“Humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings…”
For a long time I ignored this step completely. In fact I mentioned this is my previous posting, as I skipped over doing much, if any work on both Step 6 and 7 the first time I went through the steps. Today, I’m looking at this step with a very different set of eyes, and definitely a very different heart.
Next to the word God, the most important word in this step for me is “Humbly”. I looked up the definition of humble and found this one to really speak to me.
Humble – “To show a modest or low estimate of one’s own importance.”
Essentially how this step was written speaks to placing ourselves second to God and in doing so, a desire comes forward within each of us to be free of all of our shortcomings. So we then ask God because of this to remove those character defects and shortcomings. How well one does with this step, really depends on how much of one’s ego has lessened in the step work up to this point.
The first time I did Step 7, my ego was still primarily in charge of my life. The most I did for this step was to quickly bow my head and say, “Please God remove my shortcomings…” and then move on to beginning Step 8. I think it’s important to highlight at this point the same thing I did in yesterday’s entry. I realize today that if I choose to live in any part of my own self-will, that it’s impossible for me to have God remove ALL of my shortcomings. Hypothetically, let’s say that I choose to operate out of 10 percent of my own self-will giving God the other 90 percent. What that essentially is saying is “that I’m ok to handle 10 percent of my life on my own God”. So what happens then with all those things that go awry in that 10 percent of the time for me? I end up trying to still run the show, arranging it as I think it’s supposed to go, and getting more than not, disastrous results. The ego is a funny thing. My ego early on in recovery didn’t want to give up control in every area of my life to something unseen and unknown. It felt it could still operate on some level running the show, maybe for a few matinees here and there. And every time I tried to run one of those shows, my character defects came glaring out and went no where except creating more chaos around me. Thus I wasn’t able to get much benefit out of this step because I still was living in my own ego-centric world, one where my self-will was greater than God’s will and one where I wasn’t humble hardly at all.
This is why I continue to highlight how important the 3rd Step is to turning over one’s ENTIRE will to God. I know the 3rd Step doesn’t have that word in it. And maybe the steps were written the way they were for each individual to figure this out with their journey in finding God. All of I know is that by turning my entire will over to God each day I wake up, I am desiring to have God remove all of my character defects and I’m able to ask God to do just that without any reservation during my prayers.
I know all of us have free will, and free will essentially becomes self will run riot over time. I never had much success with free will and almost every show I tried to run got bad reviews. I don’t want to operate today in control of my own destiny and life. I know my happiness will only come from God being fully in charge. With that being said, when God is in charge, I see all of my shortcomings pretty clearly which brings quite a bit of humbleness out within me. And because of that, I absolutely, without a doubt, find myself asking God to humbly remove ALL of those shortcomings that may still exist within me.
Peace, love, light and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson
