Beautiful Words
AFTER Step Five, my sponsor said I should do my Step Six and Seven quickly. Next morning, after doing my morning prayers, I lay back on my bed for an hour. I thanked God for bringing me to AA, for the Steps and sponsorship. I thanked Him from the bottom of my heart, for the Steps had allowed me to know Him better. I then got on my knees to say the Step Seven prayer, as set out on page 76 of the Big Book. It has only 56 words, but what beautiful words. Words that when I said them for the first time, brought tears of happiness to my eyes, and a surge of joy to my heart. It includes words that I had no connection with before I came to AA: My Creator, willing, defects of character, usefulness to my fellows, grant me strength, to do your bidding.
I realised that doing the Steps changed my perception of things, and altered in a loving way how I looked at the world, and how I looked at or how I perceived God. In doing the life-saving beautiful Steps, I began to realise that there was a Power greater than myself, and that this Power was looking after me. Before I came to AA, I didn’t have a relationship with this Power. The world calls this Power God. When I arrived, God was a taboo word, a word I rarely used, except in a profane way, but AA changed all that. Step Seven “Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.”
From day one, members suggested I needed to develop a relationship with a Higher Power, a God of my own concept. It all seemed so strange at the time. Wise as their words were, the reason I put them into practice was the pain I was in. I quickly found that when I did as was suggested, not only was I sober, but I had a joy and peace within me that I never experienced before.
AA makes it so easy to develop this relationship, by allowing us to have a relationship with a God of our own understanding. This was a novel idea to me, something I never considered before pain forced me through an AA door. The Steps not only allow us to develop a relationship, but then by continuing to practice spiritual principles, to maintain and enhance that relationship. This is imperative, for as it says in the Big Book, “For if an alcoholic failed to perfect and enlarge his spiritual life through work and selfsacrifice for others, he could not survive the certain trials and low spots ahead.” (BB p.14-15)
The first two words of the Step Seven prayer, “My Creator…”, are beautiful. We are speaking to the thing that created us, the thing that loves us. We are speaking directly to Him/Her/It. We know it exists, for that relationship is keeping us sober, I know I can’t be doing it on my own or on my own willpower. I had tried to be sober many times before I came to AA, it was never a success, it was only when I surrendered to a God of my own concept that I was able to be sober.
Thank you lovely God for the gift of AA, and all the wonderful people in it. It is always on my gratitude list, as are the people in it, and they are always in my prayers, God bless us all.
DENNIS, Ealing