Speakers sometimes say, 'Nowhere in the literature does it say that my life becomes manageable' or similar, perhaps suggesting that, once I have 'turned everything over to God', I'm supposed to disregard the chaos of my own making and sit there like a plum pudding, 'adopting a spiritual outlook', 'letting go and letting God', being 'powerless over people, places, and things', 'recognising that God is everything', pronouncing gnomically on higher matters with an enigmatic smile, and generally being very holy indeed, the ragged yogi, the milquetoast martyr, with my brave little smile. I've occupied all of these positions, and they're the spiritual equivalent of fiddling while Rome burns.
Well, I'd never really noticed this line, until today:
'The First Step ... tells me, too, that I must acknowledge that my life has become unmanageable. My first task is to manage my own life, whether or not the alcoholic is still drinking.' (25 April, ODAT)
God will do for me what I can't do for myself, but God won't do for me what I can do for myself.
Letting go and letting God does not mean idleness, indolence, self-satisfaction, and milksop acceptance: it means placing my entire daily schedule at God's disposal and being vigorously active first of all in arranging and attending to my own affairs and secondly in contributing to the world, all under God's guidance, and all under God's direction.
The programme is not a refuge, a place to run to, a mountain top, a retreat, an oasis, a haven, a harbour, a hole in the ground, a duvet, or a group hug.
It's a set of tools for getting out there and living an excellent, packed, productive, and challenging life, the prerequisite for which is establishing, for the first time in my life, order and discipline in the 'command and control centre', without which nothing can be achieved.
Today, my life is extremely manageable, and it's got that way through hard work powered and directed by God.