by Earnie Larsen

“HUMBLY ASKED HIM TO REMOVE OUR SHORTCOMINGS”

I clearly recall coming to Step 7 with an early sponsor well over 40 years ago. What I remember about it was how he got to kind of laughing and shaking his head like when you encounter something that makes you slap your forehead and mumble, “I don’t believe it!” I asked him what he “didn’t believe?” This is what he told me – imagine a guy walking down the road with a sharp rock in his shoe. The sharp rock makes it painful to walk. How many brains does it take to stop, sit down and take the rock out of your shoe! If it hurts take the rock out of your shoe!

Instead he said, the alkies more often than not first of all tries to tell himself it doesn’t hurt. He’ll be limping and be walking in his own blood from the cut the rock leaves on his foot. But he’ll still be denying there is anything wrong. Then he figures “Well, maybe if I wear another pair of socks it will keep the rock from hurting. Or he tries to learn a new way to walk. Or he goes and studies the nature of rocks. ANYTHING BUT STOP, SIT DOWN AND TAKE THE ROCK OUT OF YOUR SHOE. still kind of laugh thinking about what he told me. And I think it is as true today as it was then – or when Bill W. wrote that Step down for the first time. He probably laughed too.

All through these articles on the Steps I’ve shared with you is how we teach the steps at the Salvation Army. Starting at the beginning with WHAT’S THE PROBLEM? (If we get the problem wrong we’ll never get the solution right.) If THE PROBLEM is spiritual bankruptcy, which always leads to isolation, which IS the hole in the soul, with can only be reminded by a life time (one day at a time) of staying honestly and humbly connected to God, self and others, then the sharp rocks of our character defects HAVE TO BE DEALT WITH. No amount of denial or game playing or dancing around the fact that those character defects are tearing our lives up removes those rocks. Only removing the rock removes the rock.

Character defects block spirituality. Spirituality found and then practiced IS the only solution to our problem.

I stress as hard as I can to our men in the program at the Sally – you have to stand up and fight for the truth. Your truth! At the heart of every character defect is a big, old, fat lie. We learned through hard experience lies like, you aren’t wanted. You are too far gone to be helped. You are a loser, failure and can never lead a life of recovery. You don’t deserve to love or be loved.

Those often practiced lies become habits of thought, emotions and actions. Those ugly lies fight to the death to stay in control. So we MUST be willing to fight just as hard to be able to stand on our square of truth. We must be ready to do whatever it takes to stop, sit down and take the bloody rocks of our character defects out of your shoe!

BREAKING THE STEP DOWN

I break Step 7 down for our men into the five concepts the step offers. Those five concepts are: 1) Humbly 2) Asked 3) “Him” (meaning the God of our understanding) 4) Remove and 5) Shortcomings. An overview of what we offer our men is as follows - Humbly – That means we are not God. We are not in control. Humility is not about humiliation. It’s about the truth. And the truth is when we arrive at Step 6 and 7 (after all the discovery and spiritual growth that comes from doing Steps 4 and 5) we are doing our best to say to our Higher Power – I can’t do it without You. The truth is I can’t make this journey of recovery alone. So I admit to the need of your power by –

Ask – Only doing is doing. Only asking is asking. The Step tells us to DO IT. (STOP and take the d---- rock out of your shoe. Not just because it is the right thing to do but because IT HURTS!) The Step tells us to not just think about it, or write a paper about it, or talk about it but DO IT! Get on your knees. Open your heart (not just your mind) as wide as you can and ASK. Call to mind what you wrote was your “worst time in your active addiction” (back to Step 1) and ASK. Even if you figure you aren’t worth God’s time (back to Step 3) ask anyway. You’ll be surprised at what you find out about your God and being worthy or not!

“Him” – Recovery without a strong, humble connection to one’s Higher Power is not possible. Sobriety might be – but plugging the jug is a far different thing than marching into the life of the Promises. I ask our men to revisit the work we did around Step 3. Sometimes at this point we all get down on our knees right there in the auditorium, all 150 or so of us, and we ASK HIM. We practice reaching out through all the ego, guilt, shame, rage and fear (that show up as our shortcomings) that blocks living the spirituality of the steps.

Remove – my understanding of the word “remove” in the step is the same as the meaning of the word, “heal.” Healing or removing does not mean if we work the Steps hard enough it will be like the character defects were never part of our life. It doesn’t work that way. For most of us, our character defects are not going to be erased. They are too much part of our grain. BUT, if we work the Steps, those character defects or shortcomings will fade to the point where they are not in control of our lives. They will cease to be the prime mover of our decisions. “Remove” means we will learn we have a choice of whether to keep feeding the dog of our shortcomings or feed the dog of our recovery. The dog that’s fed is the dog that wins

Shortcomings–I’m quickly running out of space and we have said much already about character defects or shortcomings. (Which cause the unmanageability of Step 1 and the insanity of Step 2 – sorry, I couldn’t help not bending back and connecting the dots.) How we treat shortcomings is covered in Steps 4 and 5 of this series.

A WORD FROM ROBERT

Again, my approach at the Salvation Army is that these steps must not only be understood but practiced. Only doing is doing. The consequence of not putting the lessons into practice and the joy that is missed by not embracing the lessons is far too great.

Robert is a mighty man in our program. He recently took his first trip “back home” to participate in his daughter’s graduation from high school. Through drugs and prison Robert has missed most of his daughter’s growing up. He badly wanted to be there for her this time. But he was also scared about going back into slippery places and people.

When he returned, happy as he ever was in his life, he told us about “standing on his square no matter what.” He told us he “held on to God and the Fellowship with all his might.” Robert told of a situation where he was standing alone with his 20 year old son at the reception. His old “drug man” came up offering some “free drugs just for old times’ sake.” With the pride of someone who has won a world championship (and in a very real sense he had) he told us that there was a time not long ago when he would have left his son standing right there and run off with the drug man. But not this time. He “took the bloody rock out of his shoe” and told the drug man he wasn’t interested. (Robert is a child of the street. His first reaction to conflict is pulling a pistol. He told us he wasn’t 100% successful in his program because he told the dealer in “no uncertain terms” as he put it, that if he ever saw him around himself or his family there would be one less drug dealer in the world.)

We are all works in progress. Nothing is perfect. But I so rejoiced for Robert, and all our men who take the time and make the effort to stop and take the rock out of their shoes!