4th Step PRINCIPLE: Courage

Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

If you had asked me if I were courageous back when I was drinking, then I would have told you that I was.  I would have spoken at length about the professional and personal obstacles in my life that I had overcome.  At that time, alcoholism was not one of the obstacles that I had overcome.  It was overcoming and overwhelming me, and I was not yet courageous enough to ask for help.

Go backstage and evaluate the performance.

Exercising courage is not the same as being bold or brash.  Before I started working AA's steps, I was assertive to a fault.  It was not enough to have something to say; I had to call attention to myself in an effort to command the widest audience possible.  If I had a problem with you, then I would confront you publicly, not privately, because I thought of life as a performance and felt that I belonged, not behind the scenes, but on center stage.

I prided myself on my intelligence and wit, and pride went before the fall.

Be honest about the past, and trust the God of your understanding.

The fourth step afforded me an opportunity to face facts about myself and to practice the principles that are championed in the first three steps.

Step four asks an alcoholic to stand in front of the mirror sober for the first time in a long time, and if one takes "the searching and fearless moral inventory" without flinching, then one will be honest about one's past, and all of the anger, resentment, fear and bad decisions made there, and to believe that life will be better on the other side, because the God of one's understanding is caring for him or her through the process.

Complete the step---no matter what!

In Harper Lee's novel To Kill a Mockingbird, Atticus Finch says to his son Jem, who is angry about the conviction of an innocent man, "I wanted you to know what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what."

Admitting that one is powerless over alcohol and that one's life in unmanageable is almost the same as saying that one is licked.  Trusting a Power greater than one's self to see one through, no matter what, requires courage that is motivated by faith and hope, and with this motivation, one is able to see a better life on the other side of alcohol, perhaps for the first time.

Practice all of the principles, especially the most important one.

The poet Maya Angelou says that courage is "the most important of all the virtues, because without courage you cannot practice any other virtue consistently."

Courage assumes fear.  Courage does not proceed without respect to the consequences.  Courage understands the gravity of a situation and forges ahead anyway.

How many alcoholics sit down to write a fourth step and have no idea of what will appear on the list?  I am sure that one's initial list is incomplete.  One does not remember everything, because of blackouts, on the one hand, and denial, on the other.  The fourth step is about overcoming denial inasmuch as it is about confronting the anger and fear that have marred all of his or her relationships past and present.  When this denial is overcome, one takes a giant step forward in pursuit of freedom from this potentially fatal illness.

Courage counts!

The encouraging news in the fourth step is that all of the events that appear on the moral inventory are in the past, even when the consequences of them are not, and facing the consequences of past decisions is better when one has faced his or her past and is better equipped to live in the present.  As Winston Churchill, the former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom says, "Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts."

3rd Step PRINCIPLE: Faith

Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood God.

If I made better decisions, then I would probably not be in AA.  Or I would have introduced myself to the program sooner than I did, because when I noticed that I was not able to control my drinking, I would have sought help rather than order another drink.

The judgment that I brought into the program did not serve me well, and yet as early as the second step, the program trusted me enough to formulate an understanding of God that would help me to be and stay sober.

AA is inherently optimistic.  In the first step, it asserts that men and women who are wired to drink may be able to stop and then be made happily and usefully whole.  In the second step, the program promises that the alcoholic's life will improve through faith, and in the third step, one begins to actively trust the God of his or her understanding.

Place your bets.

French philosopher Blaise Pascal suggests that faith, at best, is an educated guess, but, in truth, it is a gamble.  Pascal's wager, as it is known, says that it is better to assume the existence of God than to act as if one is alone in the universe.

If I place my faith in God, and God doesn't exist, then what I have lost?  A few more wild nights?  But: if God exists and I have faith in this God, then what I have gained?  Everything.

Conversely, if I flatly deny the existence of God and God exists, then I am subject to God's mercy (best case scenario) or wrath (worst case scenario).  If I do not believe in God and God does not exist, then I forfeit only the hope that belief in God provides.

Foster a sense of well being.

Faith and hope are not the same, but they are intimately related.  Both foster a sense of well being that diffuses anxieties and calms fears.

Hope looks forward and trusts that everything will work out for the best.  It clarifies one's place in the world in which he or she lives now, and it motivates one to act in accordance with the promises before him or her.

Faith is more deeply rooted than hope.  Sometimes hope precedes faith.  For example, one may not be able to trust the God of his or her understanding until one has a sense of what one's future with this God will be.  Often faith comes before hope, because faith is passed down from one generation to the next, and in my experience, faith flourishes in communities where human beings gather to be made well.

