Elimination of our drinking is but a beginning

I'm on steps 6 and 7 again. "Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character." "Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings." I say again because I just went through 4 and 5, again, so I am specifically focused on certain character defects and how to be free of them. I have a new sponsor as of March so we went back through my two 4th steps - partly so she could get to know me, and because I fail to do 10th steps on a daily basis and I seem to build up a lot of stuff in the interim. Anyway, it was really good to go back through them - my sponsor is awesome and a good fit for me. I relate to her really well, and she doesn't take a lot of crap from me. Which is good. Cause I do try to bullshit her sometimes.

The hard part about step 6 is the concept of "entirely." There are times when I want to be ready, when I think I'm ready, when I wish I were ready - to be free of a character defect - but until I am entirely ready, I can't be free of the defect. I've probably said before that I do whatever I do until it becomes painful enough, and that's when I stop - never a moment before. There is a tipping point with my character defects. The point at which it suddenly becomes slightly less painful to stop engaging in the behavior, than it is to keep doing it - is the point at which I effectively do step 6. Step 7 then is easy - if I am entirely ready, and I ask my higher power for relief - I get it, sometimes instantaneously. Sometimes not as quickly, but it will always come. But like I said, the hard part is achieving that level of readiness. There are some things that I want to hang on to and sometimes there is little I can do to get myself to surrender. So I do what the Big Book tells me to do under those circumstances - which is pray for the willingness to surrender it.

I have had the experience of the program of AA and this process working both on my drinking, and my character defects. I know it works and that it can work on literally anything. I believe that this program works with every ounce of my being. Why then do I find it so difficult to surrender? If I know that it works, that it will work on anything, that my life is more amazing today because this program works, why do I insist on fighting the process? Some people who know me would say I am stubborn. I feel sometimes like I work this program a lot more effectively around drinking than anything else and when it comes to my character defects, it is not as easy to believe that turning it over to a higher power and simply having faith can bring about life changing miracles. But it can, and it does. And I need to remember that.

It says in "How it Works," "a) That we were alcoholic and could not manage our own lives, b) That probably no human power could have relieved our alcoholISM, and c) That God COULD and WOULD, IF he were sought."

It doesn't say that if I seek God, he might help me. It says he can and he will. It doesn't say that if we work this program, some will succeed or that it will sometimes work, or that it will only work on my drinking. It says "Rarely have we seen a person a fail." It also says, "Half measures availed us nothing." To be effective, I have to work this program completely, and I have to surrender everything entirely. Because the same person will drink again.