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.

Prideful, Me?

I've been thinking about pride alot lately. I've decided it may be the key to any healing in either ours or our spouses recovery. Think about it, as long as we are prideful we can't be humble. If we aren't humble we can't honestly admit our thoughts and behaviors have become unmanageable. We can't honestly evaluate what we need to change about ourselves, because we aren't honestly looking at who we really are and what we have become. Maybe we are seeing ourselves better than our spouses. After all we aren't the one with that awful addiction. We must be better then them. Well that is pride.

I honestly don't know what I found so appealing about pride that I held onto it for so long. It isn't comforting. It didn't bring me peace, joy or happiness. It actually caused anger and frustration. I'm wondering if it can be a little addicting itself?

It was so painful for me to admit my faults to myself let alone anyone else. It took me a while to come to terms with who I really was as opposed to who I thought I was. It hurt. I mourned and then I started getting help and healing. The good new is that it gets easier and easier to admit my failings and that I don't know everything and that I need God. He knows me better than I do and it's time to let him take the lead.