“Healing may give you a new life, but it’s gonna cost you your old one. Are you ready?”
There’s a catch to recovery that nobody really wants to talk about. We want the new life. We’re just not always sure we want to give up the old one.
We want peace without surrendering control. We want freedom without giving up the things that have imprisoned us. We want different results while hanging onto the thinking, behaviors, relationships, resentments, fears, and coping mechanisms that produced the old results.
Then recovery asks us a terribly uncomfortable question: Are you ready?
Not: Do you want to stop hurting? Of course I do.
Not: Would you like your life to get better? Absolutely.
The real question is: Are you willing to let go of the life you know without knowing exactly what will replace it? That’s different. And that may be one of the hardest parts of surrender because while we may have been burning our lives to the ground (as evidenced in the ashes behind us), that old life may feel ‘comfortable’ and ‘familiar” and hard to let go of.
The Strange Comfort of a Life That Doesn’t Work
By the time many of us reach Alcoholics Anonymous, our lives have become pretty painful. Alcohol has stopped working. Relationships are damaged. Trust has disappeared. We’ve made promises we couldn’t keep. We’ve tried controlling our drinking, controlling other people, controlling circumstances, and controlling ourselves.
And yet there can be something strangely comforting about all of it.
Not because it’s good. Because it’s familiar. I know how to live that life.
- I know resentment.
- I know fear.
- I know isolation.
- I know dishonesty.
- I know self-pity.
- I know what it feels like to try to manipulate circumstances so I can get what I want.
- I know what it’s like to run the show.
Misery can become familiar enough that uncertainty feels more frightening than suffering. That’s why hitting bottom isn’t necessarily just about how bad things get. Sometimes bottom is the moment I finally recognize: I cannot keep living this way.
That is Step One territory. “We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.” Notice that the Step doesn’t immediately tell me what my new life is going to look like. First, I have to tell the truth about the old one. This isn’t working anymore.
Bottom Is Where Surrender Becomes Possible
I used to think surrender meant defeat. Recovery taught me something different.
Surrender means I finally stop fighting a battle I cannot win using the weapons I’ve been using. There is an enormous difference.
The Big Book begins How It Works by laying out a program that moves us from admission to belief, from belief to decision, and from decision into action. The Twelve Steps are not simply ideas to agree with; they describe attitudes and activities drawn from the experience of the early members of A.A. That means recovery eventually requires more than recognizing that my old life doesn’t work.
I have to become willing to leave it.
And there’s the scary part. Leave it for what? I don’t know. That’s where faith enters the picture.
Step Three Doesn’t Give Me a Map
Step Three says: “Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.” I love the word care in that Step. But I also notice something that isn’t there. God doesn’t hand me the complete architectural drawings for my new life before asking me to surrender the old one. I want that deal.
“God, show me exactly what’s going to happen, where we’re going, what it’s going to cost, who’s coming with me, what I’m going to lose, what I’m going to gain, and how everything turns out. Then I’ll decide whether I trust You.”
That isn’t surrender. That’s negotiation.
The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions uses a wonderful image in discussing Step Three: willingness is like a key placed into a lock. We don’t have to throw the door wide open immediately. Even opening it slightly is a beginning. That’s incredibly hopeful.
Maybe I don’t have to know exactly what my new life looks like. Maybe today I just need enough willingness to unlock the door.
But Something Really Does Have to Die
We sometimes soften recovery so much that we miss this. Recovery involves loss. There are things I cannot take with me. People I cannot take with me. I cannot build a life based on spiritual principles while protecting every resentment. I cannot surrender my will while insisting that everything happens my way. I cannot ask God to remove my defects while secretly reserving the right to keep my favorites.
That’s why Step Six may be one of the most quietly radical Steps: “Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.” There’s that word again. Ready.
- Not perfect.
- Not finished.
- Not certain.
- Ready.
And becoming ready can hurt because some of those defects once served a purpose. Anger protected me. Control made me feel safe. Isolation kept people from hurting me. Dishonesty helped me avoid consequences. Self-reliance convinced me I didn’t need anyone. They may have helped me survive something once. But survival mechanisms can eventually become prisons.
Healing asks whether I’m willing to leave the prison even when I’ve gotten used to the furniture.
The New Life Is Built Through Action
Here’s the good news. I don’t have to manufacture my new life. I participate in building it. That’s what the rest of the Steps do.
- I inventory what’s blocking me.
- I admit what I find.
- I become willing to change.
- I make amends.
- I clean up yesterday.
- I take inventory today.
- I seek God’s direction for tomorrow.
- I help somebody else.
And somewhere along the way, almost without realizing exactly when it happened, I look around and discover: I’m living differently. The Big Book calls the chapter containing much of this work Into Action. Not Into Understanding. Not Into Perfect Certainty. Into Action.
I don’t have to completely understand the life waiting for me before I start walking toward it. I just have to take the next indicated step.
“Thy Will, Not Mine”
Step Eleven brings this whole idea into daily living. We seek through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, asking for knowledge of God’s will for us and the power to carry that out. That’s very different from asking God to bless the life I’ve already designed. Recovery slowly changes the question.
Instead of: “How do I get God to give me the life I want?”
I begin asking: “God, what kind of life are You inviting me into?”
And perhaps even more importantly: “What am I still holding onto that keeps me from entering it?”
That can be a frightening prayer because the answer may involve letting go. Of an old resentment, an old identity, an old relationship, an old expectation, an old fear, an old way of protecting myself, an old version of me.
Are You Ready?
Maybe that’s what surrender really comes down to. Standing at the edge of a life I cannot continue living and facing another life I cannot yet see. Behind me is familiar pain. Ahead of me is uncertainty. And recovery asks me to move forward anyway not because I know exactly where I’m going, because I finally know where I cannot stay. That may be enough.
Maybe hitting bottom isn’t simply reaching the lowest point in our lives. Maybe bottom is finally reaching the point where we become willing to stop digging.
- We put down the shovel.
- We admit defeat.
- We ask for help.
- We turn toward God.
- We take one uncertain step into a life we cannot yet imagine.
Healing may indeed give us a new life but it may cost us our old one. Our old thinking, our old defenses, our old resentments, our old need for control, our old ideas about who we are and how life is supposed to work.
That sounds terrifying until we remember one very important thing: That old life is the one that brought us here.
So maybe the question isn’t: Do I know what my new life will look like? Maybe the question is much simpler. Am I finally willing to stop demanding that it look like my old one?
Healing is waiting. Freedom is possible. A new way of living is available. The door may only be open a crack. That’s okay.
Put the key of willingness in the lock. Turn it. And take the next step.
Are you ready?
Note – This article appears in the blog for Rick W’s excellent website ‘Take the 12’. Rick W has over 38 years of sobriety, posts great articles regularly and offers excellent free resources including his outstanding book ‘The Prep Steps: Setting Up Action In A.A’. – Bruce M