Free From Old Beliefs
Sometimes the hardest beliefs to uncover are the ones I have already worked on before.
And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. John 8:32
I was listening to a recovery speaker recently when she mentioned that her first sponsor had agreed to be her “temporary sponsor.” That caught my attention immediately. I stopped. Temporary sponsor? My first sponsor had used those exact words with me almost twenty years ago. For all these years, I had thought that was something specific to me. Then she said her “temporary sponsor” ended up sponsoring her for years. That caught me even more. I started wondering if “temporary sponsor” was actually a term. Was this really a thing? I discovered that it was. And I was not so unique and special as I had assumed. Suddenly I realized I had misunderstood this from the very beginning and had carried that misunderstanding with me all this time.
When I was brand new to recovery, I had no idea that offering to be someone’s temporary sponsor was a common way to help newcomers get started and begin working the steps. All I heard was the word temporary. With my best thinking at the time, I translated that into, I am not good enough for a real sponsor. I have to settle for a temporary one. This is not going to last. I secretly carried that inside. So even though my sponsor never treated me like I was temporary or less than, I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. I wondered when he would finally tell me our time was up. I never asked what he meant by temporary because I was afraid of what the answer might be. Instead, I filled in the blanks myself. He sponsored me for two years, and even after I moved away, he continued sponsoring me long distance for months. He never ended the relationship. I did.
Looking back, I can see how an old corrupt core belief was still operating underneath everything. I had already done a lot of work in recovery around the faulty thinking that I am not good enough. My sponsor calls the deeper belief underneath that the corrupt core belief of “I am bad.” Yet I was discovering that another layer of it was still there. His actions never supported the story I had created in my head. He showed up. He invested in me. He stayed connected. Yet I continued interpreting the relationship through an old belief I had never challenged because I was afraid to ask.
Finding out after all these years that temporary sponsor was actually a common recovery term did something in me that I still cannot fully explain. It was like another layer of the onion had been peeled back. Nothing dramatic happened. I just noticed a little more rest inside me. A little more confidence. A little less suspicion that something was wrong with me. I am learning that even after years of recovery, there can still be old beliefs quietly influencing how I see myself and the world around me. Recovery has helped me challenge that corrupt core belief many times, but apparently there was still more underneath it. There may still be more. Today I am simply grateful that truth reached another place in me where an old lie had been quietly living for years. And that is the gift of recovery for me.
Reflection
What old belief may still be shaping the way I see myself today?
