Recovered, Not Arrived

Seeking God

I am grateful that I have recovered, but transformation comes from continuing to seek God and to do His will.

“…we, of Alcoholics Anonymous, are more than one hundred men and women who have recovered from a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body.” Alcoholics Anonymous, Foreword to the First Edition

I was recently listening to a speaker talk about how the introduction to the Big Book, specifically says that we have recovered from alcohol. For whatever reason, and for a long time, I had believed the misconception that I would never be completely recovered. I have even heard people say a phrase that has become folklore and many believe it to be true.  “Once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic.” Maybe you have heard it too. I interpreted that to mean that I would always struggle and never be completely free. I thought this was the teaching of the Twelve Steps. That belief was a stumbling block for me that caused me to reject recovery for many years. I believe that God is bigger than my problems and that He would deliver and heal me completely, if He were sought. These two ideas were in conflict and created confusion for me. I could not accept the idea that there was no hope for me to ever permanently get better. I ultimately did come to recovery, not because I agreed with everything. I only came because I was in enough pain that I became willing to try something different.

So I was eager to go back to the Big Book and verify it for myself. Guess what? It really does say that we have recovered. Not just once, but repeatedly throughout the literature. I also searched for the phrase, “Once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic,” only to discover it isn’t there at all. In fact, what I found was just the opposite. When I saw that for myself, I felt relief. I felt validated. The conflict I had carried around for years suddenly disappeared. I no longer had to wonder if I would always be looking over my shoulder, waiting for it to come back. If I was always recovering, would I ever really be free? I finally saw that recovery does not oppose or contradict my beliefs. I am confident that I have recovered, but I also know that I have not arrived. I still encounter situations every day that challenge me to react. Those moments reveal areas where I still need to grow. Old ways of thinking still show up from time to time.

Recovered doesn’t mean perfected. My addiction and destructive behaviors may be gone. I am no longer living in bondage to what once controlled me. But that doesn’t mean I stop working the Steps or that I no longer seek to improve my conscious contact with God. I don’t want to settle for recovering from one malady when God wants to transform every area of my life. So I continually seek Him. It’s a lifelong journey to be relieved of the bondage of self so that I may better do His will. The freedom I thought I would never find was there all along. I found it when I surrendered to God and stopped resisting the truths He was showing me. My prayer now is that I may be able to do His will. That is the gift of recovery for me. I am recovered, I have not arrived

I do not consider myself to have “arrived”, spiritually, nor do I consider myself already perfect. But I keep going on, grasping ever more firmly that purpose for which Christ Jesus grasped me. Philippians 3:12