02/25/2025

Today’s blog

Lynn Murphy Mark

12 Step Life

“Energy follows thought”, is a line from a Willie Nelson song. I listened to the whole song, posted by a friend on FaceBook. I’ve said before that I get a lot out of my facebook ramblings, some really wise stuff posted by my really wise friends.

So, what about these words, “Energy follows thought”? Today they make me think about step six. The step says we are “entirely ready to have God remove all our defects of character”. Here’s the part that gets me every time – what does it mean to be entirely ready? I think if I really understood everything behind that phrase I’d be farther along in my recovery. 

But, I remember when I quit smoking. Just so you know how significant that was, it was April 15, 2011, at 7:01 am when I  smoked my last cigarette. I remember that as clearly as I remember the births of my two children. By the time I quit, I had to have become Entirely Ready. And that was a process that took months, if not years. I tried many times to quit – once I quit for 17 years. When I started working in Hospice I started smoking again – falling back on the one thing that seemed like a solution to the stress of this holy work. I know that sounds crazy, but my addictions don’t usually make sense.

Anyway, before I quit I thought about it a lot. I visualized my life without the frequent smoke breaks and that thought scared me at first. But I kept thinking about it, no smoke breaks, no inhaling the source of my peace of mind, and then, yes, but no more shortness of breath or cough, no more spending a fortune on cigarettes, more peace at home since my partner hated my smoking. Pretty soon, the benefits outweighed the behaviors. Finally I could visualize me as a non-smoker, and that is when the Energy to quit followed the Thoughts that had plagued me about this particular addiction. Since then I have not smoked another cigarette, although I have thought about it and stared longingly at the packs of smokes on display in gas stations and at Walgreens. 

In my other 12 Step meeting I read this statement in some literature. “We are powerless but not helpless”. That struck me as a most important thought to keep utmost in my mind. To get entirely ready to admit my greatest addiction. I have had to become entirely ready to deal with it. I have had to do some heavy thinking about making the changes necessary for my recovery. At this point I am Entirely Ready to declare myself a compulsive overeater who indulges in compulsive food behaviors. The evidence is there through my years of struggles to “control” my eating patterns and behaviors. And here goes my version of a drunk-a-log. It’s true confession time. I have tried a number of diets, paid money to NOOM and Weight Watchers and a liquid diet program, and I have been “successful” for a short time before falling back into my compulsive behaviors. I have hoarded food, hidden food, eaten in my car, waited for people to leave me alone in the house and then binged, sneaked food, eaten large portions and gone back for seconds, gone out to eat and made very poor choices, fooled myself into thinking that I could eat like my “normal eater” friends do on occasion, given myself permission to buy candy bars at the store and then eaten them while driving home. There’s more, I’m sure, but just this description of my lack of control over such behaviors is enough to convince me that I have a serious illness.

Energy follows Thought. Left to my own thoughts I find all kinds of reasons not to follow through on what I know needs to happen. That is why this program -these programs – and these meetings, and these safe places are so critical to my ability to make any positive changes. I listen to other people speak their truths and realize every time that I am not alone and that change is always possible.

Energy follows Thought. I find this to be absolutely true in my spiritual development as well. I belong to a spiritual community that believes this wise little nugget: “Thoughts in mind reproduce in kind.” That is so true for me. If I let my mind absorb my negative self-talk I begin to think of it as truth. Before long the behaviors that I know are dangerous, and danger suddenly becomes a friend. By the time this happens, I am half way down the slippery slope and on my way to relapse. This is true both for my substance addiction and my control addiction.  

These deadly thoughts can easily morph into reasonable choices in my mind were it not for the guidance of my Higher Power. Through the energy of this program I am much better prepared to say, “Get thee behind me, Satan”.( I looked up the meaning of this verse from the Bible. It is: “Do not tempt or torment me, I reject you, your statements, or your beliefs.”)

Without the wisdom of this program I wouldn’t be able to distinguish between healthy thoughts and the thoughts that my addictions whisper to me. I would lose track of the relationship that I have with an authentic Higher Power. Instead, I have seen so many places where my Higher Power lives, including in my own heart space, but mostly all around me, in these rooms,  when my eyes and ears are truly open. 

To become entirely ready is one of the actions of the 12 steps, actions that are meant to carry each of us to our personal version of recovery. I remember that someone once said, “I didn’t say it would be easy, but I did say it would be worth it.”