“Surrender to God’s will does not give us a passport to inertia. Each of us must try to carry out God’s will…” (ODAT, 20 October)
Inertia: doing nothing, or doing something sluggishly. It’s amazing how much one can do in recovery, and how quickly.
The doing of much is not spending hours on the phone talking about myself or sending hours, weeks, months, and years in meetings, listening to myself and other dribble on. Some meetings are important, particularly as venues to learn what this is about when one is new and to carry the message once the programme has been applied, but it’s the programme itself that is the business; that’s what brings about change.
I was horrified to be told I could complete my amends in a few weeks. I thought it had to take years. Once the list and its contents were assembled, I made half a dozen to a dozen a day. Most of the conversations are short, and, with modern means of communication, it’s easy to pin people down for the chat.
I was horrified to discover that turning over my will and my life to God meant showing up to work for God, starting from today. I no longer had a life. God had my life, and He was going to put me to work! It was not simply a case of hoping and wishing that, if I placed myself in God’s hands, nice things would start happening.
The decision to turn my will and life over to God was a decision NOT to do what I wanted but to do what God wanted, every moment of every day.