Surrender- Step 3

       I'm stubborn, that's obvious, and I'll admit that fact freely.  I've never been one to wave my white flag or give up easily, so when I'm told that the only way to truly heal is to surrender my life, my mind goes wild.  My chest immediately fills with pride and I feel the protective stone walls of my ego building higher and higher to block out the advice that I don't want to hear.  Yield, relent, back down, cave in, concede, acquiesce, fall, resign... these are words that I naturally fight against on a daily basis.  These are also the very verbs that I need to learn from in order to take the next step forward.  The third step is to make the decision to turn my will and my life over to the care of God as I understand Him.  It took me four years to work past this step, but the funny thing is that I never even knew that I was stuck on this part until after I was finally able to work it.  I remember the first time that my rehab counselor looked at the group and explained that in step three we would have to rely on our Higher Power, the God of our understanding.  Upon hearing those words I immediately stopped listening, thinking that step wasn't for me.  I live in the bible belt; I've gone to church three times a week for my entire life.  I thought to myself, "I already know who God is; I don't need to work this step."  But years later when I still struggled with my guilt complex and realized that I was still wrestling with the same old crap, I suddenly knew that I NEVER actually knew who God was.  I had never worked that step because I had no idea what it meant to trust the God OF MY UNDERSTANDING.  I had been missing those key words the entire time.  I thought that the God that my preacher had told me about was actually my God, but hell fire and the threat of eternal damnation hadn't helped my addiction or depression or self-esteem.  What I really needed was to find MY God, the way that I understood Him, in the way that made ME feel loved.  There is no way that any one person can teach about their God, how they perceive Him (or Her), and expect it to be true for EVERYONE listening.  As a child I was told a lot of stories that didn't seem to make sense, and they didn't particularly make me feel safe the way they were intended to.  But now that I am older I can decide what I believe and which parts are true to me.  Religion is NOT what my God is about, it in fact has absolutely nothing to do with my Higher Power.  Spirituality is everything.  The God of my understanding is in me and around me and flows through every living thing on this planet.  THAT is something that I can relax into and maybe decide to surrender to.  I don't have to be perfect (in the way that religious leaders think perfection to be), but I know that I am perfectly made in the balance of nature and energy.  I don't need an all-knowing being to judge every mistake I make and require me to throw myself into penance hoping for forgiveness and a fresh start.  What I need is the God who knows that when I decide to ask for forgiveness for something that I need only to ask myself, because my God never did stop loving me for that awful thing that happened, I did.  I am not interested in rules, requirements, or commands, but I desperately seek the approval of the one spiritual being who never loses respect for me, for I am everything that I was created to be.  Once I am able to search within myself and find how I TRULY feel loved and who I feel humbled to worship, then I feel comfortable in surrendering myself.  It's an honor to bow my head in reverence to the spiritual being that I DO understand, that DOES love me, and that I KNOW I can trust.  And really, that's all this step truly requires.
What are you surrendering to?

"The 12 Steps and Goddess Spirituality"
- Kelly Palmer