My name is Marsha, and I'm an alcoholic.

Step Three: "Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him." A bit over twenty years ago, in a clubhouse room on our knees between a row of chairs, my sponsor and I said the Third Step Prayer together. I reading from my new Big Book, and she reciting it from memory. I wish I could say that there was a profound transformation or a jolt within me that predicted that my life would never be the same. Yet, truly, I felt the same afterwards. What I didn't know at the time was that my life was no longer my own. I guess I believed that now under God's protective "care," I would be spared life's hard terms. After all, I was sober, fragile, and special. In my immaturity, hit with a particularly hard blow when my marriage of 21 years ended, our home was in foreclosure, my five children were falling apart, and I was without a job, I couldn't believe it! Here I was, one year sober, and my life was disintegrating before my very eyes. Wailing to my sponsor, I said "here I give my life to God and look what He does to it!" I was given the nugget of reality, that all I had built in self-will would probably be swept away, so that it could be replaced with God's plan. This kept me sober and I moved into a new understanding of this "care" of God. It did not mean I would be shielded from life's hard terms, it simply meant I would be carried through them. Often when life's happenings showed up I would jokingly say, "I didn't sign up for this, God" ... knowing fully well that I signed up for whatever would come when I prayed that Third Step Prayer. Life happened: two of my children had this disease and took me down scary and difficult paths, yet I stayed sober. My youngest daughter was pregnant at 16 and, sober, I was able to stand up and be her mother. When my daughter and her husband were arrested for neglect, I was able to take into my home my two little grandchildren, and stay sober. When their little family was put back together with good counseling and lots of effort on their part, I could rejoice at their growth and let go, sober. When my mother died suddenly of this disease, I was able to be present for her funeral with compassion and reach out to my grief-struck father, sober. When my dad developed lung cancer, I was able to care for him, and hold his hand as he left this life, sober. I wish I could take credit for this, but I cannot. A frightened alcoholic woman knelt on that clubhouse floor and prayed a simple prayer. This Higher Power I call God has done the rest. Recently, when my eldest son and his wife lost their first child, stillborn, I was present to welcome that tiny boy into the world and hold him in my arms and let him go. I was present to comfort and grieve with his parents ... so hard to see my grown son's heart broken open. This most recent happening is still 'wet paint' for us. And yet, gifts have come from each of these life happenings. I have discovered that with great challenges come great lessons. I believe we won't be spared life's terms, but we will be given the strength and grace to bear them ... that's the "care" I have come to lean into. It has never failed me yet. In Step Three, I turned over a messed up life; a woman who knew only how to cope with a bottle, and in return I was given a newfound hope, a growing maturity, and the ability to be present for this life with a measure of self-respect, dignity, and grace. Thanks for 'listening,' God bless you all!

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