Hi, I am Terry, a grateful alcoholic.

Peace to us all and blessings on our meeting from our Higher Power -- whomever or however we conceive and understand. Over the past few months in my second year of sobriety, thank HP, I finally struggled into the Fearless Moral Inventory: AKA -- Step Four. I pushed this Step off as long as I could, in part because of my own scruples, my own desire to do this perfectly. I have struggled and wrestled and found the most complicated format I could to make SURE I got it right. I hear in voices here and there people whose HP is guiding them at different paces, with different gifts and different struggles. And as people come in and are welcomed and challenged, I see in myself my own joy and annoyance, and know that my struggles with others tell me about my own defects. Impatience is part of growth. We all want to arrive without growing through change. Change is sometimes painful and sometimes takes a long time. My Experience, Strength, and Hope is that my Step Four was one I did not want to do. I did not want to look at my past and present and open the dark corners and look face-to-face the fears and things for which I was ashamed. Yet as my sponsor gave me a deadline of today, I had to push myself to finish. And in the past few days especially, my honest and as thorough as I could be, Inventory started to change me to change how I saw myself; to humble me into realizing that I don't know whether my defects or virtues are more powerful in sobriety and this fellowship -- and ultimately to realize that it is the whole package that is loved first by my HP. I thank you for all you have done for me in bringing me thus far, and ask you to share the joys, lest we get lost amidst the struggles. Again, thank you.

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