[This issue two members share their experience with Step Seven. Editor]

Because SA was so new when I came in, there were very few people with even one year’s sobriety. I wanted to hear from people who had a lot of experience, strength and hope in working the Steps. So I started attending a great AA Twelve and Twelve meeting.

There were about 25 people at my first meeting. Two-thirds of them had over 15 years sobriety; 10 had over 20 years, and one fellow had 39 years. What a place to hear some good experience, strength and hope. The topic was Step Seven, “Humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings.”

Almost the entire meeting was taken up discussing the first word—“Humbly.” With my one week of sobriety, I was in awe of these fine folks with 15, 20, and 39 years of sobriety. Yet they were all talking about humility. These folks with decades of recovery were talking from their hearts and from their daily experiences about how humility had helped in their recovery. To top it off, they were talking about their gratitude for the humility they had gained in working the Steps.

That was some strong medicine for this sick newcomer. This lesson was deeply etched into my brain. It helped me trust that these Twelve Step folks truly walked the talk. They had what I wanted.

I try to carry that lesson of humility with me today. To me, humility is not humiliation. To me humility is knowing my true relationships to my fellow human beings and, even more importantly, with my Higher Power. Knowing my true relationship to anything in this world helps give me balance and harmony, and is a great energy-saver. It allows me to use my energy to work on myself, rather than wasting it by trying to prove I’m something that I’m not.

I’ve wasted a lot of energy trying to prove I’m better than I am; and I’ve wasted even more trying to prove to myself that I’m less than I really am. I believe a major part of my being a sexaholic was a subconscious need to be self-destructive; to assure that I would truly be the “no good” person only I knew I was.

I’ve also heard it said that humility means “being teachable.” I think that is a big part of Step Seven. We are asked to know our true relationship with God and be teachable so that we can be willing to learn from God how He can help us in removing our shortcomings.

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Working Step Seven was a major transition for me. I had always lived life with the thought of how best to indulge myself. My sexaholism was always about what felt good to me. There were times I was actually called arrogant.

When I came to Step Seven, I really had trouble knowing what the first word meant for me. Where could I find how to be humble? Then it dawned on me: the lesson lay in the first six Steps. Each of those Steps required that I relinquish pieces of the image of myself that I had created.

I had admitted I wasn’t in control, and that there was something bigger than me, to which I had to surrender. I had to see myself as I really was, not as I wanted to appear. I had to announce, out loud, that I was imperfect, and that I wasn’t able to remove those imperfections. It is next to impossible to arrive at the understanding that came out of those Steps while keeping an inflated self-view. Working those Steps made me realize things I never wanted to admit. Knowing the truth about myself forced me to be humble. Without trying, I had learned how to feel humbled.

With my head bowed, I could turn to my Creator and do something else which was entirely new to me—ask. I had never asked for things. I went after and expected to get what I wanted. In Step Seven I had to ask for something, and not know if I would get it. I didn’t even know if I had to do something to help it along, though I expected I did. I didn’t know if I was asking for the removal of some or all my shortcomings. I had to accept whatever came.

Step Seven required that I take the action of turning to a source outside myself to get something important. None of the Steps before made me take such action. None of the Steps required that I be prepared to get less than I asked for. Nothing was certain in Step Seven, and I had to live with that. I was being forced to live life in a way I had never before accepted.

Once I realized all that, and decided to ask, the rest was easy. There was nothing left to figure out. I knew my defects of character from doing my moral inventory. I couldn’t lie. I had told absolutely everyone who and what I was. With all my heart and soul, I opened myself to my Creator and said the words: “Please remove my shortcomings.”