"Chaplain, I should have been dead a long time ago."
"So why do you think you're still here?"
"I think God has a purpose for me."
"What do you think it might be."
"I wish I knew."
After multiple conversations, they sometimes discover wonderful answers. Answers that warm the chaplain's heart:
"I just enrolled in a correspondence course to become a certified Substance Abuse Counselor. I want to help people."
Between those two points, not knowing their purpose and speaking their purpose, can lie such mountainous terrain. Despair beckons, "Follow me, for you have done the unforgivable. You are worthless, for you have lost your children. You are using up valuable oxygen." God whispers, "You are my good creation. I love you, no matter what. Just trust me, and I will direct your path."
Exercising their will on that up-and-down journey, women are able to grow strong in faith. The most successful women discover a sense of balance between faith in God and working the 12-step program. They realize recovery is one day at a time for the rest of their lives. They reach step 12, and they are able to assist others along the journey, but they also realize an every-day need for steps one through 11.
This chaplain's greatest joy, though, is when a woman realizes she doesn't have to wait until she walks out the gate to have a purpose. She is worth something in this very moment. She can begin living a positive life, full of purpose, right now. That is a priceless treasure!
AA Steps
1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol - that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
