How A Book Helped Me Find My Higher Power

About two and a half years into my recovery journey I started to feel uncomfortable. I was doing everything I was supposed to be doing, but this feeling came over me, and it was

centered around one question. What is my higher power?

I don’t know why I suddenly felt the need in my soul to be able to define it so clearly out of the blue like that, but it wouldn’t let me rest. Slowly, I grew more and more restless as the days passed without an answer. I've never had a defined higher power in my life, so I don’t know where this sudden need came from.

I doubled down on my recovery in hopes it would pass like so many other thoughts do in our journeys, but it wouldn’t let me go. I went to a recovery store one of those days, and bought a bunch of random books in hopes of keeping my mind busy, not knowing how fateful that day was.

Then it happened: I picked up one of the books I had bought that day, a $5 paperback that, at the time, did not seem all that impressive. I opened it and began reading one afternoon, unaware of the life-altering moments that lay ahead.

It was an easy read and did its job for the moment, but then it veered into the topic I was struggling with. The author had experienced the same thing I was walking through: this incessant and random need to define his religion and higher power. Then I read the line that would change my life forever and also help me answer my question.

He talked about how people would ask him what his religion was, and his answer was simple: "It’s the way I live my life, the way I treat myself and others”. I felt those words in my soul like a gut punch. Immediately, I was free from my obsessive desire to understand, and I understood at the same time. I stood up and was physically ill; it hit me so hard. It’s the way I live my life that’s my religion.

Check out the book here: New Pair of Glasses by Chuck C.