“Nannette, do you know any four year olds?” – Step 5 The Gift of Perspective

We turn to addictive substances and behaviors instead of turning to God, and one of the reasons we do is because we don’t think God likes us very much. Many of us start feeling bad about ourselves when we are very little, at least I did, and it doesn’t take much.  I’ll never forget sitting across from my sponsor, opening up my notebook and beginning to read.  “Age two,” I started, “I resented the little boys who pushed my tricycle into the gutter full of water on irrigation day and who rubbed grapes in my hair.”  “Age four” I continued with trepidation “I regret going into a shed with some little boys who wanted to have a two second peek at my “backside” and then lying to my dad about it.  There, I’d said it!  So embarrassing!

My sponsor’s response– “Nannette, do you know any four year olds?”  Four year olds?  My thirty-eight year old mind scanned through all the little people I knew and loved.  Tears came to my eyes.  In an instant, I came to grips with the fact that this moment of immodesty, the moment that was the beginning of all future certainty that God was disappointed in me occurred when I was only four years into earth life.  New perspective is one of God’s great gifts as we take Step 5, the confession step.  Do you know any four year olds?

By Nannette W. Posted Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Copyright 2011 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.

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.

“You Are More Important Than The Couch!” – Step 5 – Confession

I started babysitting when I was about 10 years old, mostly for my own family. I had one little sister and by the time I was twelve I had five little brothers. My favorite part of the babysitting was when everyone was finally in bed. That was when I could watch TV, make cookies, or just work on a project in solitude, a hard thing to find in a house of nine. There were times when my parents came home to find me in tears because I was not successful at crowd control, and my little brothers refused to take their “tween” babysitter seriously.

The “while I was babysitting” tears I remember most poignantly though, had nothing to do with my noncompliant siblings. On this particular night they were all sound asleep. My parents had just purchased a new couch. It was something they afforded over time by saving a portion of my dad’s monthly schoolteacher salary. To that point most of the family furniture had been the, “We have a couch if you think you could use it” variety. The kind that newly weds are grateful to get. That night I sat on the new sofa wondering what to do with all the quiet when I suddenly had a fancy idea. I would do my nails. Well you probably have guessed where this story goes, or at least where the nail polish went. The bottle of clear polish that I set on the middle cushion of the long saved for piece of furniture tipped over and spilled.

There was absolutely nothing I could do to fix the mess. I cried until I didn’t think I could cry any more and then I cried some more. It was the longest evening of my life. I imagined over and over the moment when my parents would enter the door and I would have to tell them what I had done.

Well, of course the moment finally arrived. My confession was short and full of genuine remorse. I don’t know what I expected, but what I received from my mother was the following:
· Truth – “What’s done is done.”
· Direction – “Please don’t paint your nails on the couch.”
· Action – “Let’s turn the middle cushion over.”
· Empathy – “I remember the day,” my mother shared, “when I broke my mother’s beautiful vase and thought I’d die, and she told me I was more important that the vase.”
· Love – “You are more important than the couch, Nannette!”

As parents, my husband and I have used similar words with our children who were in the painful position of needing to confess something difficult. “Your more important than the car, the insurance rate, the lamp, rug, the money…”

Step 5 is one of the most courageous Steps we ever take. It is to “Admit to yourself, to your Heavenly Father in the name of Jesus Christ, to proper priesthood authority, and to another person the exact nature of your wrongs.” Now, I certainly realize that spilling fingernail polish on the new sofa is hardly representative of the very difficult things we are called to confess in Step 5, but my experience and the experience of others who have taken this step bears out that our loving Heavenly Father and the ecclesiastical leaders that represent Him are as merciful as my mother was that sad night.

When we turn to the Lord in honesty and humility and share those things we profoundly wish we had never done, He meets our confession with truth, direction, action we can take, empathy, and love. The old saying goes, “Confession is good for the soul.” The great blessing of confession is the peace that comes from knowing that we have been square with ourselves, with another human being, and with God. Now we can move forward. And if we listen carefully we will feel Him say: “You are more important to me than any mess you have made!”

By Nannette W.
Posted Wednesday, April 8, 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.