Midweek: Steps Five, Six, and Seven

Our dog sheds. A lot! My husband vacuums. A lot! It really is a symbiotic relationship. He likes to vacuum, and Luci provides the motivation. There's just one additional component. Each time my husband vacuums --or at least most of the time --I am apprised of his plunder (voluntarily or no) as he empties the canister. I just vacuumed yesterday and --did you see (displaying the container for my benefit) --do you see how much hair is in here?! Since yesterday! It's half-full! How is this even possible?! The second time he says "see" it is punctuated that I might actually look up from what I'm doing and see. I acknowledge his offense, and he is then free to dump the spoils of his labor.

Step Five: I admitted to God, to myself, and to another human being the exact nature of my wrongs. 

Step Six: I was entirely ready to have God remove all the wrongs of my past life.

Step Seven: I humbly asked Him to remove these wrongs.

All those things we explored, the results of our searching and fearless moral inventory; the answers we sought as we identified the wrongs we suffered, the wrongs we committed in our past life --these things we have collected and collated, the things we have admitted and recognized as being detrimental to us, these must be unloaded.

If my husband was to vacuum day after day without purging the repository of its collected debris, the vacuum would clog and would be rendered unable to do its job. Build-up would occur. The vacuum might eventually break altogether. It certainly would be unable to receive anything else.

The garbage we accumulate as we live in a fallen world, even the wrongs we have committed toward others must be addressed. Once addressed, they must be dumped. The anger that builds in response to abuse, the shame that takes root in response to the betrayal of a friend --these are things we must confess. Yes, I allowed this to hold me in bitterness. Yes, I did that in order to score. And admission is liberating, but we must be liberated even further by submitting to the liberation of the cross, Jesus Christ, the Power greater than ourselves. We must submit these wrongs to the standard of a perfect, holy God, a standard we can never hope to meet by our own efforts; but a standard that has been met by our Savior, Jesus Christ. We claim the blood of Jesus over these things, knowing He has purchased our forgiveness by His own body. We speak these wrongs aloud that we might be emptied of them and prepared to receive all God has intended for us. We expose our dirt to the Light of the World, Jesus, asking that we be forgiven and made new; and we ask others to pray for us and hold us accountable in our wrongs and the obsessive behaviors which resulted. We want to remain clean and free to receive the newness of life in Jesus as we submit to the work of the Holy Spirit to the glory of the Father. 

Collecting Luci's daily flotsam and jetsam is important. We don't want to live in that, suffering from allergies and finding fur in everything from our towels to our tomato soup. But we don't --or, rather, my husband doesn't go around collecting in order to preserve it for posterity. It's acknowledged, contained, and discarded, a byproduct of life. As are the wrongs that occur in this world. But stand back, pay attention, See!, when we are made empty of our grief, our fear, our rage, our resentment --the byproducts of life --and we partner with Jesus and a trusted confidant, we will be filled with fullness of joy and have life in abundance!