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May 1 – Bringing Darkness to Light · The Daily Ripples Podcast

• 0:02
  Well, welcome back to the Daily Ripples podcast. Today is May the 1st. And, you know, we can't
• 0:11
  really go any further. And I've got a couple of guests on here with me today. But the first thing
• 0:14
  we've got to say is, of course, it's gonna be May. Y'all know that one, right? Justin Timberlake.
• 0:21
  Okay, Justin.
• 0:22
  All right. Yeah. Don't leave me hanging here. All right. So for those listening, again,
• 0:26
  And I am Pastor Mike.
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  I am the host for the day.
• 0:30
  Corey, we couldn't work it out to be together for these next few days, but I have some guests
• 0:36
  with me, and they're going to be here with us for today and through May the 4th.
• 0:40
  And so if you like what you hear today, tune back in for the next few days as well, because
• 0:46
  you'll be hearing more of these voices.
• 0:48
  But again, I am Pastor Mike, and we're going to go around the room and introduce ourselves
• 0:51
  in proper recovery room fashion, starting with the lady.
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  Steffani.
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  Steffani, alcoholic.
• 0:58
  All right.
• 0:59
  And we have?
• 1:00
  Nervous, recovering alcoholic and addict.
• 1:02
  Very good.
• 1:03
  So we've got some alcoholics in the room.
• 1:05
  We've got an addict in the room.
• 1:07
  And we've got some Jesus followers in the room today.
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  And so we're going to kick this off the way that we always do with those brief introductions out of the way.
• 1:15
  We're going to launch right into reading our Daily Ripple for the day.
• 1:19
  And today is May the 1st, and our Daily Ripple is titled, Bringing Darkness to Light.
• 1:26
  The Stone. What I hide begins to control me. Secrets grow stronger in the dark,
• 1:33
  but they lose their power when brought into the light. Ripple 1 is practical. Today,
• 1:39
  I will be honest about what I've avoided. I will not isolate myself behind silence or shame.
• 1:47
  Sharing truth with a trusted person breaks the cycle of hiding and opens the door to real change.
• 1:52
  Ripple 2 is spiritual.
• 1:54
  When I bring my whole self before the Father, the Holy Spirit heals what has been buried.
• 1:59
  As I follow Christ, who is the light of the world, darkness no longer defines me.
• 2:04
  Over time, honesty transforms my thinking, and freedom replaces guilt.
• 2:09
  And as always, we'll save our prayer for the end of the episode.
• 2:14
  But let's start by talking about this stone that we have for today.
• 2:19
  You know, it says, what I hide begins to control me.
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  One of the things that we say, I know, in the rooms of recovery is that we're only as
• 2:27
  sick as our secrets.
• 2:28
  You know, that's one of the things that we say often.
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  And, you know, and it continues in the stone with the secrets grow stronger in the dark,
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  but they lose their power when brought into the light.
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  You know, and I found that to be true in my life, you know, and just to back up a little
• 2:44
  bit. As we start the month of May, obviously, these daily ripples are derivative from the daily
• 2:50
  reflections, you know, the AA publishes, and AA's daily reflections typically follow the theme of the
• 2:56
  month matching the step. And so we'll be talking this month a lot about the fifth step. And the
• 3:01
  fifth step is the step that comes after the fourth step and before the sixth step, because we always
• 3:07
  do them in order. But the fifth step is where we admitted to ourselves, to God, and to another human
• 3:13
  being the exact nature of our wrongs. And what we mean by that is we go through the fourth step
• 3:18
  that we just got finished doing, and we confess all those resentments, character defects, flaws,
• 3:24
  you know, anger, things that we have. Now, for either of you who wants to jump in first,
• 3:30
  I guess one of the first things that might be helpful to anyone listening is,
• 3:34
  what did you get out of doing your fifth step? Ladies first.
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  Smooth move there, Memphis. That was good.
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  So I can tell you this.
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  Fifth step is not easy.
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  It's a simple process.
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  But to lay bare things that I may have drank over in the past, to disclose things that I find shameful, is not easy.
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  So to do a fifth step with another alcoholic requires trust.
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  What I got out of that is a spiritual experience.
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  There is something very frustrating about releasing shame and guilt over past sins or indiscretions or character defects.
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  It allows you to unlock parts of your life that you've kept secret for your entire life.
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  And I know it's not the most simple thing.
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  I think step four starts the process of you actually having to think about those types of things.
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  But in the Alcoholics Anonymous book in chapter six, and I'm, Corey, I got you here, buddy.
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  All right, Steffani, fill in for Corey today.
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  Awesome.
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  Uh-huh.
• 4:59
  Page 72, it says that there is doubt about it.
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  In actual practice, we usually find a solitary self-appraisal insufficient.
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  Many of us thought it necessary to go much further.
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  And we will be more reconciled to discussing ourselves with another person when we see good reasons why we should do this.
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  And the good reasons behind that is it's a vital step we have to do.
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  Otherwise, these secrets will make us drink again.
