I had 102 days of continuous clarity recently, until a setback a little over a month ago. I hadn’t gone that long without touching a drink in a couple decades, and I really got my mind back, which felt fabulous because before that, I had gotten to the point where I felt pretty much worthless. I thought I was done.
The secret of those 102 days, I believe, was something I read in AA’s Step 6: “Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.” All my life, my prayers were more akin to “LORD, please help me with this…” But Step 6 isn’t about God helping me; it’s about God doing it himself. I had never prayed like that before about alcohol.
And it worked! For weeks on end, alcohol was absolutely no problem to me, to the point that I had the illusion that I was cured. That illusion was aided by my mis-perception of defects of character. I equated them to sin, but they’re not sin; they’re things that can lead to sin.
If I sin, God is faithful and righteous to forgive my sin because of the price that Jesus paid, pouring out his blood for my sins. And when God forgives sin, it is as if it never happened. Because God is the embodiment of truth, able to speak worlds into existence, it really never did happen! Any forgiven sin we remember is like a bad dream we remember; something unpleasant, but it never happened.
And so I believed that if God removed those defects of character, it would be as if they never existed, and I was cured. But I was wrong. Defects of character are not inanimate objects, like a thorn that once I have removed it from my foot and thrown it in the trash, it can hurt me no more.
Our character, actually, is something that’s ever evolving, just like our bodies. And similar to the way in which our bodies are designed to age, creating more and more defects until the one that takes us away someday, I now believe our character is similar. At the very least, it is an organic, evolving thing, shaped by the stream of choices we make each day. And I believe it’s designed to be imperfect, otherwise why would we seek God?
And so I now see that it’s essential to keep asking God to remove those defects, because they are ever-changing. It’s never just one-and-done. I’m glad to finally understand that, after all these years.
And today is Day 11, dating back to 3/16, which is a date I hope I have reason to remember for a long time.
