Step 4
Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves
The essentials to recovery for me have been willingness open-mindedness and honesty none of which I possessed prior to my taking step one and transitioning through the process. No one person can get you sober: you have to really want it and believe in those who’ve gone before you and this is where my sponsor, who I am forever grateful to assisted me navigate the stormy waters of early sobriety. I owe a debt of gratitude to the old-timers at 3333 club Tampa Florida and Our Place Brandon for guiding me and giving me the ability to trust people and be vulnerable around my peers. My sponsor, a fellow Irishman from Dublin was the perfect fit for me as a spiritual guide and mentor. John had gotten sober on March 18th 1990, ironically the day after St Patrick’s day. I had about a year sober when we met and had gone through 2 other sponsors, having taken all the steps at this point but realized that there was something erroneous with life, and I again started to fall into restless irritable and dis-content mode. The real problem I now know was that I had failed to do a proper 4th step, I had deliberately held back and realized the truth in the phrase I had heard in meetings “your secrets will keep you sick.”
John was one of the first people I had met who I could truly trust, his whole deportment was of a man who had an answer and who had had the same difficulties as I did. Here it was straight out of the big book and he sat right in front of me!! I started from step one again with John and we ploughed through them with great zeal. When I started my 4th step which was within 2 weeks after our first meeting, he explained to me the difference between privacy and secrecy and was honest about his own short comings in a way that really sealed the deal of confidence and faith I had for him. His pet peeve he said, was how negatively the 4th step was presented by some people at meetings and his impression was they were usually people who didn’t appear to have a solid understanding of this vitally important step!!! The 4th step is NOT about fear. It’s about VALOR and EMPOWERMENT and don’t forget that!
He instructed me to bring up the 4th step at meetings and ask people attending for their experience strength and hope on fear. John told me when we sat down to talk about resentments and fears that I could tell him anything, because he wasn’t going to be around much longer anyway and would take it to the grave! He laughed as he told me he had 6 months to live. He had been diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer. After we completed the steps he said he was grateful for the opportunity and that I was the first person to have completed all 12 steps with him in his 19 years of sobriety. I pass along to all the people I sponsor the encouragement and wisdom of John and his sponsor Wayne, who became my sponsor on Johns passing in 2010. I attend a lot of 12 step meetings and always remember the importance of focusing on the empowerment of the 4th step as John had instructed me. He quoted Einstein to me and said “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.” Maya Angelou said “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” I was finally given the opportunity to meet myself for the first time, through the completion of a rigorously honest 4th step with the guidance of a dying man who believed in me and encouraged me to never quit no matter what.
Slainte