Pleading the fifth or taking the fifth

Coming into this program of recovery, they tell us if we do “the work” the promises of a new freedom and a new happiness will come true for us. What is this work we hear about? In our fourth step we dug deep to find the truth about ourselves. We had always been a victim of circumstances until now and we had to look at ourselves in order for the healing to begin .As we took our moral inventory, we started to see where we had played a part in our own life. The decisions we had made had been our own and we carried the burden of secrets and shame. Now what were we to do about that? The program tells us we must admit to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. If we kept silent, and only admitted these things to God, we would be robbing ourselves of the true gift of recovery. It is when we share our defects of character with another who understands our nature, that we will finally know a sense of belonging and acceptance. We will no longer be able to delude ourselves into believing that we are still a victim, and will we find forgiveness for ourselves and others, when we release the secrets safely tucked away. Finding a new sense of humility in this step, we may begin our spiritual experience.