Some of you know I am helping lead a 12 step program called Celebrate Recovery. I have personally always struggled getting past step 1 but thought this time ok I'm serious. Well the more we have read step one the more I am hung up again so I thought I'd might as well ramble about it on hear. Seriously, I would like your comments though because this is also something that I know holds up some of my clients. I'll try my best to organize my thoughts to make sense:
1st tonight a good friend looked up some definitions for me:
Powerless - lacking strength or power; helpless; ineffectual
Power - the ability or capacity to act or perform effectively; strength or force exerted or capable of being exerted; might; the ability to exercise control; authority
Power (according to my shame book I love by Brene Brown)- access to choice and the ability to effect change; to explore and create options
Ok - here is my problem step one of the 12 steps says:
We admiteted we were POWERLESS over OUR ADDICTION, hurts, habits, or hangups (whatever goes here for you) - that our lives have become unmanageable.
In Celebrate Recovery Principle 1 is:
Realize I'm not God (or your higher power) and that I am POWERLESS to control my tendency to do the wrong thing and my life is unmanageable.
Now I'll be the first to admit about sometimes my life being unmanageable but I have a HUGE OLE problem with saying I am powerless because I don't believe I am. I have never gotten past step one because of this. I strongly believe the we have free will and have the power within us to control our decisions and actions. Now whether we use that power to make bad decisions and to stay in our addictions or to change is up to us. For you counseling types insert Prochaska's stages of change here but I won't go into that. Now for Christians I know you insert in here, "we don't have the power but God does" Well don't get me wrong God may be powerful but didn't he give us free will to choose. Is that not the premise of Christianity that we have free will and yet we choose to sin thus we need a bridge to be clean again before God yet we have the power to make that decision God does not decide that for us. So Christian or not I just struggle getting past this. For instance just one of my many addictions overeating - ok you put a bowl of queso in front of me and some chips and you think I have control to say no I'm not going to eat any? Guess what ABSOLUTELY!!! but often I CHOOSE to eat whatever I want whether I need to or not. Now because of my addictions and hurts I may feel powerless like I don't have control but I sit in counseling session after counseling session offering clients hope that they DO have control that they can decide to make their own decisions. Now again for Christians I am not saying that having a relationship with God cannot help things and refocus us on striving for a sinless life so to speak but I still think that within us that is our choice.
Ok - I'll stop I don't know if this is very clear but I would like to see what some of you out there especially you Tesney think about all this!!!
3 comments:
Hi Rebekah, wow, well, hmm . . . this is pretty heavy stuff. . . I guess right off I'd lean somewhere toward saying that we are powerless without the work of God in our lives. He gives us free will and without His goodness working within in me and through me on a daily basis, my human nature would choose sin everytime I think. I don't know exactly about all this but that's my answer on first blush.
I don't think I ever replied to your comment back on my blog a month ago or so! So sorry! I do like catching up with people again through blogging!
I'm teaching music in an elementary school in the Dallas area. My boyfriend's family lives in Pittsburgh which is why I was writing from there over Thanksgiving.
Hope you have a very merry Christmas! Kelly
Hi Rebekah! I found your blog through a friends. I want to invite you to join a brand new forum for Sisters in the Church of Christ. It's small but growing, please join us! Let us support and encourage each other. The link is
http://sistersinchrist.forumotion.com
I know that, for my clients, admitting they are powerless means they are willing to give up the unhealthy need for control in their lives. Yes, they do have a choice. They do have some power at changing their lives. But, for addicts, control is a big problem that contributes to their addiction.
They go into the world thinking that no one can tell them what to do. No one can tell them they have a problem, becuase they don't have a problem, and everyone who says they have a problem can just...well, we won't go there. So Step One is instrumental for people to realize that they are only human, that they have made some pretty bad choices, and that they have made themselves powerless over their addiction.
Believing in God to bring them back to a holistic person comes later. But it is at Step One that they realize they cannot trust their own thinking, because it has led them astray for so long and needs to be rewired.
Basically I understand Step One to be about laying down our pride at the feet of God. Because, ultimately, it is He who has the most control. We may have some power over our lives, as I said above, but we are only human. We are imperfect. We sin every day. So we have to admit our own powerlessness in that and recognize God's ultimate power.
Miss you!
Vanessa
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