Encourage and be encouraged.

In the beginning, I applied Pascal's wager to my experience of AA.  I had doubts about the program and even more self-doubt.  I did my best to proceed cautiously and confidently and am happy about where the program has taken me.

Still, I remember in sitting in a Big Book study early on and thinking, "If I give AA everything that I have and AA is wrong, then what have I lost?  But if AA works and I choose not to work the program, then what would I gain?"

AA provides me with a sense of well being by placing me in an open and honest community of people who have suffered and are striving to be well.  Walking into an AA meeting is one of the most honest things that I do.  Nobody asks why I am there, because they are there for the same reason.  As we share in each other's joys and sorrows, we encourage and are encouraged.

Encouragement, in the end, may be the essence of faith and hope, which begin and end in love.

Be decisive.

AA, like life, consists of living with the consequences of a series of choices that begins with the decision to go to that first meeting.  Then, one has to decide if one is an alcoholic or not, if one is powerless over alcohol or not, if one's life is unmanageable or not, if one is able to believe in a Power greater than one's self or not and if one is insane or not.

The questions asked in the third step are: 1) Would God make better decisions directing my life than I have?; 2) Am I willing to trust God completely at this point in my sobriety?; 3) and Am I comfortable enough with my understanding of God to accept this God's care?

In AA, I am positive that I am not alone in the universe.  I feel God's presence in the stories that are told and the experiences that are shared.  Meetings help to center me and to feel connected both to the group and to the God of my understanding, who proves time after time that trust in this God is a sure bet.

INTRO: Third Step

Years ago, I asked for help, but as I became an adult, I stopped asking and started demanding that I be given what I thought that I deserved.

One's understanding of faith and life begins at home, I think, because home is the place where one first experiences everything from authority to autonomy.  On the one hand, my parents provided me with food, shelter and educational opportunities.  On the other hand, they were prone to emotional outbursts, which led to feeling unsafe and unsure of how to pursue thriving relationships. 

Looking to protect myself, I retreated into books.  With this education, I distanced myself from faith and life and expected good things to happen by virtue of my accomplishments.  When life did not meet my expectations, I drank, and then I drank some more.  Now I attend meetings with other men and women who sabotaged their lives with lofty expectations.

AA's third step calls for a decisive action: to turn one's will and one's life over to the care of God as one understands God.  This statement assumes: 1) that one knows what one's will for his or her life is; 2) that one is able to experience God's care; and 3) that one's understanding of God allows for a meaningful relationship to exist between this person and God.

As an adult, I have changed cities and jobs often.  Every time that I transitioned from one situation to the next, I was abundantly clear about why I was making this change.  I have pursued different career paths and seem to prefer whichever one I am not pursuing at the time.  Since becoming a member of AA, I am clearer about the nature of the work that I find fulfilling, but I am less certain about what this work looks like in everyday life.  By understanding who I am, I am better able to be in a relationship with anybody, including God, and to follow wherever God leads me in recovery.  

It is difficult to understand why I was reluctant to turn my will and my life over to anybody or anything, especially God, before coming into the program, because, as an active alcoholic, I was never in control.  I was controlling in professional and personal relationships, but I was not disciplined enough to achieve, much less sustain, meaning, magic or success in any area of my life.  

Because I was unable to meet the expectations that I set for myself, feelings of failure haunted me.  I looked to others to help me in ways that I was unwilling to help other people.  When they could not, or would not, help me, then I began to think of the world as a cruel and harsh place.  I did not trust anybody, especially myself, because I assumed that everybody was as selfish as me.  I felt abandoned by God and neighbor and that nobody was willing to give me a second or third chance.  I was not willing to forgive myself or anybody else and assumed that everybody else was as unforgiving as me.

I was raised in a home where Christmas is celebrated and the line between Jesus and Santa is often blurred.  As an adult, I have come to think of Christ as compassionate and God as forgiving, although I was taught from an early age that God gives commandments to an imperfect people and then judges them for being imperfect.  Christmas seemed like a time to pay off the emotional debts of the past year.  All was to be forgiven if the parents spent enough money on gifts.  In the end, I believed in asking for presents but not in forgiveness.  Now I believe in humility, which asks for nothing but peace.

The God of my understanding is forgiving and empowering, and I am finding that the more that I trust this understanding of God, the better I feel about myself and about other people.  I feel safe more often than I feel threatened.  I am more forgiving, because I feel forgiven.  Even though the third step seems to emphasize understanding God, I am finding that the third step is actually about experiencing God as a peaceful presence in one's life, work and relationships, especially those circumstances in which peace is brought about only through forgiveness.