Surrender to the AA programme took place in three stages. The first, in July 1993, was a surrender to what I saw as the AA way of life: meetings, sponsorship, steps, and service. This surrender was borne of a mixture of fear and common sense. I was frightened of dying of alcoholism, and common sense suggested that what works for other AA members would work for me, at the very least to keep me sober. The second surrender was the surrender to God in Step Three, which represented a switch from me using the AA suggestions as a way to manage my life more effectively to an abandonment of any notion of ‘my’ life whatsoever. It was now God’s, to do with as He pleased. The Steps are something like a rope bridge over an abyss in the fog. Only a little ahead can one see well; further ahead, only dimly; and furthest ahead, not at all. As I took Step Seven, the later Steps hove properly into view for the first time, and I started to understand that the rest of my life would consist in serving God—and serving only God, not self—with Step Eleven as the powerhouse and Step Ten as the constant pruning, training, and repotting mechanism (to use gardening metaphors). This was the third surrender. Step Ten is a discipline that cuts away the constantly regrowing weeds of selfishness, cowardice, vanity, conceit, sensualism, materialism, and cynicism that are the enemies not only of my welfare but of the mission with which I’ve been entrusted by God as a substitute for my active alcoholism. One glimpses only faintly and fitfully God’s purpose, but I’ve learned to trust that my purpose is perfectly fulfilled by devoting each day to doing God’s will—and only God’s will.