The Bible seems to be hard on those who want to look back. In the Genesis story, Lot's wife looked back to the cities of the plain and was turned into a pillar of salt. Two people who wanted to follow Jesus asked if they could first take care of some personal business, and were told in no uncertain terms that once they had put their hand to the plough they should be committed only to that.

One of the problems we encounter when we start to work the last three Steps is that we forget we cannot work directly on our problems. We come to Steps 10, 11 and 12 with a variety of issues, some large and some small, in the hopes that working on this last 25% of the program will make those problems go away. But there is a subtle but significant difference between making a problem go away and living a way of life which reveals there are no problems to begin with.

It's reminiscent of when we first came to Program. Perhaps we were addicted to food, and told our new OA friends about our addiction. As an answer, they offered the Steps. We looked at the Steps, but they didn't appear to address the matter of our addiction at all. And yet our new friends insisted that working those Steps was what had freed them from their addiction ....

It's pretty much the same with the last three Steps. We may work them, but the temptation is to keep looking over our shoulder at the problem. Our recovery has not yet taught us that looking at the problem can never provide a solution. We still want to be in the driver's seat, telling God as we understand God what we want fixed next. Instead, we find that Steps 10, 11 and 12 are a surrender all over again, a discovery of the fact that "our troubles, we think, are basically of our own making."