We, Not I
We were never meant to go it alone.
One of our greatest strengths are the communities we nurture around us.
It is important, even critical, to have a support group or many different ones.
The more broken we are the more we need others and sadly, the more we tend to attempt to go it alone. This is often due to guilt and shame. Sometimes it is because we grew up in a toxic environment and so did not learn good ways to relate to others.
The popular default for emotional problems is to go for counseling. It’s an option certainly, but it can also be expensive. Plus the one-hour session once a week may not be enough time.
The beauty of recovery groups is that they are inexpensive and there are usually many available daily sprinkled around most cities. Also if the problem involves fruitless arguing with a spouse, for example, one possible solution is for both of them to attend different same-sex recovery meetings. This enables both to go somewhere safe to vent frustrations and learn better coping skills that they then can bring back into the marriage. Abiding by the rules of these groups also stops gossip sessions with friends.
The idea that we are to walk with and through life we others, not just our spouse and the members of our own household can be demonstrated by studying the language of the Twelve Steps.
They instruct us, depending on our particular problem(s), on how to recover from addictions and have full satisfying lives. Each of us seeks this for ourselves and yet the steps are written in the plural voice. Let me show you.
Step 1 begins with the word “We.”
Step 2 uses the word “ourselves”.
Step 3 describes turning over “our will and our lives.”
Step 4 “ourselves”
Step 5 Admitted “to ourselves”. . . “Our wrongs.”
Step 6 “Were entirely” not “was entirely.
Step 7 “our shortcomings”
Step 8 “we had harmed”
Step 9 no plural identifiers
Step 10 “when we were wrong”
Step 11 “as we understood him” “His will for us”
Step 12 “we tried” and “our affairs”
This is also the language of the Bible.
In the Old Testament the story is principally around a family that grows into a nation. And in the New Testimony note that pastoral letters or epistles were to be shared to encourage many.
Our default way of reading or studying the Bible is through “quiet times” by ourselves. This okay but we also need community - like church and classes where the Bible is opened up and discussed.
In closing, here is a passage out of Paul’s letter to the Church at Ephesus. Note, just like in Twelve Steps, the grammar is written to many together.
Therefore I, the prisoner of the Lord, implore you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, showing tolerance for one another in love, being diligent to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
Ephesians 4:1-3 (NASB)
Twelve Steps
We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.
Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to others, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.