Does Your Higher Power Dance?

“If these Christians want me to believe in their god, they’ll have to sing me better songs; they’ll have to look more like people who have been saved; they’ll have to wear on their countenance the joy of the beatitudes. I could only believe in a god who dances.”

Friedrich Nietzsche

In recovery it’s important to know a Higher Power, or God, who dances. We need a Higher Power who smiles when we rise in the morning, who understands when we’re frustrated, who offers empathy when we hurt inside, and who loves us no matter how bad our behavior has been throughout the day. And we need a Higher Power who will love us to sleep each night no matter how bad we may feel deep down inside about ourselves.

In other words, we need a Higher Power who is ON OUR SIDE. Too many of us grew-up in households where God was a tyrant, a hanging judge; and some of us grew-up in households where there was no God at all. Either way, we never knew a God who danced with us. We never experienced an unconditional love that assured us we had value. And we never witnessed the sheer beauty of resting safely in the arms of a Higher Power that truly understood and cared about us.

It is necessary to embrace a Higher Power who laughs and dances through recovery with you. We can’t truly surrender to a Higher Power that we don’t feel safe with because we will never trust that Higher Power—and so we will never fully surrender.

Over the past several weeks I’ve realized that there are many things I haven’t fully surrendered and these many things have made me miserable for years. I am not happy because I have continued to hold tight to these many things that I can’t have or control. I’ve chosen to be unhappy by holding on to them. And yet I have chosen to hold on to them because my Higher Power was still unapproachable. My Higher Power was still a King that I had to bargain and barter with daily. This Higher Power did not dance and was not on my side.

I’ve decided to surrender all of those things now to a Higher Power who dances with joy. One who laughs and teases with me, like a close friend does. One who embraces me with real love and asks nothing of me in return, but who understands that real love begets real love—naturally. So there are no demands for love or allegiance.

I am more at peace as I surrender and release all of the things I have held on so tightly to for many years. I surrender them every morning and every time I ache for them throughout the day. And I will continue to surrender them until I have removed every last chain that binds them to my soul. In the process, I feel lighter and freer to be happy with life as it is—not as I would have it be. I have joined in the dance with my Higher Power.