• 5:38
  Absolutely.
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  Well, Memphis, you're not off the hook.
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  What thoughts do you have about that?
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  Well, I am not going to quote from any part of the big book, so you're free of having that be repeated.
• 5:51
  Don't worry.
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  I never do either, so you're saying.
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  But what I will share, and I've got to go back a little bit in time to go back to the first time that I went through my four-step and my fifth step with my sponsor.
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  It was, you know, I wasn't in a place where I had a relationship with our power or God in my understanding, as I prefer to say today.
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  You know, so for me, there was only a portion of the wrongs that I really even owned.
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  You know, I had spent so much time in addiction and convinced myself that a lot of the wrongs weren't wrong.
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  So that didn't just come immediately.
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  So my fourth and fifth step weren't real thorough, but they were as good as I could do at that point.
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  Because that's how willing I was at that time.
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  Fast forward to several years into being in the program and developing a relationship.
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  It changed for me.
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  I got to a dead end in sobriety or a crossroads, I would say.
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  And if I wasn't going to get honest, I wasn't going to get the true freedom and release to be able to find a life that could be filled with joy.
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  And so for me, it took that time of developing a relationship, and it took me being around people who had a relationship with the God of their understanding.
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  and I needed to be able to see what that looked like.
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  And, you know, so it wasn't something that I could,
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  I couldn't just, I couldn't grab it.
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  You know what I mean?
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  It was something that it took me having to struggle in sobriety
• 7:55
  without a drink or a substance for me to be willing to seek that.
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  And over time, you know, that's how I developed a relationship with the God of the understanding that I have today.
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  But it came through struggle.
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  I was going to say, I think that's a great point.
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  My initial fourth step I did was only a small amount with the willingness that I had with the problems that I was dealing with.
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  Over time, I've done several four steps because as I go along this journey, things get revealed to me that I need to process through and I need to talk through with another alcoholic.
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  So this is a journey.
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  It's not a destination.
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  It's not a one and done type of thing.
• 8:44
  Yeah.
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  And I guess the question is when you've done those subsequent, you said you've done many four steps.
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  At what point does it stop being a fourth step and it just becomes the 10th step?
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  And for those who are not familiar with the recovery lingo, the 10th step says that by
• 8:59
  the time you get there, we're supposed to continue to take personal inventory.
• 9:04
  And then when we're wrong, promptly admit it.
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  But that continuation of taking personal inventory, because like both of you kind of mentioned,
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  I mean, early on, you know, 12 plus years ago, you know, when I was doing my fourth step,
• 9:17
  you know, for, as we've all talked about the first time, as it were, you know, and I pulled
• 9:22
  it up, as a matter of fact, just last week, you know, I still had a copy of it. I pulled it up and
• 9:27
  I was kind of looking at it. And I was thinking about how it had obviously the big things, you know,
• 9:34
  the major wrongs that I had done, the major resentments that I had. But by no means would I
• 9:40
  think that in looking back that I thought it was comprehensive, but it kept me sober and it moved
• 9:46
  me on to the next step, and, you know, I'm still sober today because of it. So clearly, that is the
• 9:52
  measure in my mind of success is, you know, am I still sober today from having done that? The other
• 9:58
  thing that I think about with this, you know, concept as we enter into the month of May, you know,
• 10:04
  with this topic in particular about the, you know, confession or sharing of our wrongs with another
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  the person, because it's not easy to do. And I've got some scripture that kind of goes along
• 10:18
  in the same vein with this, but Memphis, you hit on something about past sins that you didn't want
• 10:25
  to call sins or admit that they were sins, right? And sin is a very loaded theological word. It's
• 10:32
  very loaded from a faith perspective. Sin is a wrong committed against God or what have you.
• 10:38
  And then, if I'm honest, I sometimes struggle with the alcoholism or the drug addiction, the addiction side of it, because the medical community recognizes that as a disease, right?
• 10:52
  I mean, we say that we have the disease of alcoholism.
• 10:55
  And so if it's a disease, then how is it a sin?
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  Because I think of a sin as something that you do intentionally, but I also know that a sin is something that you can unintentionally do as well.
• 11:07
  But regardless of what we think about it, in the book of James, you know, in the Bible, the fifth chapter, verse 16, it says, you know, therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.
• 11:19
  The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.
• 11:22
  And I think, Steffani, you mentioned earlier about that you had to have a good reason to do that fifth step, you know.
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  And the reason for me early on in doing the fourth and the fifth step is that I saw the fruits in the lives of people who had done it.
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  I saw that they had something in sobriety and recovery that I wanted.
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  They had a piece that I wanted.
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  And they told me that they got that piece by doing a fifth step, by going through and listing out all those things in the fourth step and then sitting down with somebody and admitting all of those things.
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  which if there's anybody listening who wants to give that a shot, just see what it may reveal to you.
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  And you think, well, I don't know who I could actually sit down and do this with.
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  Number one, if you're in therapy or counseling, that's a good person to do it with.
