Step 3
We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood God.
What it means
I stop trying to write the ending. I keep writing my own conduct.
How abandonment distorts it
Turning it over sounds like being left. My system reads surrender as being dropped, so it grips harder exactly when it should open its hands.
In this marriage
I surrender the outcome of this marriage. That is not the same as surrendering my dignity, my boundaries, or my needs inside it.
Inside me
I surrender the outcome without surrendering myself. If a version of this step leaves me smaller, that is not this step.
- Surrendering the outcome is not surrendering yourself. Self-abandonment dressed as spirituality is still self-abandonment.
God, I offer myself to you — to build with me and to do with me as you will.
Relieve me of the bondage of self, that I may better do your will.
Take away my difficulties, that victory over them may bear witness
to those I would help of your power, your love, and your way of life.
May I do your will always.
- Write the outcome you want on paper. Put it somewhere out of sight. Then do one ordinary thing from your own life.