely forgot about a Higher Power. I was so determined to save/control her that I was making myself her HP, and I'm pretty lousy at it.

I was so focused on her, thinking if she'd get clean I would be happy. I hinged everything on her, put her and her addiction before everything else. In that sense, I had made her and her addiction my HP. All that did was cause a fall from grace for me, and it literally sent me to my knees.

I always remembered HP during good times, but was slow to remember during the bad. I thought I had gratitude but without humility it meant nothing. I knew how to say thank you but I kept forgetting to ask for help for myself, despite having done that before in my life.

My grandmother was a medicine woman, and she assigned an individual word for everyone to ponder. Her word for me was humility and she gave it to me when I was 16. She told me if I needed help I had to ask for it. It was soon after that when I first reached out to the Creator.

I found serenity that day and many times since then. It's only now that I'm able to see I took serenity for granted. I didn't understand it's something I have to seek every day, and the only way to attain it is with and through a Higher Power.

I've come to believe that my Creator gives me many sources to that Higher Power, and the 12 steps, the people who work them, are one of them.

keepinon

Wow..humility at 16..that was something i didn't get until life kicked me in the a** a bunch of times. Slow learner over here. I have quoted this before , but there is a buddihst saying. "Be humilated enough, find humility" Thats how I had to get it. Am impatient for my AD to find some...must run in the family!

Freedom1990

Excellent subject, Chino!

It was a gradual process for me because prior to recovery, I spent years trying to run away from the God of the Catholic church and my parents' understanding.

I could not embrace that concept anymore.

I began to see something I wanted in the people sitting in the rooms of recovery, and I came to believe in something, if only the people who seemed to be doing well with life!

Somewhere along the way, I began to find my own HP, a God of my understanding, if you will.

CatsPajamas

A wise recovery friend often told me that she took it in really tiny baby steps. She said it like this:

First I came
Then I came to
and then I came to believe.

I understand it now. In the beginning, all I could do was show up. I walked into meetings, sat down, and cried for an hour. I was barely able to squeak out my name during introductions.

After awhile, after just suiting up and showing up to meetings, the fog began to lift. I found a sponsor and I worked step one. I remember when I "came to" and I started to realize just how powerless I was. I came, and then I came to.

And finally, I came to believe. I came to believe a power greater than myself could restore me to sanity.

Other threads to come: what is sanity, and the fact that I had to believe that the greater power in my life was NOT, in fact, my A. I had made him my god, and it was a process to remove him from power.

keepinon

I too (like Freedom) came to belive after I saw people in the program who had peace and sanity and even happiness. People who wer ein the same position I was, but could breathe, talk about something other than their A, sleep at night, etc. It made me belive that I could have it too.