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  And then, of course, you know, a clergy person or just a trusted friend, somebody that you know is not going to go and gossip.
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  And that's one of the things that I think is the most powerful about the recovery community is that,
• 12:23
  Generally speaking, we hold each other's confidence is probably better than I'd say most of the outside world does.
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  Because we know how important it is that in the honor of somebody coming and sharing their fifth step with us in the same way that we trust and share that with another person.
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  It's a trust that anyone who's truly working the steps of recovery, I don't believe, would try to violate that trust.
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  You know, this is not a, it's not a room of gossip.
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  At least it hasn't been in my experience.
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  But moving on to the ripples, you know, because we spend a lot of time talking about just the
• 13:03
  power of this.
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  But, you know, it says that today, you know, that we should be honest about what we've avoided
• 13:09
  and that we won't isolate ourselves behind silence and shame.
• 13:12
  And again, it goes back to what we said at the beginning, you know, we're only as sick
• 13:15
  as our secrets, you know.
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  And so I think what might be beneficial at this point, just to kind of model it for everybody
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  else, is that each of the three of us need to share our deepest, darkest secret.
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  I'm kidding.
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  We're not going to do that.
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  The point is to do this with a trusted person and not blast it out all over the internet.
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  But what kind of, has there been any, you know, fruits of the Holy Spirit, if you will,
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  that you've experienced in your lives from having done your fifth step?
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  Yes, I almost got away without answering your question about what I got from taking a fist up.
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  So I'll answer that real quickly, and I'll tell you that.
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  The fruit that I got from that was the freedom to live and to live in a way that it was okay to make mistakes.
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  It was okay to trust in my choices and my decisions when I asked for guidance from the God of my understanding.
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  That's the benefit I got from it.
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  I got healthier relationships with my significant other, with my friends.
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  So that was the benefit.
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  But, you know, today, because, you know, and I was sure we were having this conversation meeting the other day about anger.
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  But, you know, today with having being guided by the way God would want me to do things, it allows me freedom.
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  It allows me the opportunity to openly share my mistakes with someone
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  because I have a relationship with them and I trust them,
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  whether that's with my sponsor or with family.
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  So that is, it keeps my slate clean.
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  It gives me the opportunity for someone to be empathetic to me
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  when I do make a mistake because they know I'm coming from a place of honesty.
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  For me, this has given me a different perspective.
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  So when you take those secrets and you bring them into the light,
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  it exposes the guilt and the shame, which may or may not be founded
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  based on the perspective and the stories that you tell yourself
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  and the thinking that you have.
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  And what I have found in Alcoholics Anonymous is that I am not unique.
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  I've got a fellowship and a brotherhood and sisterhood of people who have done similar things that I have.
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  And we can speak openly and honestly about that.
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  And it takes away that shame.
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  It gives me the freedom to be able to be authentic.
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  And I think that's one of the things that, and I talk about this every once in a while,
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  but there's certain things, of course, that the recovery community can and has learned from the
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  church. And then there's a lot of things that the church can learn from the recovery community.
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  And one of the things that the church can learn from the recovery community is just that being
• 16:23
  open and forgiving of people's past, whatever they have in the past. So we're going to talk more about
• 16:29
  the past on tomorrow's episode for sure. But just that not condemning people, not judging people,
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  you know, just being open and just accepting people as a fellow, you know, broken traveler,
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  trying to walk in the light, trying to avoid the darkness. And sometimes that gets lost,
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  you know, on the church pews at times. And that's something that, you know, hopefully that,
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  you know, the church can kind of recover that sense of community of kind of like,
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  We're all in this together. And one of the other of you touched on this too, you know,
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  and it's part of the spiritual ripple. It says, over time, honesty transforms my thinking and
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  freedom replaces guilt. Because for me, there was a lot of reactions and actions that I was taking,
• 17:14
  you know, in my alcoholism and early recovery that I didn't even realize were being driven by
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  my guilt and shame. And it wasn't until I sat down and inventory that and then talked to somebody,
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  The talking to somebody to me is what unlocked that final, you know, barrier to that freedom of moving past it.
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  Because until then, you know, it's all theoretical.
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  It's between me and my higher power, of course, but there's something about vocalizing that to another person that makes it real.
• 17:46
  And, you know, it kind of goes back into the stories that you hear of people in recovery all the time of,
• 17:51
  well, you know, I had my fourth step inventory, but I wasn't going to tell my sponsor this.
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  But then when I sat down with him, before I knew it, he or she shared something bad from their past.
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  And before I knew it, I was telling the worst thing that I had done.
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  And a lot of people talk about the freedom that comes from that.
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  And so I just hope that anybody listening can experience that type of freedom that comes from that self-evaluation and from sharing of that with other people.
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  Let's close with our prayer for today.
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  Father, give me courage to bring what is hidden into the light.
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  Through your Spirit, heal my heart and renew my mind as I walk in the truth of your Son.
• 18:30
  Amen.
• 18:31
  Amen.
• 18:32
  wish.