Today @ The Gathering we continued with Step #9 in our series, “12 Steps Up.” It’s the step in AA that may be the hardest. And that is, to be willing to face up to the stupid things we’ve done, the people we’ve hurt, and try to make amends.
All of us have awakened with a case of “the stupids.” You know what I’m talking about, a period of time when you do things or say things that you just can’t imagine that you have ever said or done. But many times these lapses into times of weakness have caused consequences all out of proportion to the moment.
We talked about what you can do after dumb. You can flee, you can fight, you can ignore it, and you can deny it. But there is someplace in your life that if you’re going to grow up and be a healthy, emotional, intellectual, spiritual person you’re going to have to face up to the dumb things that you’ve done.
So we used the word FACE as an acronym for the four steps in facing up and making amends.
- We’re going to have to fix what we can.
- We’re going to accept what we can’t.
- We’re going to concentrate on the changes we can make in our own life.
- We expect that God will redeem what we’ve wrecked.
If you or someone you know is living with the consequences of bad decisions, this talk would be just the ticket to get you unstuck, and take you to a better place.