“…and the wisdom to know the difference” (end of the Serenity Prayer)

Hey everyone!

I’m Michoel and I’m a sexaholic.

Here’s another helpful attitude that has been helpful to my recovery recently. I hope you find it useful. At the very least, by reading this line, you have thereby added to our view count, which we definitely don’t compulsively check. (Compulsive? Us? Never!)

Enjoy!

I’m standing in a tennis court. I’m on one side, and my Higher Power is on the other.

Sometimes God “hits the ball into my court” – I’m faced by a situation that requires action. Perhaps I need to call the client, make the amends, call the plumber, show up in court, do the Step work, set boundaries with my boss, take the kid to the doctor, and so on. You get the idea. When that happens, it’s my job to “hit that ball right back” into God’s court by taking decisive, courageous action. The sooner the better.

Sometimes, however, the “ball is in God’s court”. There’s no useful action for me to take. I need to wait for the situation to change. Wait for the test results, see if I got the job, if the business loan was approved, if my date wants to go out again, if my sister was accepted to high school, if I won the lottery this time (there’s always this time, right? ?), and so on. In these situations, what I need is acceptance, patience, and a lot of trust in my Higher Power. In this case, it’s my job to not take any action. I need to practice acceptance, and wait patiently.

So I need to behave differently depending on “where the ball is”.

MY SIDE OF THE court

Now, both of these situations have their individual challenges.

When the “ball is in my court”, my obstacles are normally fear and laziness. I’m afraid to take action, or I’m not sure what to do in the first place. I’m afraid I’ll mess up. Or maybe the action is really clear and simple, and doing it is just really hard.

I’ve had situations where I was paralyzed by fear for weeks or months, so great was my fear of the unknown and uncontrollable! And many times opportunity passed me by in my cowardice; I lacked the courage to take action when the time was right.

Some tools that help me when I’m afraid to take an action are:

Writing fear and gratitude lists
Talking to my Higher Power at length about the action I’m scared to do
Sharing, sharing, sharing! If I’m too scared to do something, I call people up and just tell them about it. “Here’s what I don’t want to do”. Share about it in meetings, for as long as it takes. Eventually I get bored of telling people about it, and I actually do it (That’s how I work, anyway ?‍♂️)

If this action is my Higher Power’s will, then I need to do it, no matter what the cost. This is one of the most difficult parts of the program for me, taking the attitude of the 3rd Step of “abandoning myself to God” and throwing myself blindly into the unknown, knowing only that my Higher Power is with me and my fate is entirely in his hands:

“Reminding ourselves that we have decided to go to any lengths to find a spiritual experience, we ask that we be given strength and direction to do the right thing, no matter what the personal consequences may be. We may lose our position or reputation or face jail, but we are willing. We have to be. We must not shrink at anything.” (BB p. 79)

“The courage to change the things we can” indeed!

God’s SIDE OF THE court

Sometimes, however, the opposite is true. “The ball is in God’s court” – there’s nothing for me to do!

If I’m waiting for a response of some sort, or am placed in an unchangeable situation, then no action needs to be taken. It simply is what it is. I need to let go.

I can scream and rage and weep and beg and pound the floor with my pudgy little hands, like a toddler having a temper tantrum, but that won’t change a thing. My beloved great-uncle is still dead. I still lost the job. The check is still in the mail. The biopsy results haven’t come in yet. There’s simply nothing I can do about it.

In these situations, my obstacles are the character defects of fear, impatience, my need to control, and a lack of trust in my Higher Power. I’m afraid of what result God will “hit back into my court”. I’m dying to know what the answer will be, but I can’t control when or where that will happen. My need to control freaks out. I don’t trust that my Higher Power will take care of me, and that the right thing will happen, even if I do not like or understand it. I don’t feel safe, and there’s no telling what will happen next.

What helps me in in these cases is similar:

Fear & gratitude lists help reduce my fears
Using the Step 10 inventory to work the program if I’m feeling disturbed about the situation (I pretty much always am)
Working Steps 6-7 on my impatience and need to control. (I say the 7th Step prayer every morning and night)
Praying to God in my own words to help my trust his actions, even if I don’t understand them
Visualizing my Higher Power’s love in various ways helps me trust him more
Repeating short readings like the Acceptance passage (BB p. 417). I actually had it hanging by my bed on a small poster for a while, so I’d see it every day.

