Talking to God

Action Steps for Step Five:

1. Admit to Heavenly Father

Here we get to tell Heavenly Father what we came up with in Step Four. None of this will shock or surprise him, he already knows all about it. I think this is for us. It helps humble us. Yes we have to admit we aren't as good as we thought we were. We admit it then we can work on changing whatever it is that needs changing. I think this also helps our relationship with God. It brings us closer together. It helps us turn to him and admit that we do need him after all.  This is were you can ask yourself the questions:

Are my Step 4 inventories sufficiently thorough to prepare me to confess to God?

How will this confession bless my life? 

 After doing this step the first time, I now try to recognize things as I go and do this then instead of having to dig them up from the past. But, things may still pop up now and again. The great thing about doing this is God is so loving and merciful. He is easy to talk to. He always listens with an unconditional love. Don't you wish everyone did?

Three Gifts

In the Family Support Guide  it lists three gifts that we receive through working Step Five.

1. Self-awareness
2. Self-evaluation
3. Self-acceptance

They can come softly or you can have an aha moment, and wonder why you didn't see that before. Frankly this is a very liberating step. Hard, but liberating. I think that is where the self-acceptance comes in. I had so many mixed emotions about myself before going through these steps. I felt unloved, inadequate, ugly etc. This addiction can really cause our self-esteem, what little we may have to start, plummet. As we go through the steps we can begin to see ourself as God sees us and learn to love ourselves again. This step is so vital for our healing. Elder Dean L. Larsen said:

It is necessary to accept ourselves with a self-love that is neither vain nor selfish, but rather one that is tolerant and understanding.

I read an interesting article yesterday in the Oct. 1996 Ensign called  "Sins and Mistakes". It was really comforting actually with something that had been bothering me. I highly recommend reading it.

Honesty

Sleep is so overrated I'm lucky if I get 5 hours of continuous sleep. I should just get up when I first wake up because I don't go back to sleep. Think how productive I could be, instead of lying there hoping I'll fall back to sleep. Maybe tomorrow.

Today I'll start on Step 5. I'm still going to do Step Four but I've decided that is going to take a while to go through that book and really get to know myself. Actually, I'm going to make it a personal progress project. It will definitely be over ten hours. I'm sure I can fit it in somewhere.

Step 5 is Honesty. The Key Principle: Admit to Heavenly Father, to ourselves, and to another person experienced in Twelve Step recovery the exact nature of our wrongs.


Last time I did Step 5 I had stayed in Step 4 for months because I didn't want to do Step 5. So I made an appointment with someone to do Step 5 so I had to finish up step 4 and move on. I needed to move on it was time. Talking to another person about my failures etc. was what scared me. Talking to God was not the problem.  I now look back and think I didn't want to admit to myself that I had problems. I wanted only my husband to be the problem. He was the one with honesty issues, right? Obviously  I had some growing up to do. I will say that after Step 5 was done the real healing began. So this is so important. I think really getting honest with yourself about yourself is vital to making any lasting, real changes. Isn't that what we are here on earth for to learn and grow to become more Christlike? We can't do that until we acknowledge our character weaknesses, etc.

So take a deep breath, gird your loins and take that leap of faith.