Making More Spit

When my uncle was a child, he had a bad habit of spitting on everyone. My grandmother, of course, punished him for this behavior, placing him in a corner to think about his actions. He sat there, with this strange look on his face. When my grandmother asked him what he was doing, he replied, “I’m making more spit!”

It’s a funny anecdote, but there’s some practical truth in it. Life requires endurance; no one escapes that reality. And that can be especially significant with the challenge of recovery- from whatever in life.

Endurance’s definition includes the following:

“The ability to bear prolonged hardship: the ability or power to bear prolonged exertion, pain, toleration of prolonged suffering or hardship; the survival or persistence of something despite the ravages of time.”

Yep, that about covers it.

And what often goes hand in hand with endurance is that wonderful little principle, patience.

“In your patience possess ye your souls.”

Luke 21:19

Oh, Goody! Practicing patience is such a fun pastime! It’s probably why there is frequent mention of it in scripture:

 “For ye have need of patience, that, after ye have done the will of God, ye might receive the promise.”

Hebrews 10:36

“Rejoicing in hope; patient in tribulation; continuing instant in prayer;”

Romans 12:12

And it can be applied to each of the famous twelve steps:

First we have to admit we are a mess; we need help. However, by doing that, things aren’t automatically “fixed.” This is the start of the healing process; therefore, apply patience here.

Next, comes God, learning Who He is, how much He loves us and wants to help us. This also is not an instantaneous situation. Process, process, process! More patience application as we, individually and personally, discover just what relationship with Him looks like. It’s often not pretty.

Free will is a challenge, especially when we are asked to turn it over to this High Power God. We like to control things; we like to run our own lives. But that’s usually what got us in trouble in the first place. As we consider and act out this scary principle, a lot of endurance/patience needs to be applied here. Time to make more spit.

As if we weren’t scared or overwhelmed enough. Yes, more spit, please. It’s rather ugly and painful to face ourselves, our poor decisions and the damages caused from them. There needs to be a steady pace as we face truth by truth, reality by reality. Again, it’s not instantaneous; it’s ongoing like life.

And admitting these realities doesn’t just-poof- happen, either. As we deal with the wreckage of our past, we need to somehow live in the present, in the discomfort, awkwardness and pain of the moment.

And then we ask God to help us change? Deep end of the daunting pool here! Doing the actual hard work of changing habits, behavior and attitudes is not for the squeamish. And up until this pointy, let’s face it, we ARE squeamish. Nevertheless, dealing with more of this unpleasant process requires the further spit of endurance/patience. We’re still not done.

We have to admit we were wrong. We made wrong choices; we lived in a wrong manner. We wronged others; we wronged ourselves. We need forgiveness- and it’s not a sudden reassuring feeling which sweeps over us. It is a process, but it begins with a decision. That decision is not dependent upon or feelings (it’s both the good and the bad news here). Spit here, please.

It just keeps getting more difficult, doesn’t it? Make a list? Seriously? Yep. Again, this is the action, the work, the effort we need to engage in to reach that next level of our ongoing- not instantaneous- healing. Spit, yet again.

 

 

1. We admitted we were powerless over a substance or behavior - that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4. We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. We admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. We were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. We humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. We made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. We made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. We continued to take personal inventory, and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.
11. We sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to addicts, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

“And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience; And patience, experience; and experience, hope:”

Romans 5:3-4

 

Copyright © 2015 by Sheryle Cruse