After I recently shared this at a meeting, one of the members present added another nice detail: While the ball is in God’s court I can still choose to randomly swing my tennis racquet as long and hard as I want, but that still won’t do anything. I’m just pointlessly spending my limited energy trying to change the things I can’t! The end result is that my arm hurts, I’m less prepared for the next round, and most of all – I haven’t actually accomplished anything! All my stress and hard work was for nothing! What I need instead is to not act, and instead practice acceptance and patience.

I need the “serenity to accept the things I cannot change”, and not take any useless actions!

Which side am I on?

Sometimes it’s really tricky to figure out which side the ball is currently on. Should I do something? Or is “acceptance the answer to all of my problems today”? (BB p. 417). Which one will it be?

On my own, I very quickly slide into this whirlpool of endless options. I sort of drown in my own second-guessing. Should I take action or not? Take it or leave it? Would taking action mean harming others? Am I being selfish or selfless? Am I practicing true acceptance by not taking action, or am I just being lazy? And so on.

Discussion with my sponsor, program members, my therapist, and even friends from outside program can help me decide whether or not taking action would be useful and appropriate. Sometimes I sit in meditation on the matter for a few minutes, but I’m not so good at that yet. Talking to real human beings so far works better for me, at least in this stage of my recovery.

The funny thing is that when real action is needed, I often don’t want to do it! That’s when I want to quietly sit and accept! And when acceptance is needed, that’s when I want to take action! It can really be tricky to figure it out on my own.

Maybe that’s “the wisdom to know the difference” that we pray about in the Serenity Prayer. It’s a wisdom that I don’t have on my own, but can find it in God, and in the advice of my fellows.

Play on

Sometimes the “ball” I end up getting served after a long and nervous wait isn’t what I expected, or had hoped for at all. Sometimes the result can be amazing. Or annoying. Or mildly pleasing. Or devastating. Or exhilarating. And sometimes it’s just nice. There’s no way to know. But when the ball’s back in my court, then it’s time for action again. And so the game continues!

Sometimes the ball never comes back. I’ve had people who never responded to my “important work email”, ever! And then it’s time for acceptance again. But God always has more tennis games for me.

The metaphor isn’t perfect. The perfectionist in me complains that in real life there’s no score, and no time limit. No racquets and no safety gear. No teams, and no winning. But – perhaps there is.

Unlike the real game, my Higher Power and I are both on the same team. My God loves me and wants the best possible future for me. And in this never-ending game, this dance in two parts, my Higher Power slowly draws me along, to a better future. To that “fourth dimension of existence” the Big Book talks about.

It is almost impossible to put into words how much better my life has become while trying to live by our program’s principles. And I’m not even talking about the miracle of sobriety! Over the last few years I’ve taken a number of new actions that I could never have dreamed of, ever. And the difference isn’t so much in how I look on my outside, but rather in who I am internally. How I think, how I talk, how I behave. Slowly, slowly, the program has been gently carving me into a better shape. The way I respond to many life situations now is utterly different from how I used to only several years ago.

Life continually barrages me with a seemingly endless spray of new life problems. It seems to do that to everyone. But there’s no question that imperfectly trying to “practice these principles” on my various life issues has helped so much. It takes being painfully honest, admitting that I frequently make mistakes, and that I don’t know what’s best for me. It takes the uncomfortable realization that I am also often both wrong and ignorant, and for my own good should listen carefully to the feedback and advice of my fellows. It means gritting my teeth and bravely doing the right thing, even if my knees are shaking with fear. And sometimes it means letting go, giving things up, and not doing anything at all, or waiting patiently, even if I’m dying to know what comes next.

Sometimes I succeed, sometimes I fail, and other times I just don’t know. But the games keep coming, and if the path so far has taught me anything, it’s that despite all the bumps in the road, it slowly but surely goes uphill.

May God grant us all:

The peaceful serenity to accept and wait patiently, when the ball’s in God’s court,

The incredible courage to take action, when it’s on our side,

And the wisdom to know the difference!