"Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God 
as we understood God."

	Practicing Step Three is like the opening of a door which to all appearances is still
closed and locked.  All we need is a key, and the decision to swing the door open.  There
is only one key, and it is called willingness.  Once unlocked by willingness, the door opens
almost of itself, and looking through it, we shall see a pathway beside which is an
inscription.  It reads:  "This is the way to a faith that works."  In the first two Steps we
were engaged in reflection.  We saw that we were powerless over alcohol, but we also
perceived that faith of some kind, if only in A.A. itself, is possible to anyone.  These
conclusions did not require action;  they required only acceptance.
	Like all the remaining Steps, Step Three calls for affirmative action, for it is only
by action that we can cut away the self-will which has always blocked the entry of God --
or, if you like, a Higher Power -- into our lives.  Faith, to be sure, is necessary, but faith
alone can avail nothing.  We can have faith, yet keep God out of our lives.  Therefore our
problem now becomes  just how and by what specific means shall we be able to let God
in?  Step Three represents our first attempt to do this.  In fact, the effectiveness of the
whole A.A. program will rest upon how well and earnestly we have tried to come to "a
decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood God."
	To every worldly and practical-minded beginner, this Step looks hard, even
impossible.  No matter how much one wishes to try, exactly how can they turn their own
will and their own life over to the care of whatever God they think there is?  Fortunately,
we who have tried it, and with equal misgivings, can testify that anyone, anyone at all, can
begin to do it.  We can further add that a beginning, even the smallest, is all that is needed. 
Once we have placed the key of willingness in the lock and have the door ever so slightly
open, we find that we can always open it some more.  Though self-will may slam it shut
again, as it frequently does, it will always respond the moment we again pick up the key of
willingness.
	Maybe this all sounds mysterious and remote, something like Einstein's theory of
relativity or a proposition in nuclear physics.  It isn't at all.  Let's look at how practical it
actually is.  Every woman and man who has joined A.A. and intends to stick has, without
realizing it, made a beginning on Step Three.  Isn't it true that in all matters touching upon
alcohol,  each of them has decided to turn his or her life over to the care, protection, and
guidance of Alcoholics Anonymous?  Already a willingness has been achieved to cast out
one's own will and one's own ideas about the alcohol problem in favor of those suggested
by A.A.  Any willing newcomer feels sure A.A. is the only safe harbor for the foundering
vessel they have become.  Now if this is not turning one's will and life over to a newfound
Providence, then what is it?
	But suppose that instinct still cries out, as it certainly will, "Yes, respecting
alcohol, I guess I have to be dependent upon A.A., but in all other matters I must still
maintain my independence.  Nothing is going to turn me into a nonentity.  If I keep on
turning my life and my will over to the care of Something or Somebody else, what will
become of me?  I'll look like the hole in the doughnut."  This, of course, is the process by
which instinct and logic always seek to bolster egotism, and so frustrate spiritual
development.  The trouble is that this kind of thinking takes no real account of the facts. 
And the facts seem to be these:  The more we become willing to depend upon a Higher
Power, the more independent we actually are.  Therefore dependence, as A.A. practices it,
is really a means of gaining true independence of the spirit.
	Let's examine for a moment this idea of dependence at the level of everyday living. 
In this area it is startling to discover how dependent we really are, and how unconscious
of that dependence.  Every modern house has electric wiring carrying power and light to
its interior.  We are delighted with this dependence;   our main hope is that nothing will
ever cut off the supply of current.  By so accepting our dependence upon this marvel of
science, we find ourselves more independent personally.   Not only are we more
independent, we are even more comfortable and secure.  Power flows just where it is
needed.  Silently and surely, electricity, that strange energy so few people understand,
meets our simplest daily needs, and our most desperate ones, too.  Ask the polio sufferer
confined to an iron lung who depends with complete trust upon a motor to maintain the
breath of life.
	But the moment our mental or emotional independence is  in question, how
differently we behave.  How persistently we claim the right to decide all by ourselves just
what we shall think and just how we shall act.  Oh yes, we'll weigh the pros and cons of
every problem.  We'll listen politely to those who would advise us, but all the decisions are
to be ours alone.  Nobody is going to meddle with our personal independence in such
matters .  Besides, we think, there is no one we can surely trust.  We are certain that our
intelligence, backed by willpower, can rightly control our inner lives and guarantee us
success in the world we live in.  This brave philosophy, wherein each person plays God,
sounds good in the speaking, but it still has to meet the acid test:  how well does it
actually work?  One good look in the mirror ought to be answer enough for any alcoholic.
	Should one's own image in the mirror be too awful to contemplate (and it usually
is), we might first take a look at the results normal people are getting from self-sufficiency. 
Everywhere we see people filled with anger and fear, society breaking up into warring
