Shrinking the Problems

I made a meeting last night, for which I am grateful, and someone said something that triggered revelation in me. Sometimes I am a little slow. I say this because I should have realized this truth a long time ago. During the few months of misery before I went back out I knew there was a problem. I did not however know what the solution to the problem was. It angered me when people told me that if I concentrated on the problem the problem would get bigger, but if I concentrated on the solution the solution would get bigger. Why did this make me angry? I did not know what the solution was, and no one I talked to could tell me. They told me the answer was in the first 164 pages of the Big Book, but I couldn’t find it. I got more and more frustrated. How could I concentrate on the solution when I did not know what the solution was?

But while I may not always know what the solution to my problem is, and therefore can’t concentrate on it, I do not have to focus on the problem and make it bigger. I do not have to let the problems in my life run my life and overwhelm me. When I trust God, I do not have to be afraid that the solution will not come. God provides all that I need, including answers and solutions, when I trust Him, allow Him to guide and direct me, and do my part of the next right thing and being of service to others.

The Big Book says that selfishness and self-centeredness are the root of my problems. All of them. I am the problem. Not my debt. Not the way I am treated by others. Not my inability to see the future. I am my problem. So when I use the steps to get outside myself so that I am of maximum service to God and my fellow man, I get out of myself. I find freedom. And when I am no longer the center of my own universe, my problems don’t seem so big and I am more open to see the solutions that God provides.