“We change every day.”
Basic Text, Sixth Edition, Chapter Four – How It Works, page 37
This sentence in our Seventh Step is one of my new favorite lines. I really, really, love it, the simplicity and at the same time the complexity of it. Even though we don’t reflect on it, we do change every day. Every day, we start our day with yesterday’s experience and yesterday’s growth, even though I’d really say my daily spiritual growth is microscopic. That’s not to say that I don’t have spiritual experiences or revelations, I just can’t always see the impact they have on my life going forward, but each time I look back at where I was a year ago I can see definite growth in how I participate in society and in my relationships, in my relationship with God, and in my relationship with myself.
Putting this sentence into the context of the Seventh Step, I felt myself really change and grow this Seventh Step on a daily basis, on another level than I normally feel myself growing. That’s not to say I don’t work a Seventh Step and pray for my defects to be removed when I’m not writing a Seventh Step, but I can definitely feel the impact of the spiritual process of the steps in my life as I go through them, in a more intense way than I’m able to feel other forms of growth in my daily life.
If I reflect upon how recovery is an uphill journey, up a hill that we start sliding down without effort, it also adds the perspective of a continuous duality to our recovery; we’re either changing and growing, or we’re moving backwards. That’s not to say that mistakes can’t be one of our greatest teachers, because they definitely are and they definitely have been for me. Mistakes are also the unavoidable part of being human that I’ve had to learn they are.
“Change also involves our greatest source of fear, the unknown.”
Basic Text, Sixth Edition, Chapter Nine – Just for Today– Living the Program, page 95
But why am I always so scared of change, even if I can see the good it does me? Because I’m unable to deal with life, with or without drugs, and need God’s strength to get through my daily life. I’ve found that having a daily program always helps me feel I’m anchored to something. And yet, I fear change, in my overthinking ways.
This round of steps I saw instant and unexpected growth in one area of my life: I became much less of a perfectionist when it came to my university assignments, because I’ve always been a perfectionist in a way that brings a lot of internal, emotional pain and manifests, through my disease, in endless, obsessive ruminations. Even though this was growth I was both surprised by and saw as a beautiful, divine gift, I still felt some worry that not worrying about my assignments and ruminating as much as I used to would make me a worse student.
Our Second Step also talks about how, as we learn to trust this Power [God], we begin to overcome our fear of life. Change is a big part of life, as nothing is constant. Since my default setting is a fear of life, and an unwillingness to accept change or anything outside of my control, even reality, the way to overcome it is to trust that I’m taken care of and that everything is the way it needs to be.
“On a practical level, change occurs because what’s appropriate to one phase of recovery may not be for another.”
Basic Text, Sixth Edition, Chapter Ten – More Will Be Revealed, page 105
It’s a natural change, with God giving us what we need and not what we want. I probably needed to be relieved from my perfectionism, although I wasn’t relieved from some other, deeply ingrained character defects. It wasn’t time for those yet.
A friend of mine has told me that they believe the progression of recovery is slow because the progression of the disease is slow. Every day, like our Seventh Step says, we change, a little, both depending on our actions and God’s grace. But when faced with something my ego doesn’t feel I want, I also try to remember that everything I go through will help me carry the message to someone else in the future.