Step Three: “Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.”
3rd Step Principle: Our free will must be activated in trust for our Higher Power to channel Its creative life force through us. (Principles after the First Step are constructed from personal reflection and acceptance. Use my version or formulate your own.)
AA Extracted Value: Faith
ACA Extracted Values: Willingness & Accepting Help
Other Extracted Values: Spirituality
I used to think surrender meant weakness—like giving up, backing down, or losing control. But Step Three isn’t about giving up—it’s about handing over. Not in fear, but in faith. It’s the first time I truly tested the idea that something greater than me might actually want what’s best for me.
This step asked me to decide—not to fully understand, not to perfect a belief system, not even to feel spiritual, but simply to activate my free will in the direction of trust. That was enough to begin.
My will had been running the show for so long—driven by fear, ego, shame, and the desperate need to protect myself from pain. I thought I was strong because I was in charge. But what I really was… was exhausted. I wasn’t free. I was trapped in my own survival mechanisms. Step Three invited me to consider another possibility: that there might be a Life Force, a God, a Higher Power—not only bigger than me, but also kinder than I could imagine.
The principle behind this step hits home: Our free will must be activated in trust for our Higher Power to channel Its creative life force through us. That truth rearranged something inside me. My will isn’t the problem—it’s the isolation in which I tried to use it that caused the pain. Step Three offers a path where my will doesn’t have to be erased, only aligned. That means I still get to show up. I still get to choose. But now, my choices are made in partnership, not panic.
Faith is the AA value, and it’s the word that probably scared me the most when I got here. It sounded abstract, soft, maybe even naive. But in practice, faith became something simple: a willingness to keep walking even when I didn’t know the way.
In ACA, the values extracted are Willingness and Accepting Help—both of which were muscles I hadn’t used in years. Willingness meant being open to change, to guidance, to not knowing. Accepting help meant admitting I couldn’t heal alone—and trusting that help wouldn’t humiliate me. That felt revolutionary.
And Spirituality—the value that quietly hums beneath all of this—isn’t about religion or doctrine. It’s about connection. It’s about believing that my life has meaning beyond my mistakes. That there is something alive in me that’s worth protecting, nurturing, and guiding.
Step Three is a decision—a quiet but powerful one. A shift from fear to faith. From control to connection. From surviving alone to living in relationship with a Source greater than myself. I don’t always do it perfectly. But every time I choose trust over terror, even for a moment, something holy happens.
And I keep deciding. One day, one step, one surrender at a time.
Daily Reprieve 
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