I just left my third Step 3 meeting in as many days (don’t you love the first week of the month?) and it got me thinking about how much has changed.

All my relationships have changed since I started the journey of saying no to my own bulls#!t. Note I didn’t say that the alcoholics have changed. Some are better, some are worse. I’m still just as powerless over their disease as I was before I walked into my first meeting.

But the changes in me have changed our relationships for the better, even though their disease continues to progress. As it says in Hope for Today on page 60 (Feb. 29th): “In algebra, altering one variable, even if the other variable remains constant, will change the entire equation…I realized I could transform ‘a’ (myself) and get a different ‘c’ (relationship), even if ‘b’ (the alcoholic) never changed.”

That’s where the hope comes from: realizing that changing the one thing I can change–myself–is enough to change my life, whether the alcoholics are still drinking or not. I can have serenity regardless of another person’s behavior. That’s the miracle, and if it’s the only miracle I ever get, it’s more than enough.

The relationship that changed the most, though, and is still changing the most, was a total surprise.

The relationship that changed the most

I had no doubt, even before coming into program, that God existed and that He loved me. That felt like a huge advantage, and in many ways it was. I didn’t have to struggle to accept the concept of a Higher Power. Me and God were tight. We had history. When I learned about Steps Two and Three, I thought, No problem, I’ve already done that. I felt smug, like I’d discovered I had transfer credits that put me a semester closer to graduation. Ha, ha!

(I’ve since learned that anytime I feel smug, God is reaching for the flyswatter. But that’s another post.)

I had a relationship with the God of my understanding, sure. But that relationship consisted mostly of me telling Him what to do. I grew up in a denomination that emphasized praying for results–if you ask God for something, be specific. Better tack on an “if it be Thy will” just in case, of course, ’cause He’s the Boss. But prayer means telling God exactly what you want.

Whatever truth might have been in that concept, it didn’t stand a chance against my diseased thinking. My lopsided Al-Anon brain latched onto this idea and twisted it backwards, far from anything I’d been taught. Obviously it was my job to tell God what He should do!

The weight of this responsibility nearly crushed me. Do you know what a big job it is to figure out what God should do, and how and when He should do it, and cover all the specifics, for all your loved ones, every day? Running the universe is a lot of work!

Wish-list prayer: a full-time job

My ‘prayer time’ consisted of giving orders and whining. It was my job to make sure God did His job, and did it my way, and got all the details right.

The sicker I got, the more work it was to stay prayed up. There were so many specifics to cover: every detail of my two Kid Qualifiers’ lives, every bump in every crisis, all the ways I wanted Partner Qualifier to change–because, of course, there was nothing wrong with me! Trying to adjust for all the variables was a full-time job. I felt like if I didn’t cover all the bases, I’d leave us open to disaster. I had to keep all the plates spinning or something terrible would surely happen. It was my job to keep us all safe, and when bad things happened, it felt like my fault, like I’d failed. Yes, this is mental illness.

And the biggest problem: God wasn’t very cooperative. If you haven’t noticed–and I hadn’t–He doesn’t take orders very well. What was His problem?

The genie in the bottle

Well-meaning friends suggested that I just needed more faith. To my sick little brain, that meant somehow pumping up my belief that God would give me the results I asked for. Experienced readers will note that this is exactly like a five-year-old being extra good the week before Christmas. I tried, and tried. Boy, did I try. I did everything I could to manipulate God into bringing me the stuff on my wish list.

Surely the problem couldn’t be what I was asking for. I knew what was best for everyone! The fault had to be in how I was asking. Was it my timing? The wording? If I could just figure out the right way to rub the lamp, the genie would have to come out and grant my wishes.

About this time, I came into the rooms. I’d been in a few weeks when I sat in my first Step Three meeting. I hadn’t taken Step Two seriously: Yeah, I believe in God, and I believe He can restore all these crazy people in my life to sanity. Done, check mark. Did you spot all the mistakes in that sentence? Asking Him to restore me to sanity never crossed my mind; I wasn’t the one with the problem! And I thought I had Step Three wrapped, too: I’ve already got a good relationship with Him. I pray a lot. I guess I can skip this Step. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

My ‘conversations’ with God were all one-way. I gave directions, bargained, and complained. All my efforts were directed at making God do what I wanted, not at lining my will up with His. I was so focused on getting Him to change my circumstances and my alcoholics, I didn’t see the missing ingredient on my end: obedience.

