Breathing Under Water: Becoming Willing
Last week, as we continued our work with the 12-step tradition that undergirds so many addiction recovery communities, we explored Step Five which invites us to tell the truth somewhere safe: to name one place where we find ourselves separated from God and let another human being help hold that with us.
That all by itself is hard work. And once we begin that kind of work, many of us want to move quickly past that experience toward apology, repair, and relief.
Repair matters, and next week we will turn toward making amends. But the Twelve Steps necessarily slow us down before we act. This pause is part of the wisdom of this tradition. Human beings often want to move from confession to repair as quickly as possible—not only because we want healing, but because we want relief.
But the recovery tradition honors the truth that healing is incremental. Confession is one grace. Willingness is another. Amends will be another.
Steps Six and Seven ask a deeper question: Are we ready not only to be forgiven, relieved, understood, or reassured, but to be changed?
Step Six says we became entirely ready to have God remove our defects of character; Step Seven says we humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings. We borrow this language from recovery communities with humility because these practices have helped people live truthfully, stay alive, rebuild trust, and become free. They are not just good advice. They are a spiritual tradition formed in the daily, embodied work of recovery.
The language of “defects of character” can sound harsh, especially to people who already carry a lot of shame. But these steps are not about God erasing our humanity. They are about God healing the patterns that separate us from love, truth, repair, and freedom. This is not divine rejection; it is our consent for God’s grace to reach what we have been defending.
And that is deeply spiritual work, because many of us do not know how to let God work in us without immediately turning that into one more thing we are supposed to accomplish ourselves.
We are inclined to turn healing into a project, willingness into a performance, and surrender into a checklist. We’ve got this!
But Steps Six and Seven do not say, “We fixed ourselves.”
These steps do not say, “We improved ourselves through disciplined effort.”
They say we became ready.
They say we asked God.
That is so different.
Luke gives us a picture of this.
A man with a skin disease comes to Jesus and says:
“Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.”
Now, we need to handle this story carefully.
This is not a story where illness equals sin. It is not a story where someone’s body becomes an object lesson about moral failure. Too often Scripture has been used that way, and it has hurt people.
This is a story about a person pushed to the margins.
A person whose need is visible.
A person whose life has been shaped by separation.
A person who comes to Jesus with nothing to offer except the truth of their need.
And what the person says is remarkable:
“Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.”
They does not control, perform, pretend, or give Jesus a plan for their healing. They comes near, tell the truth, and ask.
Jesus answers, “I am willing,” then reaches out, touches them, and restores them to life and community. The man does not manufacture his healing or perform his way back into belonging; he receives what Christ gives.
And then Luke tells us something else. As word spreads and crowds gather, Jesus withdraws to a deserted place and prays.
Even Jesus does not live from endless output.
Even Jesus returns to communion with God.
There is something here for us.
Some of us are very good at noticing needs – ours and others. We see what must be done, who needs help, where things are falling apart, and what might happen if we stop paying attention.
So we solve, fix, smooth, respond, manage, hold, and keep everything running. But all that motion can keep us from the quieter question underneath:
Am I willing to be changed?
Am I willing for God to loosen my grip on what I keep defending?
Am I willing for God to heal whatever it is that I have made into identity?
Am I willing for God to touch the fear in me that keeps showing up as control?
Am I willing for God to remove the resentment I carry that I have mistaken for armor and protection?
Am I willing for God to show me the difference between faithfulness and over-functioning?
These are not questions that we answer by trying harder.
These are questions that we bring to the living God.
“Lord, if you are willing, you can make me whole.”
And the gospel answer is not hesitation.
It is not distance.
It is not, “Come back when you are less complicated.”
The gospel answer is:
“I am willing.”
Luke’s gospel narrates the encounter: a person comes to Jesus with need, and Jesus is willing to heal. The text from Ezekiel reveals the promise behind that encounter: God does not only forgive from a distance; God works within us.
Ezekiel speaks to a people who know failure, exile, and loss, and who cannot repair themselves simply by deciding to do better. God promises, “I will cleanse you. I will give you a new spirit. I will give you a new heart.”
Notice who acts: God sprinkles, cleanses, removes, gives, and puts. The people do not perform spiritual surgery on themselves. God does the deep work.
“I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.”
That is such tender and powerful language for this series.
Remember that we began this journey with stones: signs of what was heavy, beyond our control, and impossible to fix. We released them into water, a reminder of baptismal grace, truth, and cleansing. Now Ezekiel brings stone and water together: water that cleanses, God who removes the stone, and God who replaces the heavy stone with a living heart.
That is where Steps Six and Seven ask us to stand: in the water of grace, holding no tool sharp enough to remove the stone ourselves, but becoming willing for God to do the deeper work.
But maybe this is the hardest part for us:
Actually receiving the new life God gives.
Not earning it.
Not proving it.
Not making ourselves new by sheer force of will.
Receiving transformation that comes from God.
So much of the spiritual life is not achievement.
It is consent.
It is making space.
It is discovering that our carefully built foundations were never going to hold us the way God can hold us.
We live in a world that trains us to produce, acquire, achieve, improve, optimize, and move on. Even our religious life, healing, and souls can become projects to manage. So we thrash.
That image brings me back to the title of the series: Breathing Under Water.
When the water rises, when the truth crosses the threshold, when the sea we tried to keep at a safe distance enters the house, our instinct is often panic.
We thrash.
We grab.
We kick.
We fight for control.
We try to get out of the water as quickly as possible because surely the goal must be to escape.
But this series keeps asking a different question:
What if the invitation is not escape?
What if the invitation is learning a new way to breathe?
Nothing about this is natural to us. Underwater, the body wants to panic. Spiritually, we do the same thing. But willingness is the moment when we stop thrashing long enough to notice that grace is not absent from the water.
Week Five said: let the truth cross the threshold.
Week Six says: do not thrash your way past it.
Stay long enough for grace to work.
That is hard, because most of us would rather move quickly through discomfort than remain with it long enough to be changed.
We want to jump from “I did wrong” to “I said I’m sorry” to “Can we be done now?”
We want relief from guilt without transformation of the heart.
We want reconciliation without becoming different.
We want to repair the relationship before we have let God reach the pattern that caused the harm.
And I understand that.
Action can feel responsible and even look faithful. But sometimes action becomes avoidance, apology becomes control, and we try to make amends before we are willing to stop doing the very thing that made amends necessary.
That is why we pause here in steps six and seven: before repair, before amends, before the next brave conversation.
Maybe the most honest prayer this week is simply:
God, make me willing. Make me willing to be changed, to receive help, and to stop resisting grace.
Sometimes that help arrives through prayer, therapy, a sponsor, a doctor, a truthful friend, worship, rest, or the uncomfortable grace of being interrupted before we repeat the old pattern again.
God’s work in us is God’s work.
But we can become willing to receive it.
We can stop refusing the help because it does not look dramatic enough.
We can stop mistaking control for faithfulness.
We can stop treating discomfort as the absence of grace.
We can come to Jesus with our need and say:
“If you are willing, you can make me whole.”
And hear the answer again:
“I am willing.”
This week, the invitation is not to fix yourself, become perfect, or rush toward repair before grace has reached the root. Amends are coming. Repair matters.
But this week asks us to stay with the slower prayer: God, make me willing. Make me ready for the change that will make repair more truthful, more humble, and more whole.
God, make us willing.
Change what we cannot change by force.
Heal what we keep defending.
Soften what has become stone.
Help us receive the help you send.
And as we’ve prayed each week in the series,
God, meet us where we are,
and lead us toward wholeness.
Amen.
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