When I was a Child, I thought like a Child
As I bask in the afterglow of Easter, I'm reflecting on the way that this year's Lenten journey coincided with the completion of my sixth step work in the Al-Anon program . To put it simply, (and to quote it directly) in step 6 we're asked to 'become entirely ready to have God remove our defects of character.' And while I had a list of behaviors I picked up in childhood that no longer served me, like the need to control my surroundings and others, obsessive thinking, self-righteousness (character defenses we may also call them), I was happily ready to leave all of them behind except for one. It was something that I'd been holding onto, a program that had been running in the background of my mind, influencing the way I related to people. It was a grudge. A resentment of a childhood figure, the story I told about " why I can't be happy now ." I loved to talk about it whenever the subject of intimacy came up, to use it as a defense, the reason I cou...
