The Spiritual Pillar
The Bedrock of a Well-Lived Life
“Gun to your head. Give me one.”
Craig was back. His broad-shouldered frame loomed over me with his hand extended, waiting for me to respond to his demand. My eyes darted between four cards laid out before me on the floor. Fifteen minutes earlier, I had written My Marriage, Recovery, My Family, and Career on those cards, not understanding why we were being asked to list the things that mattered most to us.
My eyes stuck to the Career card. I reached for it and handed it to Craig.
“I’ll be back,” he said as he sidestepped to the person sitting next to me, who already had their index card extended and ready.
We had been at this for only fifteen minutes, but they felt agonizing, building toward this moment. Every pass Craig made required you to give away one more thing you valued in life. Though purely theoretical, I dreaded this next round from the start.
My eyes scanned the last three cards, cycling through them countless times. I hoped for a momentary flash of insight, but I was met with silence in my mind.
Suddenly, Craig appeared before me once again, his full-sleeved tattooed arm extending an open hand in front of me, demanding a choice.
“Gun to your head,” he said, quietly this time with a hint of caring support in his voice. Somehow, he seemed to sense my agony.
I reached down, picked up a card, and lifted it toward him. The word Recovery stared back at me.
“Ok,” Craig said in a fatherly tone that made me wonder if I had just caused disappointment, discouragement, or quiet anger.
I sat pondering my selection. Before his next time around the circle, Craig stopped and centered himself at the whiteboard and faced our group.
“By this point, only two of you have held onto your Recovery card over other things that you value in life,” he exclaimed, “so I think we can draw this exercise to a close.”
“Let me be clear with you,” Craig said, giving pause to ensure everyone’s attention was drawn towards him, “whatever you chose to value above your recovery, you should plan to lose.” Craig paused, giving everyone time to glance at the cards by their feet.
He took a breath and continued, “And the cornerstone of your recovery will require you to develop a real and personal relationship with God.”
Bullshit, I thought. I felt my face flush with anger. I don’t need God as a part of my recovery story.
Looking up, I met Craig’s eyes and sensed he could see the discomfort and conflict in me. Somewhere, buried in the pile of cards he held in his hand, I had handed my recovery over to him.
That lesson stayed with me. I couldn’t reconcile the idea that I was supposed to prioritize my recovery over every other aspect, every other person, in my life. And that God was to be the center of my recovery journey.
No, I thought, it just couldn’t be true.
But things changed. They changed slowly at first, as I replayed Craig’s lesson in my mind. They continued to shift as I heard people’s stories of how finding a higher power gave them the capacity to endure hardship in recovery.
Then, all at once, it completely shifted—triggered by a simple statement from an old man I will likely never meet again.
“I don’t want a God that I can understand.”
Those words undid every defense I had built. Nearly two decades of attempting to reason and intellectualize God into a box that I could understand were completely upended. And the most shocking revelation was freedom. I finally felt the permission to approach God and begin turning things over to Him.
The Spiritual Pillar is finding the faith to turn everything over to God: fears, worries, victories, defeats, shortcomings, and my recovery. It is finding the patience and perseverance to travel difficult roads, knowing you’re not alone. It’s finding the humility to accept that God’s plan for you might not align with your own selfish desires. It’s about building the capacity within yourself to serve others.
I finally came to understand that building my Spiritual Pillar, a real and personal relationship with God, wasn’t strictly about church attendance or adherence to a certain denomination. It’s not moral superiority, ego-driven performatives, passive faith or evangelizing with words.
It is about aligning your actions with the way that God intended and instructed you to act. It was about me finally listening, after years of pushing back.
It started simple, but these simple actions formed the bedrock upon which the Spiritual Pillar is built. I prayed. I worked on communicating with God to rebuild the relationship I had turned my back on. I didn’t memorize extensive scripture, but instead I found three simple moments each day where I could connect with God.
Every morning, “Thy will, not mine.”
To quiet my ego and trust that God had a plan.
As anxiety, stress or challenges arose, “Worry not.”
To trust His plan and release what was never mine to control.
To close each day, “Thank you.”
To remind myself that every day—whether filled with struggle, monotony, or treasure—was a gift.
The relationship grew out of these three foundational moments of connecting with God.
While the three pillars may stand in symbolic unity, I found that the Spiritual Pillar is the bedrock of a meaningful existence. If grounded and strengthened, it holds when it feels like all else has fallen apart.
After hardship, if it remains standing, life can be rebuilt around it.
Without it:
Discipline becomes ego.
Emotional awareness becomes self-absorption.
Recovery becomes fragile.
This is not built through performative action. It is built in the quiet moments. It is built in spaces where you can sense a higher power’s presence. It is, strictly between you and God.
No one else can turn your life over to Him for you. That’s the work you must do to create the bedrock all pillars are built upon—for a lifetime and beyond.
Keep showing up,
Kyle Layne Zibrowski