fragments.  Each fragment says to the others, "We are right and you are wrong."  Every
such pressure group, if it is strong enough, self-righteously imposes its will upon the rest. 
And everywhere the same thing is being done on an individual basis.  The sum of all this
mighty effort is less peace, less brotherhood,  less sisterhood  than before.  The philosophy
of self-sufficiency is not paying off.  Plainly enough, it is a bone-crushing juggernaut
whose final achievement is ruin.
	Therefore, we who are alcoholics can consider ourselves fortunate indeed.  Each
of us has had our  own near-fatal encounter with the juggernaut of self-will, and has
suffered enough under its weight to be willing to look for something better.  So it is by
circumstance rather than by any virtue that we have been driven to A.A., have admitted
defeat, have acquired the rudiments of faith, and now want to make a decision to turn our
will and our lives over to a Higher Power.
	We realize that the word "dependence" is as distasteful to many psychiatrists and
psychologists as it is to alcoholics.  Like our professional friends, we, too, are aware that
there are wrong forms of dependence.  We have experienced many of them.  No adult
woman or man, for example, should be in too much emotional dependence upon a parent. 
They  should have been weaned long before, and if they have not been, they should wake
up to the fact.  This very form of faulty dependence has caused many a rebellious alcoholic
to conclude that dependence of any sort must be intolerably damaging.  But dependence
upon an A.A. group or upon a Higher Power hasn't produced any baleful results.
	When World War II broke out, this spiritual principle had its first major test. 
A.A.'s entered the services and were scattered all over the world.  Would they be able to
take discipline, stand up under fire, and endure the monotony and misery of war?  Would
the kind of dependence they had learned in A.A. carry them through?  Well, it did.  They
had even fewer alcoholic lapses or emotional binges than A.A.'s safe at home did.  They
were just as capable of endurance and valor as any other soldiers.  Whether in Alaska or
on the Salerno beachhead, their dependence upon a Higher Power worked.  And far from
being a weakness, this dependence was their chief source of strength.
	So how, exactly, can the willing person continue to turn their will and their lives
over to the Higher Power?  They made a beginning, we have seen, when they commenced
to rely upon A.A. for the solution of their alcohol problem.  By now, though, the chances
are that they have become convinced that they have more problems than alcohol, and that
some of these refuse to be solved by all the sheer personal determination and courage they
can muster. These problems simply will not budge;  they make the newcomer desperately
unhappy and threaten our newfound sobriety.  Many of us were still victimized by remorse
and guilt when we thought of yesterday.  Bitterness still overpowered us when we
brooded upon those we still envied or hated.  Our financial insecurity worried us sick, and
panic took over when we thought of all the bridges to safety that alcohol burned behind
us.  And how should we ever straighten out that awful jam that had cost us the affection
of our family and separated us from them?  Our lone courage and unaided will could not
do it.  Surely we must now depend upon Somebody  or Something else.
	At first that "somebody" is likely to be our closest A.A. friend.  We rely upon the
assurance that our many troubles, now made more acute because we cannot use alcohol to
kill the pain, can be solved, too.  Of course the sponsor points out that our life is still
unmanageable even though we are sober, that after all, only a bare start on A.A.'s program
has been made.  More sobriety brought about by the admission of alcoholism and by
attendance at a few meetings is very good indeed, but it is bound to be a far cry from
permanent sobriety and a contented, useful life.  That is just where the remaining Steps of
the A.A. program come in.  Nothing short of continuous action upon these as a way of life
can bring the much-desired result.
	Then it is explained that other Steps of the A.A. program can be practiced with
success only when Step Three is given a determined and persistent trial.  This statement
may surprise newcomers who have experienced nothing but constant deflation and a
growing conviction that human will is of no value whatever.  They have become
persuaded, and rightly so, that many problems besides alcohol will not yield to a headlong
assault powered by the individual alone.  But now it appears that there are certain things
which only the individual can do.  All by oneself, and in the light of one's own
circumstances, each of us needs to develop the quality of willingness.  When we acquire
willingness, we are the only ones who can make the decision to exert ourselves.  Trying to
do this is an act of our own will.  All of the Twelve Steps require sustained and personal
exertion to conform to their principles and so, we trust, to God's will.
	It is when we try to make our will conform with God's that we begin to use it
rightly.  To all of us, this was a most wonderful revelation.  Our whole trouble had been
the misuse of willpower.  We had tried to bombard our problems with it instead of
attempting to bring it into agreement with God's intention for us.  To make this
increasingly possible is the purpose of A.A.'s Twelve Steps, and Step Three opens the
door.
	Once we have come into agreement with these ideas, it is really easy to begin the
practice of Step Three.  In all times of emotional disturbance or indecision, we can pause,
ask for quiet, and in the stillness simply say:  "God grant me the serenity to accept the
things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the
difference.  Thy will, not mine, be done."

NEXT

HOME