Step Two

[MajestyJo]

Hope

from: "He Sold Himself Short"

"I can still remember very distinctly getting into Akron at eleven p.m. and routing this same Howard out of bed to do something about me. He spent two hours with me that night telling me his story. He said he had finally learned that drinking was a fatal illness made up of an allergy plus an obsession, and once the drinking had passed from habit to obsession, we were completely hopeless....

"I thought at times that he was telling my story!....

“Here was a man with essentially the same outlook on life, except that he had done something about it.... As I look back on that first evening, I realize that I began to hope, then, for the first time."

© 2001, Alcoholics Anonymous, page 261

My first Promises meeting is what gave me hope, It was shortly after I came out of treatment. I was promised a new freedom. Didn't know the extent of that promise! Today it has come true many times on many levels.

To know that I am powerless, to surrender to a Higher Power, empowers me to do what I need to do for myself. I am not the Power, I am not the Source, I am the Channel, I am the Co-Creator of my own life. God doesn't do for me what I can do for myself. He leads and directs, He give me strength and courage, He is always with me and I am never alone.

When I came to the rooms, I heard others tell my story. It gave me hope to know I wasn't the only one!

STEP TWO: Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
"The minute I stopped arguing, I could begin to see and feel....I can't say upon what occasion or upon what day I came to believe in a Power greater than myself, but I certainly have that belief now. To acquire it, I had only to stop fighting and practice the rest of A.A.'s program as enthusiastically as I could."

c. 1952, Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, page 27

The best thing for me is when I get out of the way. God is as He reveals Himself to me today.