Why is everything so confusing?

Hi ______,

The confusion and groping around for answers and meaning IS part of the process of working the Steps. And in my mind, part of building a personal relationship with one's higher and/or helping power(s). It took a lot of time to develop our eating disorder and so it may take a lot of time to get it under control and heal.

When I look back at my first time through the Steps I see it much like a parent teaching a child to ride a bike for the first time. In the same loving way a parent finally takes a risk and lets go of the bicycle to see their child enjoy the first realization of riding free all by themselves; my higher power helps me. If the parent would fear too much for the child's safety and refuse to let go, the child would never learn to ride a bike. My higher power will not take the journey, the  work of recovery, away from me. I have too much to learn from the process.

In other words, my higher power gives me the tools but does not take from me the dignity of doing the work it takes to figure out how to incorporate them into a personal plan for living in a healthy and constructive way. Oftentimes, I don't readily see what the tools are or how they are suppose to work, but the looking for and the figuring out how to rightly use them is part of the process that can and will create recovery miracles. Part of the reason the Steps aren't all that easy is that they are so highly personal. There are many seeming paradoxes built in that we must come to terms with in our own way. Each of us must figure out exactly how each Step relates to our own lives and our continuing recovery... it's a unique and new thing each time that only unfolds as we go. We in fact create a new sort of reality for ourselves as we go along. The fact that you are struggling means to me that you are very likely doing it right and that you are probably exactly at the spot in recovery that you are suppose to be at for today.

Something an old sponsor use to say over and over to me was that "the Steps are simple, but they sure aren't easy".

Love, Dave 1/8/2003