Hello all ladies of GROW.
My name Rene and am an alcoholic.
Step 6 (Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character).
Step 6 is necessary for spiritual growth. The beginning of a lifetime job. Being ready is all important and delay is dangerous. The point at which we abandon limited objectives and move towards God’s will for us (paraphrased from 12×12 pages 65-67).
I still have many character defects, impatience a big one for me, and I find sitting at home (due to the pandemic) that my mind wanders a lot more to things that have happened in the past and I build up a resentment again (note that all in my mind-how fickle I am)’
Guilt is another character defect, I remember when doing step 4 the all consuming guilt I felt “like I was something unpleasant stuck under a shoe, I felt like I wanted the earth to open up and swallow me. That been said having a measure of guilt is good to remind me of what I was to help me develop into a better person.
I was a happy drunk most of the time, would go with anyone to the next watering hole.
Fear another character defect (fear of what I done and what will happen to me, fear can be replaced with courage, the courage to change within myself (still at times fight against it), not an overnight process and takes time. That why I like what been said many times, this is not a programme we graduate from, I am still a work in progress.
Once when I was in my early 30’s I went club hopping with a friend (that time friends were a dime a dozen), we ended up at a club early hours in the morning and I went to get us drinks, I even accused the owner of not giving me the correct change, whereby she told us that the last drink (much grumbling from me)’
When we left the owner came around the corner with bouncers to question me about the change, luckily it only ended up in a shouting match and the cops were called and we were hauled off to jail for disturbing the peace, to me then it was like a badge of honour, now sober am still horrified at what I did, and the irrational fear of going to jail again still creeps up, even though I have done nothing wrong.
At the moment time is all I got, it just a matter of how well I use it. My job is to practice the principles to the best of my ability, in my case it slow plodding along.
To me step 6&3 are similar (my distorted thinking), step 3 we made the decision to turn our lives and will over to the care of God (as we understood him), with continuous effort on our parts to progress to step 6 asking for the defects of character to be removed.
I like the June 6 daily reflections (can he now take them a-every one?
(Paraphrasing – All that step six asks of me is to become willing to name my defects, claim them as my own, and be willing to discard the ones I can, just for today.
Thank you for letting me share.
Rene