I see Step 3 as sort of the heart of the program. It asks me to make a crucial decision that will affect how I go through the rest of the Steps…and the rest of my life. Step 3 solidifies the foundation of my lifelong recovery.
I was so blind to the hold alcohol had on me, in spite of all the evidence, that it never occurred to me to ask God to help. Well, also I didn’t trust the very God I was brought up to believe in. I didn’t understand that, when I stopped drinking (long before I got to AA), there could have been some caring being that removed my obsession. I wasn’t planning on it or even asking for it, but strangely enough, I just never picked up another drink. Fortunately, that didn’t solve my problems. I say fortunately, because if it were just about not drinking, I never would have been led to AA. When I got to AA, my problem for the longest time was that I was just giving lip service to Step 3. In the early stages of my recovery, I hated making decisions. I was so afraid of making a mistake that I usually just waited until someone made the decision for me. What if I couldn’t turn my will and my life over to a God I didn’t really understand? My sponsor reminded me that the we in “God as we understood Him” referred to each one of the people who practiced the program. It did not mean I was supposed to have the same understanding of God that everyone else did. Each person made the decision for themselves and came to their own understanding. I wasn’t even required to use any particular name or pronoun when referring to God. But together we would be on the same path from darkness into light.
Then my sponsor pointed out the magic word later on in the sentence: “care.” I had been plowing through my life on my own steam and not doing a very good job of caring for myself. Oh, I thought about myself, all right, but it wasn’t the kind of care I needed. I began to get the idea that I could entrust my care to that mysterious Something or Someone who had removed my desire to drink and who had also led me to AA (and who had kept my marriage together, just for a few examples). I started to understand that when I had been desperately seeking safety and comfort, I was actually trying desperately to control everything all by myself. Could I hand over the reins to that Something I had plenty of evidence of? I was still like a skittish horse for some time before it kind of just happened.
Our whole trouble had been the misuse of willpower. We had tried to bombard our problems with it instead of attempting to bring it into agreement with God’s intention for us.
I must have made the decision somewhere along the way, because I shudder to think where I would be today (if I still existed at all) if I hadn’t. Don’t get me wrong – I am an alcoholic, and my tendency is to forget who I gave the reins to every so often. But that Something, my higher power, God, sees to it that I keep coming back, not so much so that I’ll get everything right once and for all, but so that I can be happy, joyous and free again and again. And I believe the means God uses to keep me on the path is the access to the unconditional love of the people in AA. A little conscious contact goes a long way!