The Higher Power Home
“I’m an alcoholic,” my now-wife said to me when we first started seeing each other. “But like, the good kind. In recovery. I go to AA,” she continued.
When she said to me that she went to AA, I thought, Oh no. I was falling in love with this woman. And come to find out she’s a religious nutjob.
But we kept talking.
I did not know much about Alcoholics Anonymous, other than it pushed religious belief, or at least that was my understanding of it.
Your higher power can be whatever you want, she said. Her higher power, she would describe to me, was whatever made the sun rise and set.
I was really surprised that someone so intellectual and rational as my wife would be involved with an organization that I would have considered a cult. However, what I learned over time was that I had a misunderstanding of how to read the Big Book, and how to understand 12-step programs.
When she began explaining to me all the concepts that she enjoyed in “The Big Book,” I would explain to her that these were all deeply Christian values.
“You’re the most Christian non-Christian I think I’ve ever met,” I would say to her.
That saying, “don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater,” is really helpful for understanding how to not read something with a black and white mentality. As a former fundamentalist Christian that was an extremely hard principle for me.
When I initially left my faith of 21 years, a fundamentalist Christian minister for 15 years, I then went to another black and white position - atheism. I did not see it that way when I first declared my atheism - I thought I was picking the intellectual, rational position. I was confident that atheism was not “black and white”, but simply the facts - there is no god.
I had moved closer to something like agnosticism - I couldn’t prove there was a god, and I couldn’t prove there wasn’t a god.
“You don’t even believe in a ‘higher power’?” she asked me when we dived further into the discussion on this organization that I ignorantly detested as a non-believer. For me, thankfully when I was being asked that question, years had passed since I had left my faith. I had found a happy medium with my spirituality, and I understood that there was more nuance to this discussion on a higher power. “At times I do,” I responded to her.
The reality for me is that a higher power of some sort is not that hard to imagine. Who cares about the details? I have come to learn the fundamentalist Christians and ironically the atheists are the ones who want to get in the weeds and bicker.
My wife often says she likes to practice the principles of Alcoholics Anonymous in our parenting. As I mentioned earlier, she is essentially practicing the principles of Christianity without any of the baggage that comes along with it.
In AA, I learned, the program requires a higher power, “God, as we understood him.” In some meetings, my wife says, people will say “as we understood her,” or even “whatever is out there.”
She tries to practice these principles in all of our affairs, she says. In not a cult-y way, we say. We try to distill (pardon the pun) these AA principles, so many of which I see are founded and grow from Christianity, to our parenting, without any of the fire and brimstone.
Living a Life of Rigorous Honesty
“It’s always the right thing to tell the truth,” we tell our kids. “Even if it hurts.”
This extends into telling the truth even when it gets you or someone you love in trouble. We explain the difference between tattling and telling the truth.
Tattling is just to be mean, we say. Kristen uses the Berenstain Bears and the Truth to help her guide this discussion. Being honest is about saying what is.
Our children are all poor liars.
We have to be honest about what is, not what we wish or hope or pray for. What is actually happening in front of us.
That doesn’t mean, we say, that we can’t hope and wish and pray. We can. We want everyone to be better. Always. But if they are not better, we say, we cannot pretend that they are.
But in AA, Kristen says, I have to be honest about the fact that I am an alcoholic. I might one day forget my name, Kristen says of people in the program who introduce themselves as “an alcoholic named —”. But I can never forget that I’m an alcoholic.
It is a hard truth, one that she surely once wished was not the case. But alcoholism has been a teacher in her life. Starting with the honest truth, she says, is what cracks the world wide open for the rest of the truth to pour out.
Taking a Personal Inventory
Yesterday, Kristen told me Mady was upset in the morning. She had snapped at Mady, she said, because Mady was complaining that we might not bring her home from her field trip.
We have tried to hold strong that we send our kids back to school after field trips (all of which we do attend), but we have failed miserably. We don’t really have the time to take full days off of running our household of 10, we really don’t.
I’m not frustrated with you, Kristen said to Mady, but every single one of you were giving me lip, and I was just overwhelmed.
Sometimes Mady says she cries because there are so many boys.
We cry, too, Mady, we say to her.
It doesn’t make us feel good that Kristen snapped at Mady, of course, but Kristen takes accountability for the fact that she was overwhelmed, reveals to Mady that she is also just human, that being overwhelmed happens, and says she is sorry and will strive to do better.
It would be easier, to be sure, to pretend that none of this happened. I can see it doesn’t feel good for Kristen to cop to the fact that she took a tone.
But Kristen doesn’t pretend that she didn’t take a tone. She tells the truth and we move forward.
When I first met Kristen, I remember her looking at me. “Oh my God,” she said. “You live by a code of ethics.”
“Even when it’s to my detriment,” I told her. There have been so many times when I wish I could have looked the other way and ignored a wrong that was happening.
In our family, we tell the truth. Even and especially when it hurts.
We are putting 8 people out into the world. Teaching them to tell the truth will ripple out into the world.
What Kristen had taken a tone with Mady, anyway, was whether or not she would be coming home with us after a field trip. Whether or not we’d be sending her back to school. We are running a household of 8 children. There is too much work to do every day.
But we brought Mady with us. In fact, we taught her how to push a shopping cart in Costco on a Friday. And that is not easy. Mady helped unload the cart. Kristen thanks Mady for her help, and Mady tells the cashier about her field trip from today. Mady lights up.
We admit when we are wrong. We take accountability for our actions.
The Serenity Prayer
On our fridge, we have a caligraphy-style copy of the Serenity Prayer. A gift from Kristen’s sponsor that she gave us when she came to meet our baby.
We read this prayer while we fill endless sippy cups with specific variations of whatever our children want. Some want water with ice, some want flavored water with ice, or maybe apple juice with ice. Alternately, apple juice without ice.
It’s very important not to mess this up.
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, I read, leaning my forehead against the fridge. The courage to change the things we can. And the wisdom to know the difference.
Kristen says it is our life’s work to understand the difference.
“I hit him because he hit me!” Cade shouts from the other room.
“He called me a stupid nudey head!” Austin screams back. “And I. DON’T. LIKE. THAT!”
Cade is responsible for Cade, we explain. Austin is responsible for Austin.
“Are you a stupid nudey head?” I ask Austin.
“No,” he says, looking down.
“Then just ignore him. You can only control your response to what he does,” I say, shifting my gaze to Cade. “And Cade, you’re responsible for Cade. Hitting is never okay. And you know that.”
They settle down. Time passes. We sit at the table and drink our coffee. But then: from the other room, we once again hear Cade call Llew “stupid.”
“Cade!” we call.
“Stupid means Llew in my language,” Cade tries.
“You know you’re not stupid,” we say to Llew.
I look at Kristen. God, I think, give us the wisdom to know the difference.
In our house, we lead with love. We pause and ask for the next right thought or action. We don’t always pause. Sometimes we say, Just give me a minute to get you your juice!
But the kids know they’re loved. They don’t fear a God, or fear a Higher Power.
We move through the world with our beliefs and we exhibit these principles as best we can. The key here is that even when we don’t do these perfectly, as we are flawed humans.
We don’t carry shame for our flaws (or our sins). It just is. We say, we messed up when we messed up. We strive to find the difference between what is ours to carry and what is not. We don’t do this perfectly, to be sure, but we are out here in the world, honestly trying.
And perhaps the most salient principle spoken in the rooms: Take what works and leave the rest.