Letting Go and Letting God | Alcohol Recovery

I guess my comfort zone, whether I was drinking or in sobriety, has always been shaky ground when it comes to outcomes—how things will turn out. In my own opinion now, it really boils down to a control issue.

“Letting Go and Letting God” was one of the early slogans I heard in sobriety. It sounded catchy, but its application eluded me.

Letting go has never come easily to me. The need to hold on feels deeply ingrained in my nature. Turning things over to God was even harder, and for a long time, I struggled to understand what that truly meant.

Alcoholic Fantasy and the Need for Control

When I drank, worry and anxiety could literally drive me to drink. Whether it was relationships, finances, or health issues for myself or loved ones, I would feel betrayed when things did not go my way.

It was an excuse to tie one on if things didn’t go my way, or tie one on to celebrate if they did. Sick, isn’t it?

That type of thinking was not grounded in reality, but rather in alcoholic fantasy. I cannot force the wills of others to change. I cannot reverse a change in fortune, mend a broken relationship by myself, or make someone recover from a serious illness.

Life events are going to happen, and my stubbornness and inflexibility are not going to change their outcome.

That type of thinking is a one-way street going the wrong way. No one has that much control over life.

Learning to Let Go in AA

In AA, there are several tools available to help me deal with this. First, there is the Serenity Prayer.

For me, it offers reality-based choices: peace of mind when I accept the facts, the acknowledgment that I am powerless to change certain things, the willingness to change the things I can, and the common sense to recognize my limitations.

This was a big step for me.

The next tool is the Third Step in AA:

“Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.”

For myself, this became a conscious decision to stop trying to run my life as an active alcoholic. I had to learn that I could care deeply about the outcome without believing I could control it.

Trust in my Higher Power had to become real for me. I lived through some very tough moments in my life when I literally had to pray, turn things over, and trust.

One of those moments came when my wife and I had a son who was born on Christmas Eve one year in the 1980s. He had no vital signs at birth and had a zero Apgar score.

It was an extremely cold night, and I had to rush back to the hospital because he was near death.

A Christmas Eve I Will Never Forget

The situation was dire, and the decision was made to medevac him to Children’s Hospital in Washington, D.C. They would have life-flighted him by helicopter, but the weather was so severe that night that it was not possible.

I had him baptized by a nurse, and off he went in an ambulance.

I made it home early Christmas morning after getting stuck on the road overnight because of the weather. After a few hours of sleep, I had a 45-mile drive to the hospital in D.C.

I was driving to see a child in a neonatal ICU who was on 100% oxygen and receiving plasma. I had been told he had virtually no chance of surviving.

Back then, there were no cell phones and no place to duck into an AA meeting. There was no easy way to get in touch with anyone.

It was Christmas morning.

On the way, I visited my wife in the hospital near home. She had just given birth by C-section. Then I continued the rest of the journey alone.

It was a painful time, and it would have been easy to feel sorry for myself.

I started to pray, but I wasn’t happy.

My first words in prayer were, “Why me?”

Everyone else I knew seemed to have gone through childbirth without complications. I was mad.

But the words that came back to me were, “Why not you? What makes you different? Just because you are not drinking does not give you an exemption from the hardships of life.”

Those words were real to me.

I knew I had to work my program. I knew that the Steps required me to be willing to accept the outcome, whatever it might be, if that was God’s will.

Then I started praying simply for the strength to be able to do that.

It was a bitter pill in recovery, but I stayed the course.

Letting Go of the Outcome

When I arrived at the hospital, my crying had stopped. I was determined to do what a dad does.

I went to the neonatal ICU and met his doctor.

The prognosis was not good. Hope was not offered. They pointed to his labored breathing, even while he was on 100% oxygen and receiving plasma.

As I stood there watching my son, I realized this was one of the most difficult moments of my life.

But I wasn’t crying, and I wasn’t acting out.

Then a thought came to me.

I wasn’t even thinking about drinking.

Pausing for another moment, I realized that I had never wanted to drink since I came to AA some seven years before.

I was there with full acceptance of the situation, not tied to any particular outcome. In that moment, I was present and grateful.

Immediately, I started thanking God for the strength I had asked for to overcome my own weakness.

I gave thanks.

It was a miraculous moment I will never forget.

My wife had told me to start talking to him. Surely, she said, our son had heard my loud, familiar voice even while he was in the womb.

She was right.

He responded.

My son’s kidneys had shut down. Then, as I started speaking to him, his vital signs began to change. His kidneys started working, and gradually his own breathing took over.

What Letting Go Taught Me

By letting go and letting God, I learned something I had never understood before.

Life was going to happen whether I tried to control it or not.

My worst fears never materialized. I had placed the outcome in God’s hands and become willing to accept whatever His will might be.

The moment was surreal.

It was painful, but it was also a truly freeing experience. I didn’t have to know what was going to happen. I didn’t have to control the outcome.

All I had to do was trust the process fully.

I turned over something to God that I could not handle and trusted His holy will.

In AA, we have meetings, literature, and powers of example. But at some point, we move beyond the theoretical and have to face life on life’s terms.

In my own sober life, there have been many times like this. There was never a sponsor standing there to call the shots and tell me exactly what to do.

Prayer Is Always There

Prayer was always there.

Living the program was always there.

Asking my Higher Power for direction on the next right thing to do was always there.

That is what letting go and letting God has come to mean to me.

It does not mean I stop caring. Nor does it mean I become passive or stop doing what I can.

What it does mean is that I recognize the limits of my control.

I do what I can, ask for direction, and then I turn the outcome over to God.

I am eternally grateful for the lessons I learned in AA and for the grace of a loving God.