One step at a time...

We had a speaker at our church this past Sunday, Dr. Charles Lowery, and he was amazing. I bought a DVD of a series he gave at a Celebrate Recovery group, covering their 12 steps of recovery. I watched Part 1 last night, which covered Steps 1-3.

STEP 1: We admitted we were powerless over our addictions and compulsive behaviors, that our lives had become unmanageable.

If anybody deals with compulsive behaviors, it's me -- compulsive eating, compulsive spending, and so on. Food is not my addiction. The wrong type of food and indulging myself in that is my addiction. That area of my life has indeed become unmanageable. I can't begin to tell you how clearly it seemed he was speaking directly to me during the video. He said, "There's an area of your life that this fits." Yes, indeed. He talked about a family at a holiday barbecue and how Aunt Telula burned her hand on the grill one year. She just stood there and put her hand on the hot grill. They got her taken care of and all bandaged up, she did just fine. Next year, same holiday, same hot grill. Here comes Aunt Telula. Everyone's watching her, and what does she do? Places her hand on the hot grill. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results. If you go back and do the same thing that's bad for you over and over again, you're only burning yourself. You're only hurting yourself.

STEP 2: We came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

I don't remember much about this part, to be honest. I plan on re-watching the whole thing eventually, just to keep these things fresh in my mind. From what I recall (I was fighting off attention-seeking dogs at this point), God is the one who can help you with this. You can't do it yourself.

STEP 3: We made a decision to turn our lives and our wills over to the care of God.

This was my favorite part. You see, growing up, I always felt God was standing over me with a big stick, threatening "If you do something wrong, you're gonna get it!" Dr. Lowery said some of us see God as an angry parent or a coach, especially a coach, screaming and yelling, just waiting for you to mess up. God's not like that. God is our FATHER. He wants us to succeed. He wants us to have the best life possible, but only He can do that for us. We don't know the path to the best life. We don't know what lies ahead. We don't know what's best. HE does.

He gave the example of someone saying, "If you drive in the next NASCAR race and win, we'll give you $2 million." You know you can't do that. Look at your car. Even if it COULD go that fast, could you control it and get around the other cars? Your favorite driver calls you up and says, "Hey, I'll drive that car for you, and I'll even take your engine out and put a race engine in it." This driver's never lost a race, and he's offering to drive it for you and give YOU the $2 million. But, you say, "Nah, I think I can handle it." How stupid...that's exactly what we do. We think we can do it ourselves. We can't. He wants to give us the best of everything, but we're holding ourselves back. He's not going to take the reigns from you. You have to hand them over. But, why not? Why wouldn't you...when all He wants to do is make you deliriously happy. :) The last thing I'll mention is how he replaced the word "love" in this scripture with "my Father." God is love, you know.

"My Father is patient, My Father is kind. He does not envy, He does not boast, He is not proud. My Father does not dishonor others, He is not self-seeking, He is not easily angered, My Father keeps no record of wrongs. My Father does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. My father always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. My Father never fails."

*sigh* That makes me smile. :) He wants me to be happy. All I have to do is let Him make me happy.