“Higher Power…Grant me honesty, courage, humility, and serenity, to face that which keeps me from you and others.”

– Third Step Prayer, Life with Hope, first edition, page 13

I don’t ask my Higher Power to keep me clean, or to make my life better, or to make my problems go away. I ask for honesty, courage, humility, and serenity. Fear kept me from my Higher Power. I was afraid to give myself to God, afraid to be vulnerable with others, afraid to let go of control, afraid to love or be loved, afraid to fail and afraid to succeed!

As I kept working through the Steps, I kept facing those fears, with the support of my sponsor and the other people in MA. As I continue to face those fears, they keep getting smaller because Step Four helped me to recognize them for what they are: fleeting thoughts and feelings that don’t define me. Step Six helped me understand how they keep me from my Higher Power and others and aren’t effective in leading a clean and spiritual life. Step Seven helps me pray to have them removed, which I think of as seeing through them. Step Eleven helps me stay close to my God so those fears just keep getting smaller and smaller. Step Twelve gets me out of myself completely; out of fear and into love and service for others. I am blessed with actual times in my life when I live in love rather than fear.

Final thought: Today, I will ask for help in facing my fears so that I may learn from them, see through, and overcome them. I will ask to be closer to my Higher Power, others, and love.