By Ross A.
I stared at the cuts and bruises on my knuckles, enraged with everyone in my life, blaming them for my unfathomable unhappiness. I sat in the locker room of The Family Foundation School with a bunch of people who I’d never met before, and tried to convince them that my parents were to blame for my presence in the room. I had no idea that I was the creator of all the problems I was experiencing, that they were all outcomes of my decisions.
Many people don’t know how they got where they are. They don’t understand the power of decision. Some convicts say that they are in prison because the other guy deserved it, or they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Some millionaires say they are rich because they are smart, or life presented them with rare opportunities. Although most of them have extraordinary intelligence and outstanding drive, they still decided to use it to their greatest benefit.
My understanding of the role my decision making played in my life began when I arrived at FFS. My junior sponsor would tell me time and time again that “anger was a choice” in his seemingly futile efforts to calm me down when I became enraged at the world. It took many months for me to seriously understand this concept and eventually I began to get my anger under control, I decided to stay calm.
My understanding grew even more when I learned about the third step; “We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him.” I had to choose to give my life to God. The first time I made this choice, it was the most significant decision I had ever made in my life.
Over the next few months, by talking through my struggles with staff and students at FFS, as well people in the rooms of AA, I heard the word decision a lot. I began to understand that I am where I am because of my decisions in the past. Of course, in my personal belief God plays the biggest role in all of this, but that will come later.
My understanding grows deeper and deeper as time goes on. I have realized that doing drugs is a decision. Hurting people is a decision. Lying is a decision. All of these were negative choices I made in my life. On the other side of the coin, telling the truth is a decision. Being kind to people is a decision. Doing my best to do God’s will today is a decision. Everything we do is a decision!
Knowing these things changes the way I live my life, the way I decide to live my life. I now understand that my present and my future are in my hands, but fortunately for my own sake, I open my hands to the sky and give it up to God every day. I tend to mess things up when I choose to do them my way.
In my opinion, free will is a God-given power. It is a gift. My understanding of my Higher Power is that he gives us free will from birth. The insight of Carl Jung, Leo Tolstoy, and even the teachings of Jesus Christ all affect my comprehension of this life and its many questions, but the basic idea I hold is that God puts a whole lot of “forks in the road” on our journey through life and we decide which way we go. Today I try to choose to go the way God is ‘pointing.’ The way we go can change our lives for the better or for the worse. We just need to decide which way we want to go.
