The 12 Steps
- Step 1 - Admit that you alone through the use of coercion, training tactics, behavior modification strategies, etc. are powerless to control your children's lives and that your own life has become unmanageable
- Step 2 - Come to believe that the transformative power and joy of unconditional love can restore you to sanity and enable growth in sanctity through horizontal detachment and vertical reorientation
- Step 3 - Make a decision to turn your will and your life and the lives of your children over to the care of God through Trustful Surrender
- Step 4 - Make a searching and fearless examination of conscience
- Step 5 - Admit to yourself , to God, and to one other person, i.e., the priest in sacramental confession, a spouse or trusted friend, the exact nature of your wrongs
- Step 6 - Make entirely ready to have God heal all these defects of character by coming to rest in His unconditional love and mercy
- Step 7 - Humbly ask God to heal you in His own good time by embracing The Cross for love's sake through an act of blind, profound faith ("The blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead rise again, the poor have the gospel preached to them..")
- Step 8 - Make a list of all the offenses you have committed against your children, and become willing to make amends to them
- Step 9 - Make direct amends to your children wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others
- Step 10 - Continue to take personal inventory and when wrong promptly admit it and apologize
- Step 11 - Seek through prayer and contemplation to improve your conscious contact with God, praying only for knowledge of God's will for you in each moment and the power to carry that out
- Step 12 - Having had a spiritual conversion as the result of these steps, embark upon the apostolate of Catholic parenting, bringing this message to other families, and practicing these principles in the context of ALL your relationships
[Note: Each of these steps will be elaborated upon in subsequent posts.]
3 comments:
Hi! I am a Catholic Mom who is in a 12 step program. I was so excited to see your version of the twelve steps for use in the home in the context of Christian parenting. I am the mom of 8, homeschool and I have an attachment parenting style, but sometimes feel overwheelmed and think if I were more a strict obey me or else type things would be more managable. I know this is trying to control when the control is truly God's and I just need to be seeking and doing His Will for me at any given moment. Would love to read the further posts on the 12 steps!
Megan
I feel so blessed to have found your site! I am an AP Catholic mama, and have felt very lonely in that respect. I will definitely be following along- your previous post describing/defending Catholic AP details my beliefs exactly.
I just stumbled across your blog and I love it. I now want to eagerly read all your posts. Your blog is exactly what I've been looking for. I recently began parenting peacefully (after praying to Mary to please help me be the mother my children need me to be) but so often I feel like I'm going it alone because those who parent peacefully that I know don't do it in the context of faith and those who are share my faith often have an authoritarian-type parenting style.
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