July 3

“At this point in our program, we are simply willing to move forward. We decide to make a commitment to recovery, and to our spiritual growth.”

Sex Addicts Anonymous, page 29

In another Twelve-Step program I learned, and loved to tell, the story about three frogs sitting on a log that ends with the query, “How many were left after one of them made a decision to jump off?” The answer is, “Three, because the frog had only made a decision.”

My problem was that I didn’t know what action should follow the decision in Step Three. So I made up an answer, namely that there was a missing step, which I liked to call Step Three-A: Turned our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood God.

One day, someone who is older and wiser—well, wiser anyway—told me that my answer was wrong. There was a much simpler answer that didn’t involve rewriting the Steps. After I got over my initial resentment for being corrected, I pondered it with an open mind and realized that she was absolutely right: I make the decision in Step Three, and then actually start turning my will and life over in Steps Four through Twelve. The action is not a single thing I do, but rather, the way I live my life from then on.

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May I live this day as an expression of my decision to turn my will and life over to the care of my Higher Power.