Before FA, I would have asserted I was an honest person. I’d have bet money on the fact that I was more honest than those around me. If I received too much change at the store, I gave it back. I never said anything behind someone’s back that I wouldn’t say to their face. Yup, I was honest.
After seven years in FA, a few AWOLs, and other Twelve-Step work, I now see the brutality that went with that honesty. It is true, if someone gave me too much change at the store, I would give it back, but that went along with an “honest” appraisal of the store clerk’s intelligence. I may not have used the word “idiot,” but there was no doubt about my message.
I loved my husband enough to tell him all the things nobody else would say to his face, and was just as brutal and relentless as with the store clerk, because I was honest and he needed to know. I loved a lot of people enough to be totally “honest.”
I showed myself about the same amount of compassion and understanding. My internal critic was constantly being honest with me: They don’t even like you. You’ll never get it right. Why even try?
At my first FA meeting, for the first time in my 55 years of life, I was greeted by a group of men and women I wanted to be with. It was a Sunday morning and many of them were dressed for church. The word “God” was everywhere: “Thank you God this,” and “Thank you God” that, and “If it is God’s will.” I couldn’t fit in, I just didn’t believe in God.
The qualifier told her story, but I really wasn’t listening too closely. Each time she said, “God,” I shrank back into myself. I sat at the front of the room so that my scope of vision was limited to those in front of the room, a trick I learned to keep me from judging everyone by their appearance.
I heard, “If you want what we have and are willing to go to any lengths to get it…”
I decided the length I would go to would be to pretend to know God, use the word, and tell people I prayed, because I couldn’t be honest with these poor souls. If they needed a God, that was their problem, but I’d just pretend. I figured that pretending wasn’t dishonest, was it? I mean, it was their fault if I had to lie just to fit in!
After the break, a woman spoke of her challenge with the word “God” and how she interpreted “…of our understanding.” This was just what I needed. If she could be open about it, then I could. Yet, so much of the literature and spoken word was about this “God of my understanding.”
A few months into Program, I had an epiphany in my morning meditation. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe in God, it was that I believed there was a God who loved everybody except me. After all, I thought that if there was a God, why had He allowed me to grow up with incest and parental neglect. Why had He determined that I should be fat and lonely?
Over the following days and with my sponsor’s guidance, I came to believe that a power greater than me had likely brought me to the doors of FA. Some while later, a fellow shared a concept with me that opened the door for me to openly talk about God. He said that he spelled God with an additional “o.“ He said, “God is ‘good.’ I had always thought that phrase meant that God was good-natured, but then I saw that God and goodness are synonymous. Now I freely use the word, “God,” but to me it means “good.” And the context is “goodness” rather than good or bad.
When I say “God show me your will,” I understand that to mean, “Let me see what is the good way to go.” When I am at the height of my goodness, then I am “one with God.”
This is the God of my understanding.
Today, abstinence and my developing spiritual life have shown me that FA is the easier, softer way. When I am honest with myself, I can truthfully say I am doing the best that I can. I no longer succumb to the internal critic, and I offer feedback to others only when asked. I offer honest feedback in a way that feeds that person’s growth, not that offers brutal criticism. That is so much easier and softer than living in constant shame and hostility.
I am abstinent, thank goodness, I have a developing spiritual life, thank goodness, and I feel like I belong. Thank goodness. Thank God.