Slow Summer Series: Help

The Twelve Steps + the Serenity Prayer

Jun 23, 2025

2025 has been, by far, one of the hardest years of my life. It doesn’t feel too dramatic to say it’s been a Job-type of year, and I am leary of what is ahead for the rest of the year. However, I haven’t lost all of my family members nor do I have boils all over my body, so… while it’s been by far perhaps one of the most challenging things I’ve gone through, I know that graces abound and it could be worse.

I understand that it’s just a season, but my life feels like it is falling apart, and I’m looking around wondering how I got here. I’ve had several crises, and being in the chaplain business, I am not exaggerating when I say crises. I've completed my spiritual direction training, and I was hoping to begin a deeper chaplaincy training while working as a chaplain. However, while everyone else moves on after graduating, I’m stuck in a liminal space, unsure if I will have the capacity to pursue the things I want to do. I trust God, but I am not without questions.

Earlier this year, I read two books - Steps: A Guide to Transforming Your Life When Willpower Is Not Enough by John Ortberg and The Fix: How the Twelve Steps Offer a Surprising Path of Transformation for the Well-Adjusted, the Down-and-Out, and Everyone in Between by Ian Morgan Cron. I read the books in tandem, so when one author described a step, I would read the other author’s version before moving on to the next step. As a result, the two are integrally linked for me. I chose these books because I love the work of John Ortberg and because I had heard a fascinating interview with Cron on his book. I also had a natural curiosity about the 12 Steps due to my work with my chaplain charges and even directees, some of whom are in active addiction recovery.

Both of the books are written with the thesis that the twelve steps are helpful and valuable tools for every Christian in their spiritual formation — that none of us are really different than people with an addiction. I highly recommend them both and often recommend them to those I work with.

The theme of my year has surrounded Step 1, which states, “We admitted we were powerless over our deepest problems — that our lives had become unmanageable.” The first step to life change is always to admit we need help. Every Christian first becomes a Christian by crying out to God to say, “I need you!”

Trust, I have admitted I am powerless, and as I write, I sit here wondering if there’s more I need to accept or ask for help with. I need lots of help right now. I am in a type of grief and hold a myriad of emotions. Each day is a roller coaster and has to be lived on its own. It’s easy to feel abandoned or forgotten, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.1

I know I’ve matured because even when tempted to wallow in self-pity or when I do, I’ve learned to get up, to notice what is good, and to know that new mercies are given every morning. I am gaining a deeper understanding of the fellowship of His sufferings. Sometimes, it’s too much, but I keep waking up, eating, trying to sleep, going to work, and smiling and listening, even though I’ve currently cut back on my work and spiritual direction sessions.

I’ve seen what it is like when people don’t want help, even when intervention is attempted. My friend says that no intervention is a failed intervention. And so, this hard time is teaching me about love. Love intervenes. Sometimes, it lets go. Sometimes, your best is acceptance of what is.

In the meantime, I continue to examine my own heart in the process. I’m heartbroken, and even though I know the crises will end one day, it could also take from me than it already has.

I’ve readily used courage to change the things I can, but in some ways, I remain powerless. My work is to examine myself, accept the things I cannot change, and grieve my losses. I stay with Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, and no matter how low I go — if I make my bed in the depths, He is there.2 There is power in knowing I am never alone.

I’m reminded of a post I wrote in 2021. Sometimes I think I’m an old soul, but at the same time, I often see myself as a baby who needs constant care and attention. I often see God loving me like a mother loves a baby at her breast; yet, I was still surprised to see this imagery in the quote below, which I wrote four years ago.3

It’s the mountaintop where you see the glory and even bask in its warmth. There you see the beauty of God. But, it’s in the valley where you are known. Here God refines you, makes you, holds you and knows you, rocks and cuddles you like a swaddling babe, even when you feel alone. You are known and hopefully you are drawn near. The valley is where you find the face of God – the tenderness in His eyes, the tearstained cheeks, the dimpled smile, the wrinkles of wisdom, the joy of looking at you, His beloved child, whom He gently forms through the tears and the pain.

Jamie S. Harper, When Brought Low

This week, for my slow summer series, I present the Twelve Steps (in the first person rather than the third):

I am powerless over my deepest problems — my life has become unmanageable.
I came to believe that a Power greater than myself could restore me to dignity.
I made the decision to turn my will and my life over to the care of God as I understood Him.
I made a searching and fearless moral inventory of myself.
I admitted to God, to myself, and to another human being the exact nature of my wrongs.
I was entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
I humbly asked Him to remove my shortcomings.
I made a list of all persons I had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.
I made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
I continued to take personal inventory and when I was wrong promptly admitted it.
I sought through prayer and meditation to improve my conscious contact with God as I understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for me and the power to carry that out.
Having a spiritual awakening, I tried to carry this message to others, and to practice these principles in all my affairs.

Reflection Questions

Have you ever considered the Christian life to be like the recovery life?
What could the 12 steps open up for you?
Where do you need help? How are you asking for it?
Where, if anywhere, do you feel powerless?
Where, if anywhere, do you notice Christ?
Where are you weak? And how do you notice his strength?

The Serenity Prayer

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

God, grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.
Living one day at a time,
enjoying one moment at a time,
accepting hardships as the pathway to peace.
taking, as he did, the sinful world as it is,
not as I would have it,
trusting that he will make all things right
if I surrender to his will -- that I may be reasonably happy in this life
and supremely happy with him forever.