Potato Peels Are Just The Beginning – Steps 4-10

Who knew a few potato trimmings could cause such trauma in the kitchen! The day of rest turned into the day of the big mess with just a flick of the disposal switch. With chicken gravy on the stove and the taters my daughter had cleaned and seasoned baking in the oven, Sunday dinner looked like it was going to be a great success. I glanced into the sink as I passed by and noticed a few potato trimmings way down in the disposal. “Oh, it doesn’t look like there’s much there. I bet it will go down the drain just fine,” I said to myself as I flipped the disposal switch. I had an immediate second thought about my decision, but it was too late. Within seconds I knew I had created a giant problem. “Why oh why hadn’t I just reached down and pulled those scraps out and put them into the trash?”

My husband walked through the kitchen just as water with hundreds of little tiny potato peelings began welling up on one side of the double sink. The memory of the Sunday I put brown rice down the drain came to my mind. My husband just shook his head. He was silent, but “here we go again” was written all over his face. “Don’t you worry!” I assured him and invited him to leave the kitchen. I grabbed the plunger, ran the water and the disposal and plunged for all I was worth. Nothing! “Maybe if I just let it sit for a while something will break through,” I thought as I worked toward dinner. I could see that I was getting nowhere.

Eventually my husband and my son-in-law got into it. We did all the things people do. We ran more and more water. We ran the disposal again and again and of course, we plunged and plunged. We stopped up the disposal side of the sink to create some resistance and plunged and plunged some more. Nothing!

We used a pail and got all the water out of the sink, disinfected the area around the sink and sat down to Sunday dinner. We took a short break and for thirty minutes and we all pretended there was no problem. I sat and visited and ate and hoped that something miraculous was going on down in those pipes.

I won’t bore you or disgust you with all the details of the next two days. Suffice it to say that today our sink works. No small thing. One husband, one son-in-law, one neighbor, two plumbers and a lot of money later, the water flows freely.

I’ve learned a thing or two about our plumbing. A little disposal worth of potato peals can a very large mess make if those peals are trying to get down a small already mucked up pipe. The plumber says that once a month we should fill the sink with water, turn on the disposal and run water through the line to keep the pipes cleaned out!

This little experience with a plugged up pipe in the house made me think of the brilliance of Steps 4-10. I am like that pipe! Many of us come to apply the 12 Steps because in some aspect of our lives we are stuck. We can’t move forward and it isn’t for lack of trying. We are aware of many of our imperfections. Most of us have done some confessing. We’ve told God we wish we were making greater progress. We’ve said we were sorry and asked for forgiveness on several occasions, and we try not to go to bed angry. But we are still stuck.

When I first read through the 12 Steps I thought to myself, “Well, I kind of like the first three and the last three, but I’m not doing the ones in the middle. The following are the Gospel principles represented by the middle Steps:

Step 4 “Truth”
Step 5 “Confession”
Step 6 “Change of heart”
Step 7 “Humility”
Step 8 “Seeking forgiveness”
Step 9 “Restitution and Reconciliation”
Step 10 “Daily Accountability”

Today I see that not being willing to take those steps thoroughly and dabbling about with repentance is like using a plunger on a plugged up drain that is ultimately going to require a fifty-foot plumbing snake and daily maintenance.

The fellow that unplugged the sink was finally able to get to the root of the problem. Tuesday morning I woke up to a sink where the water could run freely, something I won’t take for granted again.

That’s the purpose of Steps 4-10 too. As I do the work required I discover a kind of water that runs more freely in me too. It’s the “Living Water”, the life changing water the Lord promised to that ancient “Woman at the Well” in John 4:10.

Now I truly don’t mean to offend by comparing our emotional and spiritual inner workings to the plumbing in my house. I know it’s not a very pretty picture, but it’s a picture the Spirit used to get my attention.

As it turns out, the potato peels were not the real culprit. The real problem was a pipe with years and years of build up that had to be cleaned out. It’s the same with our personal cleansing. Eventually, if we want to get unstuck we have to surrender to the process that promises to clean out the years and years of accumulation and free us to move forward.

By Nannette W.
Posted Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Copyright 2008 by Nannette W. All rights reserved. Making or sending copies is permitted if the page is not changed in any way and the material is not used for profit. This notice must be included on each copy made or sent.

Parents kind of WHAT? – Step 4 Truth

Leave it to the three year olds of the world to tell the truth as they see it. My brother and his wife had the good fortune of having two at the same time, boys, Landon and Gavin. Double fun! Double trouble! And, double the “out of the mouths of babes” moments!

These two three year olds were right on schedule with their first memorized Primary song. “I am a child of God,” Landon sang out one day. “And He has sent me here,” he continued. His proud parents appreciated every note and every word, pleased with the foundational truths there little fellow was beginning to grasp.

Landon’s rendition of the next part of the song took his devoted parents by surprise. Landon got a little bit creative. He sang out, “Has given me an earthly home With parents KIND OF DEAR!” Oh dear!

Landon’s adaptation was rehearsed for family and friends over telephone lines, over the Internet, and around the dining room table. His lyrics added a little levity to any gathering. There was a kind of knowing smile and laugh from anyone hearing the telling. Deep down I think we all know we fall short of “kind and dear.”

When we take Step 4 we “Make a searching and fearless written moral inventory of ourselves.” When I first read the 12 Steps I thought, “Well, I’ll take the first three steps and the last three, but I’m not taking those steps in the middle. I was afraid of what I might find, things I might remember and have to deal with that had long been put away. I had tried my best to be a good person, a good wife, and a good mother, but I knew in my heart that mistakes had been made, and though I don’t like the word, especially if it is attached to me, sins had been committed. What if I found that the bad outweighed the good?

