Dear SA,

My Sponsor by Mail suggested I write to SAICO to request being put on the mailing list to receive ESSAY. Receiving and reading it will help me, and I can also share it with our SA group here at the prison.

He also urged me to submit the enclosed article I wrote for our group for possible publication in ESSAY.

Thank you for your referral to get a sponsor. We have been corresponding and working together through the Twelve Steps, and I am sending testimonies from our “inside” group with him to share with his “outside” group.

In gracious recovery,

Surrender

We ended up in prison as a result of illegitimate attempts to overcome the difference between our self-image and reality. Between what we had and what we thought we deserved. We were unfulfilled. We sought fulfillment. We failed. The essence of our problem and our condition is an unfulfilled self. It is a painful condition.

As we looked for happiness and completion, we attempted to medicate the pain of being ourselves—selves we found unacceptable. We looked for fulfillment in external sources and never reached our goal. The self, unchanged, always resurfaces when the intoxication of whatever addiction—sex, drugs, alcohol, whatever—has worn off. It is revealed in the cold light of dawn no matter the roles we played the night before. We wake up to ourselves empty and aching. Nothing changes because nothing has changed. We remain unfulfilled.

Fulfillment is not found in sex, drugs, alcohol, or any kind of high. This is only avoidance and not accepting who we are. Neither is it found in doing what we think we like or want to do. It is certainly not found in trying to be what we are not. We can only fail at that. Rather, fulfillment is found in learning to like what we have to do, in being who we really are. It is found in accepting our lot in life. This requires surrender.

Surrender has a bad sound to us. It sounds like weakness. But surrender isn’t giving up. It’s about not having to fight anymore. It is not an abandoning of our individuality, and it doesn’t mean not to care. Surrender says that something is wrong and we’re willing to get it right. Surrender says there is something for us to do, something we need to become. In this it becomes unification with God.

It is in surrender that we lose our old destructive selves. In surrender, the true and real self is found. What we once thought we were, didn’t work. It wasn’t the truth. What works is the truth. It has to work. We are surrendering to the way God Himself works. We become a functioning part of a greater whole. When we surrender our self-importance and our prideful delusions, when we accept that our old ways don’t work, we can begin to use tools of rehabilitation. We surrender ourselves to become the person God created us to be.

Which man is truly free? The one who fights every obstacle to have his own way no matter who gets hurt, or the man who has internalized the laws of God and society until they are as neutral to him as breathing. You can run from the straight and narrow path that God demands us to live, always looking over your shoulder to see if the police are watching you for the rest of your life, or you can surrender into true freedom and become yourself…and begin to really grow.

We may never become brain surgeons, Presidents of the United States, or play in the NFL. But we can be the best of what God intended us to be. We can find purpose and fulfillment in being that. And we can become the strongest of men. Men complete…able to give of themselves.