In our program, we call the transformation that happens in sobriety an “inside job.”
When I was drinking, especially toward the end, I would have to drink just to be around people as a shield. I did not know how to handle being with you without my liquid courage. Little did I know it was not the answer I needed. It was not about what I could find in this outside world to help me cope.
It was an inside job.
I had to go inside myself and look at behaviors that needed to change to help me cope. But first, I had to surrender to the fact that I could not do this on my own power. What a conflict!
Surrender to gain power—that still baffles me.
Surrendering to God is not giving up. It is partnering with God and allows me to gain the power given to me through that faith, to move forward without the artificial strength of alcohol.
Now, the real work begins.
The inside job requires my looking at the behaviors that I had put in place in the past that are not serving me anymore. How I am reacting to the world and not responding from a place of Grace from within. It requires two major rearrangements; one of my mental state and the other of my spiritual state.
1—Working the 12-steps was my work for my mental state.
2—Surrendering and partnering with God was for my spiritual state.
To finally be of service to others again, I have to show that I have been transformed, mentally and spiritually. Not that I have “just stopped drinking.” As, a fellow sober friend always says, “It’s not the drinking, it’s the thinking.”
Now, I want to be the evidence that this program works. To show others that, by doing the work and relying on their Higher Power for the help they need, they can do this too!
I am continuously working on that never-ending inside job to change my own nature—to be the evidence that lights the way for others.
If I can do it, so can you.
“Do not conform to the pattern 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.”
Romans 12:2
Click on my books below to buy.
