A Meditation Moment

Imagine yourself free from the impulsiveness of your shortcomings. What if your defects of character no longer controlled your decisions, relationships and enduring vulnerabilities? How might your relationships improve? Would your ability to work with others change? How about broken relationships? Do you think others might be more willing to give you another chance if you were not repeating the same old patterns of harm?

What if…all the things you were afraid to change were the true obstacles standing in your way to the life of your best intentions?

These are the days that must happen to you.

~ Walt Whitman, “Song of the Open Road”

Overcoming character defects takes practice

Recovery is a lot like working out. It builds muscles that are relational, physical, mental, emotional and spiritual. My gym mentor likes to remind me of a training principle she calls - “What the heck?”. I’ve never been able to do a pull-up my entire life. Last week I managed 3. What the heck? I had not been practicing pull-ups because I did not believe it was possible for me to ever succeed at doing one. However, I have been faithfully doing the exercises my mentor prescribed for me to do several times a week. These are not marathon workouts. I’m talking twenty minutes a session, three sessions a week. I don’t break out in excessive sweat or groan and moan like a cow in labor as I practice. The routines are challenging but not intimidating.


Evidently, they are also effective. When she asked me to hop up on a stool and grab a bar above my head, I thought she was going to let me hang there and decompress my back. Instead, she challenged me to try a pull-up. What. The. Heck. I could do them!


All the steps, but particularly Step Six, is an awful lot like going to the gym, putting in the time, and one day - “What the heck?” - happens. You change. Maybe at first this change is minimal, even discouraging. But if you continue stepping, over time willingness increases and so does capacity to live differently.


I did not lie to my husband about my rug purchase. I also did not purchase a rug that exceeded our budget. We had no conflict and I had no need for shame or guilt. I didn’t even register the story as a big deal until I was working on this project. Suddenly I thought, “What the heck?” The old me would have lied; the not quite as long ago me would have not lied but it would have been a struggle to do the next right thing. What the heck? When did honesty become my go-to practice? I could not tell you. It’s mysterious. It’s a God thing.


It took a long time. There were many backslides and face plants along the way. But at some point my readiness invited God to change me. And he did.

A Meditation Moment

What if….your worst day is the portal to peace?

Disaster can be a fine designer. Better than a pencil sometimes. It can lead you to safety.

~ David Esterly, The Lost Craving

Living as if God is at work

Perhaps more challenging than acknowledging our own limitations (after all we have plenty of experience in that department) is making sense of this notion that God can remove our shortcomings. We struggle to understand who God is and how he works in our lives.


Father Joe Martin entered treatment for alcoholism in 1958. His recovery experience gave him the unique capacity to help ease the suffering of those affected by substance use disorder. Once Father Martin talked to Terence T. Gorski, author of Understanding the Twelve Steps, about God’s role in the Sixth Step. Father Martin said, “God gives us the courage, the strength, and the means whereby to correct our character defects. But we’ve got to do the correcting,”[4]


We ask for guidance, inspiration, courage and strength. We trust God is listening. We wake up each morning mindful that we have asked God to remove our defects AND we go about living as if he has done so. Suppose my husband asks me how much I paid for the new rug he discovers in our entrance foyer. We have a housing budget and we are on the verge of going over budget. If I tell him the rug cost $50.00, then all is well. The budget can absorb it. But what if the rug cost $150.00? I am going to be $75.00 over budget. This is going to raise more questions about my commitment to our shared budget goals. I don’t want the hassle. There is a good chance I can get away with telling him $50.00 because he would not know the difference.


But I would know that I was lying. Dishonesty is a shortcoming that I have given God the green light to remove. I can tell the truth and this gives me the encouragement of knowing that God is at work and I am working at believing God. If I lie, I realize that this particular defect is alive and well and I have to go back to the drawing board and figure out what’s up with my lying. This will initiate the amends process. Either way, I am not without hope. I have a plan for dealing with my shortcomings even as I have hope that God is removing them.


Either way, I have work to do. I prepare each day to live as if all my shortcomings are removed by practicing living without them. I have other steps to practice at the end of the day when I review my day and discover that God is not done with me yet.

Asking God to remove our shortcomings

Take a few minutes and reflect on the possibility of asking God to take control of your shortcomings.

For here’s what I’m going to do: I’m going to take you out of these countries, gather you from all over, and bring you back to your own land. I’ll pour pure water over you and scrub you clean. I’ll give you a new heart, put a new spirit in you. I’ll remove the stone heart from your body and replace it with a heart that’s God-willed, not self-willed. I’ll put my Spirit in you and make it possible for you to do what I tell you and live by my commands. You’ll once again live in the land I gave your ancestors. You’ll be my people! I’ll be your God!

~ Ezekiel 36:24-28, MSG