To my surprise “Making a searching and fearless written moral inventory” of myself turned out to be a great blessing. It was a blessing because it was a careful visit with the Truth, with Jesus Christ, about me. Through the Holy Ghost He showed me my strengths and He verified my weaknesses. With the help of the Lord, taking Step 4 helped me put the events of my life into perspective. Before I took Step 4 I let Satan take my inventory for me. The devil only has two approaches. He either uses his resources to convince us we are doing fine on our own, or that we are worthless – Either that we don’t need God or that God couldn’t possibly need us.

People give a knowing smile when they hear Landon’s rendition of “I Am A Child of God” because his words speak the truth. It’s the same truth we find when we do our 4th Step Inventory. My parents were “kind of dear” and so were their parents and so are the parents of my children. Not one of us has managed to be “kind and dear” fulltime!

None of us will leave a perfect “kind and dear” record for our children. The most important legacy we can leave to others is that we knew our need and we called out for divine direction and power. The love we feel and the divine perspective we receive as we take the middle steps, the ones I wanted to skip, are invaluable. They propel us to sing out, “Lead me, guide me, walk beside me, Help me find the way. Teach me all that I must do To live with Him someday.”1

By Nannette W.
Posted Saturday February 7, 2009

Copyright 2008 by Nannette W. All rights reserved. Making or sending copies is permitted if the page is not changed in any way and the material is not used for profit. This notice must be included on each copy made or sent.

“She Did It!” – The Tiny Foundations of the Way We Feel About Ourselves – Step 4

My sister and I are three years apart in age. My only vivid memory of Jane as a baby has to do with something I did that was naughty. Here’s what I remember, this is the scene of the crime. Little one-year-old “Janie Bird” as they called her, is standing in her crib. She has just woken up for the morning or from a nap. I don’t remember which. Next to her is a plant on a table or a stand of some kind. Enter, big sister Nannette (me). Then, for some four-year-old reason, which I cannot explain today, I walk over to the plant and proceed to pull off all of the leaves. The leaves are scattered all over the floor when my mother enters the room. Looking at the plant and the floor and the two of us she says something motherly like, “Oh dear, who did this to my plant?” Great embarrassment and fear of being in trouble griped me and I say, pointing to my sister who is innocently standing in her crib looking on, “She did it!” The scene in my mind ends with my mother giving my sister an appropriate pat on the hand and saying, “No, No!”

That’s it! That’s the beginning and the end of one of the first things I placed in my 4th Step Inventory. After praying one night before bed that the Lord would help me have a memory of my fourth year on earth, I got out my little steno pad. On the left side of a clean page I wrote “age four.” The page was divided lengthwise into two columns, by a line. At the top of the first column I wrote the word “Regrets.” At the top of the second column I wrote the word “Resentments.” The first entry under regrets reads, “Pulled all the leaves off mom’s plant. Lied and told mom Jane did it.” Finally the entry ends with the most important part. As a thirty seven year old woman looking back, I thought through and recorded the “exact nature of my wrong,” which as you will see is different from the thing I did. “I lied because I was scared of getting in trouble and I did not want to disappoint my mother.”

Step 4 is to, “Make a searching and fearless written moral inventory of yourself.” It is the step of recording the truth, as we understand it. The 4th Step is the step many people put off indefinitely because of the fear of being honest, the enormity of the job, and resistance to thinking about unpleasant aspects of the past. When I first read through the steps I thought: “I’ll do Steps 1-3 and 10-12 but I’m not doing the stuff in the middle.”

Obviously, a 4th Step Inventory contains very serious memories of our past, times when we committed sin and times when sin was committee against us. So why do I bring up some silly, insignificant incident about the leaves on a plant and the little lie of a four-year-old girl?

Those who have taken these steps and experienced lasting recovery have learned that it is critical not to leave anything out. They refer to it as being “rigorously honest.” Apparently we are each related to that lovely young woman, of fairy tale fame, who underwent a test to see if she was indeed a princess. As you remember, she was required to sleep on a very tall bed made up of mattress upon mattress piled high. Underneath the bottom mattress was a pea. The story goes that no matter how many mattresses were placed on top of that pea she could not sleep, she could find not rest. Her inability to tolerate something even so small as a pea was the very proof that she was a princess.

The big things are critical, but the little things are also important. They matter. I had never apologized to my sister or my mother for this wrong. I had never even thought about bringing it up. But, as you can see, being the princess that I am, I had never forgotten it either.

Finally, this seemingly small beginning to my inventory is very important to my recovery today. Its peas size (or leaf size) is not important. It is important because remembering it and thinking about it allowed the Lord make me aware of two things about myself, things that are critical for me to understand in order to change and to live in recovery. First, in this incident I see the earliest signs of my very big fear of being in trouble. Second, I see a little girl who does not want to be a disappointment to anyone. As I read through my inventory I find that this is definitely not the only time these two reasons for doing wrong appear. On the contrary, they appear over and over again.

Our character weaknesses weave in and out of our story. As we fearlessly inventory the details of our lives, big and small, from the beginning to the present, we finally become aware of what we refer to as the “exact nature of our wrongs.” It’s hard to be honest about the big things and hard to believe the little things make a difference, but they do.

By Nannette W.
Posted Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Copyright 2008 by Nannette W. All right reserved.
Making or sending copies is permitted if the page is not changed in any way and the material is not used for profit. This notice must be included on each copy made or sent.