Step 11 AA

Dan B 76 · Member

Step 11 AA

Wolfie55 · Member

Powerful share. I'd like to write something spontaneous, but its late and I should be asleep. So what I would like to do is post an excerpt from an article that appeared in the November 2011 issue of the AA Grapevine. It was on Step Eleven. I'm pretty sure I can quote it since I wrote it.

"In a little country church just outside of Meductic, New Brunswick God and me had a little meeting. I thanked Him for keeping me sober and alive as long as he had already and I asked Him to keep me sober and alive just a little bit longer, long enough for me to get back home to AA. In return, I promised that I would try to believe a little bit more.

When I got up from my praying, I knew that something was different. Its difficult to explain. I felt stronger. I felt something I had not felt in many years. Hope.

Later that day, in the evening, I was in Fredericton, New Brunswick, on the telephone to an AA member I barely knew, explaining my situation. That man got in his car and drove 200 km in a snowstorm to save me from freezing to death. They say God works through people. That night, he used the two of us to work a miracle. The following day I was back home, in an AA meeting. God kept his half of the deal. It was up to me to do my part.

I was homeless. I was jobless. There were many nights I slept on sofas, and in meeting rooms and in doorways. It was the closest I ever came to skid row. The fellowship carried me most of the way. My sponsor was always there, telling me things he had learned. He used to say, the men who cry for food and shelter before conquering alcohol are on the wrong track. Get sober first, he would say and then all those other things will fall into place. Have a little faith he would say. And, so I did. I went to lots of meetings. I hung around with sober members of AA. I prayed every day.

Eventually, I moved into a transition house for men in the early stages of recovery from alcohol and drugs. It was a local place, everyone knew about it. The manager was a sober member of AA. Most of the guys who worked there were in one fellowship or another. There were lots of times when we would sit around and talk program. And, Id be lying if I said it hadnt made a difference.

I did not live there very long. I managed to find work and met someone who was also in the program and we decided to trudge the road together. As my sponsor had pointed out, things were falling into place. The following year, I was forced to leave my job for health reasons and seek employment in another field.

Larry M., the fellow who had saved my life in that storm, was working as an Attendant in the transition home where I had lived and he said he could get me a job working there. I figured, what a great way to give something back. Like any place of employment, there were rules to follow. Well, I have this problem. I dont like being told what to do. My ego reared its ugly head, and I resigned.

I would like to point out here that I was wrong in my decision, but at the time I believed I was right. I sought counsel from other persons. I went to meetings and shared about it. I read literature on the subject. I did almost everything that I should have done in order to arrive at my decision. The one thing I did not do was ask for guidance from God.

I just went ahead and did what I thought God would have me do. I took another job, as a laundry worker, washing dirty underwear for minimum wage. The place I worked in had a five-foot high ceiling. I am six feet tall. Yep. I sure showed them who was in charge. I had lots of time to read on the job. So I read my Twelve and Twelve. I became active in service work and got some satisfaction from that, but something was not right. I couldnt put my finger on it. My sponsor asked me if I had talked to God about this yet. Well, I hadnt of course.

So, thats what I did. I got down on my knees at work and said one simple prayer, Please, God, show me what to do.

The next day, my old boss called me and told me that the caseworker had resigned and asked if I would be willing to take the position. Better hours. Better money. Well, naturally, I told him Id think about it. I guess that sometimes I get so focused on what I believe Gods will is that I am unable to see what Gods will actually is. Sometimes I need to be hit with a two-by-four. Well, that is precisely what God did that night."

Sorry it was so lengthy but that's only about a third of the story.

Dan B 76 · Member

Wolfie - It's a great story thanks for sharing. It is another example of when we get out of the way and let God do for us what we can't do for ourselves things work out. It took me many years to reach the point of nearly total trust, can't say total cause i'm not perfect. Now my life is on such a better plain life is good.

Fyne Spirit · Member

I was on holiday in Australia last year when we stopped in a town called Woy Woy, just north of Sydney. Wonderful place names in Aussie. We walked around the town and came across a store called "The Gnostic Hemporium" . Inside it was full of interesting knick knacks and a lot of material on meditation and, if I remember correctly, some material about the King James version of the bible. I was interested because of the meditation material which I thought might help me with step 11. Now, I had heard of Agnostic and Atheist, but not Gnostic so out of curiosity I asked the manager what it meant. She told me "faith through experience". Wow, I thought, that describes my experience in AA exactly when it comes to "God conciousness".

When I came in, I described myself as Agnostic, which I thought meant having a bob each way. I was skeptical, in fact I re read some notes I made back when I made inventory, and I talk a lot about my desire to achieve a spiritual awakening, and how much I wanted to overcome my skepticism. The progress began when I was shown how to pray and most importantly I was told to look for the results. Strange things began happening. My attitudes began to change without any effort from me. I becam a thief who could not steal, a skiver who had to go to work etc, and each change I only noticed in hindsight - they didn't come from any conscious effort on my part. This is what I saw when I looked for the results of my prayers. So my faith became stronger through experience. Maybe another way of looking at it is that when I became willing, He made himself known to me.

So now, through experience, I have a solid faith that has got me through all kinds of difficulties in life. I know it works. But I am undisciplined in the actual practice of this step. I greatly admire those that can stick to this discipline, it was one of the main components of the early AA and it was very effective, but it appears to be an area I don't have much talent for. (meditation that is) The nightly inventory I take now and then is always a dissapointment because I fail so miserably. I worked through this with a sponsee who passed every test, it was a bummer.

But I pray all day, sometimes 3rd and 7th steps prayers but more often converstational types. My three main prayers which seem to work everytime are
1) God, please take these stupid thoughts away
2) God, please send me the right thought or action for this situation
3) God, please can I have a car park

I used them big time last week when asked to attend an AA member in hospital who was going to have is ventilator turned off. I am not good in these situations, I have always had a hard time with emotional detachment and I was worried I might fall apart. That would not have been appropriate, it was not about me, it was about the man and his loved ones. I was unsure what to say or do, but I agreed to be there and I prayed all the way there and all the time I was there, for the right words and actions and of course for the carpark, which I got right by the hospital. Our man was not religious but wanted the third step prayer which I said for him. So it all went ok as far as you can say that about these events. I had been working with him for about a month prior to this , all on the same basis, me acting as a channel for God's love just trying to carry the message, and although he was unable to talk, we made progress and managed a good third step between us.

So, today I had a call from the social worker at the hospital. The staff in the ward had seen a remarkable change in their patient from the time I began visiting. They had been gravely concerned about his state of mind which is why his family involved AA, and it really did some good. She told me the whole ICU are now fans of AA. I didn't bring that about, I just prayed for the right thought or action the whole way through. And now our local AA has made some friends in critical area of medicine and we may well get the chance to help someone else.

It seems that even though I am not disciplined and not much good at meditation, that it works anyway, and I remain a Gnostic. My faith is based in experience.

God bless,
MikeH.

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