“We have to deal with the sorrow. We may try to stuff it down and ignore it. We may try to drown it by giving in to our addiction or avoid feeling it by intellectualizing. But sorrow doesn’t go away. We need to accept the sorrow that will be a part of the inventory process.”
Step 4, Constructive Sorrow devotional, The Life Recovery Bible, p. 1489.
Those of us that have gone through the process of a personal inventory know the emotional pain that resurfaces. We understand why people in recovery don’t want to go through the process. It means having to relive some of our past in order to heal from it. We have to write down and speak the pain we’ve experienced and/or caused others. That never feels good. But it’s completely necessary.
We are essentially cleansing our heart, mind, and soul from the shackles of our past hurts. We don’t realize how much our emotional experiences keep us trapped in the past—whether good or bad. And it’s the bad emotions that we’re cleansing by doing a personal inventory.
I view the personal inventory as a “walk through our past.” We’re going to relive some, if not all, of the emotions we felt as we recall the experiences that have impacted us. We don’t need to remember every single thing right away. We start with the experiences that are foremost in our memory. The ones that we personally know keep repeating in our mind. Those repetitive hurtful experiences are the ones we need to let go of. And a personal inventory helps us do that.
“Recovery is the process by which we find new ways of coping and dealing with life instead of using and avoiding. The only way to proceed in that process is to uncover our shame and allow God’s light and life to flow in and heal us. We have made a beginning in the first three steps, and now through working Step Four, we find the roadblocks to lasting recovery.”
Project HEAL Christ-centered Recovery Lessons, p. 14.
The goal is lasting recovery. We don’t just want to be recovered for a year or even a few years. We want to be recovered for the rest of our lives. We’ve already spent enough time damaging ourselves and our lives. It’s time we find the courage to move in and through our past so we can heal.
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