A friend and I were working on a Step Two exercise that my sponsor taught me. My friend was answering the question, “Why don’t you choose your own conception of God?” (AA 12). The exercise is to write down new ideas about a Higher Power.

He wrote out his list and read it to me: comforting, nonjudgmental, caring, loving… As he was reading, I remembered a line from the Big Book, “We, in our turn, sought the same escape with all the desperation of drowning men. What seemed at first a flimsy reed, has proved to be the loving and powerful hand of God. A new life has been given us or, if you prefer, ‘a design for living’ that really works” (AA 28).

It occurred to me that my friend’s sheet of paper with his list on it was the flimsy reed. He could easily tear up or crumple the paper and toss it in the trash. It was nothing more than ink on paper; not much more than a wish and of no value in the material sense.

I suggested to my friend that he begin looking for those characteristics of a Higher Power as he goes about the day. I suggested that every time he feels anxious and experiences discomfort, he might recognize that as the “loving and powerful hand of God.” I shared that I have come to realize that any time I want to shame myself and don’t, it’s because of the nonjudgmental mercy and grace of my Higher Power.

The fact is that when I completed this same exercise myself, it was as if the words on my paper became the proving ground for my own Higher Power—a design for living that really works. It is in the working out of this design for living that God restores us to sanity and we experience a new life.