Midweek: Step Ten

I am going to tell you something that might sound a little strange to you: I am always discovering what it means to be married. We will celebrate our eighteenth wedding anniversary this year (Lord willing) and yet Scott and I are always encountering new situations together --good and not so good; we're always finding new things out about one another's preferences or past experiences. And, as we age, we're always developing different habits --good and not so good, new hopes, revisiting dreams that were never realized (Is now the time?), and thinking of unique ways to enjoy each day in one another's company. We are living out this married life together --an objective very different from saying some words before a judge, carrying around a marriage license, or wearing a wedding band. (There is a reason those words are called vows, by the way.)

I continue to take personal inventory daily, and when I am wrong, I promptly admit it.

Step Ten of Walking the Twelve Steps with Jesus Christ, is the upward call, the moving forward, the living out of the commitment to sobriety we have made, daily evidence of the vow we took. It is the difficult task of living the solution to our problems --a much better, more appropriate, life-giving solution to our problems than the poor excuse for a solution (addiction) we tried previously. We have come to acknowledge that, in the past, we used addictive behaviors to numb ourselves to problems --wrongs we did, wrongs done to us. Rather than confronting these things with the light of God's Word, we hid from and muted the voice of truth with our bad habits. We acknowledged that God alone is able to take us from who we were to who we were made to be and agreed to follow Him in the way. We made an inventory of those hang-ups, confessed our role in those events or the cover-up that followed, and asked Jesus to heal us from them, to break their hold over us. Knowing that our previous actions impacted those around us, we determined which apologies and amends were necessary and possible, and made them happen. Having given our past over to the King, and "settled" as much of it as is within our power to do so, it is time to walk in this newer, freer way. It is time to live a life of sobriety.

For the sake of the bigger picture, I want to tell you, it will not be easy every day. As with living a married life, there will be days it feels liberating and safe and joyous. There will be days when the greatest thing holding us to the sober life is our word, the vow we have made, the course to which we have committed. Because of our commitment, we will know sobriety is liberating; we will know it is safe; we will know it is a joyous thing to handle circumstances with a clear mind, fully engaged with Jesus in the process. Despite what our feelings are telling us. Daily we will look at ourselves using the light of God's Word; we will confess our sin and choose to walk in obedience to our Master. And this is how we will live. It will be a "voyage of discovery." We will find new ways to deal with old problems, rather than creating new problems through the use of old ways. We will journey boldly with Jesus as His Spirit finishes the work that has begun, and spiritual fruit is matured. We will discover new things for which to be grateful and, perhaps, be given opportunity to realize dreams put on hold long ago. We will live a sober life in union with our Savior, pressing toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus (Phil. 3:13, 14)!