The Fifth Step
ACoA
It was 1992. I had been attending my church’s Adult Children of Alcoholics group for about three years. After growing up in church, attending Bible college, and having positions of leadership in Christian organizations since high school, I began to understand God’s plan for sanctification. To my surprise, the understanding happened through my journey with the 12 Steps. The 12 steps of Adult Children of Alcoholics introduced me to God’s grace.
The modeling and teaching of the group facilitators were used by God to literally turn my world upside down. I remember the night I couldn’t stop weeping. One leader paused the meeting and said, “Louise, I see that you are struggling tonight. Is there something you’d like to share with us?” To which I responded, “If all of what you are teaching us is true, it changes everything for me.” I was half afraid and half hopeful. And, of course, it was true and it did change everything.
Working the Steps
I began to work the steps as best as I could, eventually tackled the fourth step of making a searching and fearless moral inventory of myself. I found myself unafraid to create the list. I looked forward to the freedom I would experience as a result of putting everything out on the table. I wrote the list as honestly as I could. I recorded what I did and the permission I gave myself to do it. I didn’t hide anything, even the really bad stuff.
God, Myself, and Another Human Being
Next, I needed to complete the fifth step of telling God, myself, and another human being the exact nature of my wrongs. I started with myself, reading aloud what I had written out longhand in Step 4. Everything on the list was mine to own. Each sin I committed I did because I wanted to. No excuses. No minimizing. Just saying it as it was. My pride wanted to keep the sins hidden even from myself, but in order to heal, I needed to own it all.
I then told God, confessing to Him what He already knew. I postured and pretended for so long that I was above certain sins. Naming the ugliness of my sin before Him allowed me to then experience His forgiveness and grace. I remember my amazement at not feeling condemned by God. His gracious mercy was a gift, though I didn’t yet fully know how to accept it.
In the last part of Step 5, I needed to confess my sins to another human being. It felt scary. I had done some pretty rotten things. What would someone say who heard everything on my list? Would I ever be trusted by them? Would I ever be loved or respected by this person if they knew the worst of me? Would I ever be used by God, or was I too broken? I decided I needed a person I trusted to be my listener. I asked my mentor, Nancy, and she agreed.
Receiving Grace
We set aside a time for me to come over to Nancy’s house. I brought my list and sat at her kitchen table. I went through page after page of my sins that I had heretofore hidden from myself and others. She cried with me, displayed unfailing compassion, and lovingly accepted me. I remember taking a deep breath before I told her about my most egregious wrong. She didn’t flinch. Her eyes brimmed with tenderness and understanding.
When I concluded, Nancy affirmed me for being brave, told me she was humbled by my trust in her, then reminded me of God’s full forgiveness and grace. She assured me that all I had shared with her didn’t change her opinion of me. It instead made her trust and love me more. We ended with her praying a blessing over me. I walked out her front door feeling lighter and freer than ever before. Scripture verses of God’s grace that had up to that point been theory became reality, which took me another step further on the trajectory of healing by God’s grace. Being accepted as I am because of God’s grace is indeed what changes everything.
James 5:16 “Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.”
Photo by Jasmine Reskp