4.Step
Well, until now the program has been great. To accept unmanageability, that was natural and to believe in a Higher Power was an act of grace and to give my life and will over to the care of god was the biggest relief. If you have come so far in the program - congratulations. But now oh boy! Lots of people do not make it through the 4th step. They give up. It’s too uncomfortable. I don’t want to go into my past, I don’t really have any grievances or any excuses that you can think of will come up in your mind. But please do not stop. At this point I always have to remember what I wrote in the first step. All my addictions and the conditions that I don’t ever want to find myself again. I have to remember how I have been and the willingness to do my inventory comes by itself. It is amazing what comes up, when I just give myself the quiet time to just think and watch my mind. All those things that I thought I had already forgiven or that I never wanted to think about again. Every thing goes on the paper. It is amazing to me too, that I was so dishonest when I did my first 4th Step. And I did not even know it. For that time in my recovery I was as honest as I could be. But looking back I thought I could have saved myself a whole lot of pain through complete honesty.
The thing that I love so much about this program is, that I found out through meetings and being a sponsor, that there are no thoughts that have not been thought before. Isn’t that amazing? Every thought that I feel guilty about and want to hide, lots of other people have had that thought. So in other words it is never a big deal. It is only a bid deal when I keep those thoughts hidden. Meanwhile I love the 4th Step and the power and freedom I derive from doing it. The most amazing discovery is always the 4th column. What is my part of the story. I never want to see that, and if I do it is hard to see the whole story. That’s were my sponsor comes in. I often think when I have a grievance - oh I don’t need to write it down, I can just work it out in my head… But I have done that forever and it has lead me to my addiction. The power of writing it down, and seeing it there black on white with nothing to hide or alter it, is immense. In the action of writing it down I am actually breaking my habit of trying to find a solution to my problem. I simple admit that I am powerless, hand my life and will over to the care of God, write it down, tell it to another person and let God completely take care of me.
This is the 4th Step in a nutshell. It takes guts to do it, put the rewards are undescribable.