Growing up my father was an alcoholic. I had been raised around The 12 Step Program but had never really seen much proof of lasting success. In my childhood, watching my father and mother work The Steps was akin to brushing their teeth in some degree to me. It was like a ritual, just another set of rules to follow rather than putting it together with a relationship to their heavenly Father and His Word. I know the traditional AA 12 Step program is founded on principals of faith, but in trying not to offend other’s beliefs by using the term “Higher Power” I think the program is doing a great disservice by not grounding the program firmly in the Word of God. Over the years I became skeptical of the program.
One Mother’s Day 2005 I was at the mall with my husband, Bill and son, William, when we ventured into a bookstore. At this early point in my recovery (sober only a few months) I had been in a constant search for different bibles. Every time I was in a bookstore, I immediately went to the bible section. In doing this I was gathering a collection of great study bibles. This day I stumbled across The Life Recovery Bible. I had never heard of this bible even though it had been in publication since 1998. No wonder in 1998 I was no where a bible!… Anyway, I started reading it in the bookstore and couldn’t put it down.
I was excited to find a bible with The Steps worked in with scripture. I purchased the bible and started using it immediately. This bible has been a pivotal key to successfully working The Steps in my recovery. For the first time recovery and The Twelve Steps started to make sense.
The Live Recovery Bible brought everything together for me. It was relevant and fresh, not just a dogmatic “program” from man. Instead it showed how The Twelve Steps can be found in the Word of God.
I didn’t start working the program in the traditional sense by going to meetings and finding a sponsor. God didn’t lead me in that direction. In essence The Holy Spirit became my sponsor. For almost a full year, I spent many hours each day reading and studying the bible…listening to Joyce Meyer’s teaching tapes and reading her books. I put strict boundaries up for myself. I only watched Christian television, restricted myself from listening to secular music or reading secular magazines. Because I was able to be at home, not out in the world working around other influences, I was able to work my recovery this way and feel safe. I’m not encouraging others to do it this way, but this is how my recovery process worked. If I had had to go to work, I would have definitely needed a sponsor with ‘skin’ on to be my accountability partner.
My recovery process has been one of deep inner searching within myself to understand where I’ve come from and why my life has been what it has…searching God’s Word and using it as the mirror to my soul to bring about correction and discipline. I did, however, work the steps by actually doing what each step required. Over the next few weeks, I’d like to share with you a study of The 12 Steps and how I worked them …one by one…
(The Twelve Steps and Scripture references are taken from The Life Recovery Bible, New Living Translation, copyright 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.)
Step One
We admitted we were powerless over our dependencies–that our life had become unmanageable.
I took this first step at a marriage seminar my husband, Bill had requested me attend with him in October 2004. Dr. Doug Weiss from Heart to Heart Counseling Center in Colorado Springs was speaking on his book Intimacy. Bill had asked me to go to the 2 day workshop and I reluctantly agreed. I told him I would go on Friday evening, but if I didn’t like the guy speaking I wasn’t going back for the Saturday morning session.
The group was small, about 25 couples…friendly and inviting. I was nervous and had my defenses up. Dr. Weiss spoke from his heart and told how he had grown up with a sex addict for a mom and because of her addiction he was shuffled around foster homes and then eventually back to his mom and step father. Through their bad influences he too became addicted to sex and pornography at a very young age. He explained how people get addicted to sex, what happens in the brain and the suffering to come as a result. He was so transparent and real. He seemed to understand exactly the pain I had. I was really listening. I realized for the first time he was talking about me. I was a sex addict. I didn’t know what it was about him and his story that touched me…I now know it was an anointing from God. Dr. Weiss talked about his clinic in Colorado and that they have Three Day Intensives for couples suffering from sex addiction.
Bill and I returned for the Saturday morning seminar. I was actually looking forward to talking to Dr. Weiss when it was over. I told him I would see him soon at his center in Colorado for counseling. I left that weekend scared by hopeful that help was available. After all the sex, drugs, alcohol, running away, various therapists, medication and jail time through Dr. Weiss God opened my eyes and I was finally able to see and here the truth of my own addiction. It was a miracle. It truly was the beginning of my recovery.
The First Step is the hardest. It can be very scary and humiliating to admit powerlessness… especially for someone who likes to be in control. Most addicts think they have it all under control…”I can handle it!”…that’s one of the biggest lies. The admission of powerlessness is truly the first step to recovery and forms the foundation for working the other steps. If we rely on our willpower alone, we will end up escalating our addiction to get out of the unending pain.
We must come to a realization that not only are we powerless over our addiction, but over ourselves as sinners. We can’t do anything without the healing power of Jesus Christ.
I don’t understand myself at all, for I really want to do what is right, but I don’t do it. Instead, I do the very thing I hate. I know perfectly well that what I am doing is wrong… but I can’t help myself, because it is sin inside me that makes me do these evil things…No matter which way I turn, I can’t make myself do right. I want to, but I can’t. — Romans 7:15-18 NLT