Examining My Beliefs

Step Three hit a wall for me. I was saying the words — turning my will over to God's care — but nothing moved inside. Like reciting a phone number in a language I didn't speak. The syllables were right but the meaning wasn't there.

That's when I realized I had to examine what I actually believed. Not what I'd been taught, not what I thought I was supposed to believe, but what I honestly thought was true about God, power, and whether anything out there gave a damn about my situation.

The honest answers were uncomfortable. I believed God existed but didn't care about me specifically. I believed prayer was talking to a ceiling. I believed that if God was real and good, my father wouldn't be drinking himself to death. These were the beliefs I was trying to build Step Three on top of. No wonder it felt hollow.

I had to stop performing faith and start being honest about its absence. That honesty — ugly and graceless as it was — turned out to be the first real spiritual thing I'd done. God could work with my doubt. He couldn't work with my pretending.