The conviction that wrongdoers are very sick helps show their behavior is not personal. Page 60 of the AA Big Book states that the first requirement (for Step Three) is that we be convinced that any life run on self-will can hardly be a success.
Once a beachhead is established, defeat of the enemy is inevitable. Even if the first sallies out of the beachhead meet with stiff resistance and are driven back, it doesn’t matter; once a beachhead is established, enemy collapse is assured.
On page 81 of the Sexaholics Anonymous book is a paragraph which just happens to be my favorite quote from the book.
At first, Step Three for me (“Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him”) was just the surrender that I heard talked about in Sexaholics Anonymous meetings.
Once every week an SA member calls to read to me the First, Second and Third Steps as a kind of surrender prayer. When I listen to him it brings me back to the basics of the program in these Steps. It could be changed depending on the person giving these Steps. Here is what he reads to me when he calls:
For my Step Three, my sponsor suggested that I answer a standard set of questions that we use in our local groups. The answers I found were illuminating for me, and I shared my Step Three with my SA group. The feedback I got from the group was positive—several members even encouraged me to submit my Step to ESSAY!
Dear Fellow SA Members: Lately, I’ve been reflecting on Step Three. While working Step One, I faced my powerlessness over lust. In Step Two I came to believe that there is a power greater than myself. Now, in Step Three I must take positive action and give myself to that Higher Power, so that I can be free of my self-destructive behaviors.
I like to look up definitions of words that seem important to me in the Twelve Steps. I use a 1934 Webster’s Dictionary that was current when the Big Book was being written. My love of studying these old definitions somehow turned into a love of making drawings based on them.
In completing my Third Step, I followed a suggestion to write a letter to my Higher Power. I thought the suggestion a bit unusual until I realized that by taking Step Three, I would be in effect entering into a covenant of sorts with my Higher Power, and that a letter would be an effective way to document my side of the agreement.
For me, lust is an attitude. It begins with a desire to covet. It is a desire to take (even if only mentally) something that is not mine to take. My acting out always begins with lust. Why? Because I am powerless over lust. I do not have the ability to control it.