The idea of simply asking for God’s will to be done, and leaving it at that, terrified me. Inconceivable as it was, what if His will wasn’t the same as mine? What if He didn’t do what I wanted? What if He doesn’t avert all the scary things I’m obsessing over? What if He never changes my qualifiers? What if He lets them hit a bottom that is more than I can handle? What if I’m not really in control?

The real issue: who’s driving?

And that was what I wanted: control. I’d accepted, by this time, that I couldn’t control my alcoholics. (Well, not completely control them, anyway.) But I was still trying, through prayer, to get God to control them. I can’t make them behave, but He can! And I have so many good ideas! I know how everything should turn out! So why doesn’t He listen?

I had no clue, at that time, that I was really, really scared of letting God drive. If anyone had suggested I was scared of God, I would have been outraged and offended (two symptoms of poor spiritual health, by the way). But the truth was, I had a lot of fears around the genie-in-the-bottle God I’d created, far outside my religious tradition and common sense.

Why? I had too much power over Him. I had to ask Him to take care of my loved ones in just the right way, at just the right time, or else He might drop us all on our heads. I was scared because running the universe is too much responsibility for me.

I am not smart enough to run the universe, or run my qualifiers’ lives, or even use the remote control some days. The unmanageability of my life testified to that. As Jordan Peterson says: “You are, on the one hand, the most complex thing in the entire universe, and on the other, someone who can’t even set the clock on your microwave. Don’t over-estimate your self-knowledge.”

It took a long time for me to start to understand that ‘faith’ does not mean believing God will give me the results I want. That kind of faith treats Him like a vending machine, or like a genie in a bottle: if I can just figure out the correct input, I’ll get the output I want.* No wonder I was scared of a God like that. Too much depended on me!

Step Three now

The faith I’m growing into now means trusting that I’ll be okay whatever the results. It means trusting that God isn’t going to drop me on my head. He’s got my best interests at heart, and He’s smart enough to run the universe without my help.

Letting go of prayer as just another form of control changed my relationship with my Higher Power. Instead of manipulating Him, I’m free now to learn to start trusting Him. And that’s turning out to be a much saner way to live.

There’s such relief now in turning my will and my life over to the care of God. Relief! I don’t have the horrible pressure of trying to figure out what God should do. I can let Him drive, trusting He’ll get me where I need to be, even if I’m not wild about the route. I don’t have the stress of trying to convince Him to take care of my loved ones; He loves them more than I do. And I don’t make myself crazy worrying that if I don’t say all the magic words, He’ll let something awful happen, like an angry genie.

I can settle into being His creature, His child. That’s a blessed place to be. Something long wrong deep inside me is coming back into alignment. The feeling of safety that all my attempts at control never gave me is starting to creep in through surrender.

Well, most days. Mostly. The crazy comes back. Turning my loved ones over to God is a lot less like having my tonsils out and a lot more like brushing my teeth. It’s never a one and done, because as often as I turn them over, I take them back. I have to renew that intention day by day, hour by hour, sometimes minute by minute. When I find myself worrying that I haven’t prayed enough, or prayed right, or covered all the bases, it’s time to surrender all over again.

Someone recently shared their sponsor’s words in a meeting: “There’s two reasons I can’t be someone else’s higher power: One, there’s no vacancy, and two, I’m not qualified!” No joke! And I can’t be my own Higher Power either. I’m a lot less insane since I resigned that position.

I still tell God what I need and want. To pretend I don’t have those feelings would be false, and I need that relationship to be honest and real. But I trust Him enough now to ask what He wants, and to leave the details and the results up to Him. It sounds funny now, but it was a big stretch to believe that God knows better than I do!

God will still let me drive anytime I want. But all my wrecks happen when I insist on taking the wheel. I’m learning, little by little, to let Him drive.

Keep coming back!

*I’m sure this phrase comes from CAL, but I haven’t been able to find it. If you know the source, please let me know so I can give proper attribution! Thanks!