Recovery Journal 20120705

Write about how recognizing your helplessness to overcome your addiction on your own can bring you to admit your own nothingness and become as a little child.

Sometimes I wonder what I am supposed to be. Am I to be self-sufficient, self-reliant as I am sometimes taught, or am I to be completely dependent and unable to do anything myself as I am sometimes taught.  Am I one or the other? I am supposed to exercise self-control and self-discipline and be self-governing?. The problem is that these terms suggest that I achieve these abilities on my own. The illusion is that I have mastered myself.  The reality is the Lord has mastery over me by my allowing him to take control over my life.  I believe this may the the need for all of us, but it is more pronounced for addicts. The addict is loses all self-management.  Thus the addict must admit not only loss of power over self, but accept that only the power of God can restore them.  I don't know if all people need to recognize this helplessness.  Maybe most saints already do so. I do know that I need to always be aware of it because anything less is when I try to put my trust in me and I my failures to solve this myself are well documented. Cursed is he that putteth his trust in flesh or maketh flesh his arm (2 Nephi 4).