Tag: Step 6

Step 7

Humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings.

Character defects and shortcomings are the same things.  I read that Bill W. was told in a writing class not to use the same phrases twice, so he came up with synonyms rather than using the same words across steps.  Someone should have told him it’s ok to use the same terms when talking about the same things when giving instructions to avoid confusion.  🙂

For me, this is the simplest step.  It’s a prayer.  That’s it.  So I take the list I created in Step 6 of all my character defects and what each one gives me, I’m ready to let them go, so now I just need to give God permission to help me rid myself of them.  I go over the list with God just like I did with my sponsor, and then I ask Him to remove them from me.  Or rather work with me to have them removed.  I found that the removal of them isn’t usually miraculous and instantaneous during my prayer.  I get to work on them in step 10.  But at least I’m now prepared to work through them and have given God permission to work through them with me, having done steps 6 and 7.

Step 6

Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

I like to think of step 6 as a way for me to gather up a bunch of my underlying addictions (character defects) and figure out what each one of them is giving me that makes me want to keep holding onto it.  I can’t really become ready to have them removed if I’m holding onto them for some reason.

So, I went through my 4th step and gathered up all of my own character defects from the experiences I had documented into one big list.  Impatience, anger, grumpiness, hatred, pride, denial, yelling at my kids, shame, codependency, selfishness, etc.  Then I wrote next to each one what it gives me.  For example, denial gives me a false sense of righteousness and safety from consequences.  Yelling at my kids gives me a sense of them being obedient and me being a good parent.

It seems that a lot of these have to do with impatience.  I don’t want to wait to do things the hard way, the right way, the way that actually lasts.  So I go for a quick and easy way that doesn’t work in the long run.

As I inventory all of these defects and realize that they give me stuff that’s temporary and just makes things worse, in the long run, it helps me to surrender them, let them go, and become willing to have God work with me to get rid of them.  A lot of that work to get rid of them happens in step 10, but I have to want to let them go before we can work on getting rid of them.

I share the list of defects and what they give me with my sponsor and let him know whether I feel like I’m ready to let them all go or if I need more surrender first.  Once I surrender them, I’m ready to move to step 7.