A member wrote, “I’m looking for a miracle. I’ve been looking for a miracle for a long time. Recently I’ve thought that if I just work the Steps, I could then have the miracle I’ve been looking for.” Wow! This statement hit me pretty hard, because it reminded me so much of my own Step Two (which took something like five years for me to fully accomplish).

When I was about 12, I latched onto God as the solution for my problems. I became a Christian and tried very hard to be a good one. The problem was, nothing really changed and nothing got better. It was all willpower on my part. For example, I have a dark side when it comes to sexual stuff, and my response was to completely suppress my sexuality. I didn’t date, I didn’t flirt, I didn’t even know what masturbation was. So it was all white-knuckle willpower—but I could not control the sexual fantasies. As I learned later, it was my self-will that kept me disconnected from God.

When I was 19, I gave up on God. I admitted the whole Christian thing was not working for me, and I was just miserable. I still believed in God, but I chose to leave Him. I had lost any trust and faith that I’d had at the beginning. Within a year I had learned to masturbate, and was doing it compulsively.

Fast-forward to 1996 (age 29). I had been back in church for about three years, and I started working the Steps with a sponsor. I stalled on Step Two. It was that whole lack of trust thing. My sponsor gave me various assignments, and we had discussions for a while, but I couldn’t shake my mistrust of God in certain key areas of my life. These were areas in which I “needed” a miracle. We sort of gave up on Step Two and continued on, although I was under the belief that I’d really worked and completed the Step. Once again, I was disconnected from reality.

Things came to a head in the Step Four fear inventory. I discovered and wrote down a major fear of mine. When asked the question, “Am I willing to turn this fear over to God?” I quite honestly said, “No.” This was the start of more struggles over Step Two that lasted for years.

Approximately five years after I first started Step Two with my sponsor, I had the insight that allowed me to start trusting the God of my understanding. I’d gone through years of struggling, but the revelation came over me in a matter of minutes. I guess I had to experience every bit of those five years in order to be ready.

I realized I had been focusing my energy on areas of my life that I wanted to have fixed. My life was unmanageable, even without my sex addiction, and I was naturally looking at those areas and saying, “God, please fix them.” Or, to bring this around full circle, “God, I’m looking for a miracle.” I was so fixated on these areas of my life that I was blind to God’s will for me. Simply put, God wanted me to focus on my spiritual fitness. Once I put my energy into that, He would take care of these other areas as He saw fit. But so long as I continued to focus my energy and willpower on those areas, He would let me go it alone. I had expectations of miracles, and that is not how the Twelve Steps teach me to relate to God. In Step Three, I unconditionally give my will and my life to the God of my understanding. Unconditionally. No expectations allowed.

It took about another year before I was able to get sober, as there was one significant area of my life that I was still trying to manage on my own. But this earlier realization made sobriety possible. Today I focus my energy and effort on God’s will rather than my own (which for me meant focusing on spiritual fitness). I let go of my expectations and let a loving Higher Power run my life as he sees fit. It’s so much better that way.

That’s what has worked for me.