The Seventh Step -- Finding A Path From a Higher Power

"My Creator, I am now willing that you should have all of me, good and bad. I pray that you now remove from me every single defect of character which stands in the way of my usefulness to you and my fellows. Grant me the strength, as I go out from here, to do your bidding. Amen." This is the prayer that is said for people in Alcoholics Anonymous. This prayer signifies for the person in recovery that that have asked for some input from their higher power.

At Mark Houston Recovery, the month of July is the month devoted to the 7th step of the 12 step program. In this step we are asking our Higher Power to take all of us, good and bad and to remove from us every single defect which stands in the way of usefulness to God and our fellow human beings. Step Seven is where the rubber meets the road. We take actions to implement the changes we need to make. We ask our higher and helping powers for help and guidance.

Being Humble Is The Seventh Step In Alcohol and Drug Recovery

Step seven starts with the word "humbly" so that you can gather that humility. Humility in terms of recovery should be the opposite of humiliation. It is a sense of our very humanness. It's accepting your strengths and weaknesses. What most people should understand is that during recovery this is the step when an individual continues to ask for help and feedback. This is a perfect time to do it for many reasons but primarily because of the amount of time and effort it takes to get this far and the time it takes to make changes. At this point in your loved one's recovery, after making it through those six steps there is still a chance that he could fall back to a lot of the old coping strategies. That's why the seventh step is such a powerful exercise and confirmation.  Making this declaration to a higher power gives him the opportunity to move on to the remaining five steps, the opportunity to remove old patterns and to become more open minded and teachable.

Taking One Step At A Time In Recovery

Mark Houston Recovery has spent years working on all the steps. Getting to this step we often find old patterns have been removed from us, we become more teachable, open minded and seem to be able to be of service to our fellow human beings. The ones who have successfully taken the seventh step have common themes. "Things like Step Seven was really a turning point for me in my ability to trust my Higher Power and the Program of recovery."  "Up till then I was mostly trying to stay straight and keep my act together one day at a time " I really wanted to change a lot more... to work at bringing myself into a more harmonious relationship with the world,"  "Taking this step make the difference in my life and kept going all the way through." At Mark Houston Recovery you can take all the steps and use all the tools and assets you have, but those deeper changes happen in God's own time and manner. You do what we can as best you can and the rest is up to our Higher Power.