I wanted to share the following beautiful illustration I heard at a meeting a couple weeks ago about the way one fellow member describes what it is like to do the 4th step:

He compared it to what we would do with a pile of garbage.  We have two choices:

The first is to put all our “garbage ” (emotional baggage, dirty secrets, grudges, and resentments) into a big trashcan in our mind, hide it in a deep dark corner, put the cover on it, and try to forget about it.  But some day, something will come along and turn our inside world upside-down.  Then that big trashcan will re-surface, the cover will come off, and all that garbage will be exposed.  But this time it will stink much more than it did when it was first put into hiding.

The alternative is to “take out the trash.”  To actually remove it completely.  Then, no matter what happens, it will never bother us again.

When we do the 4th step, rather than hiding our “garbage,” we actually get rid of it.  This gives us the confidence to move forward in our lives, comforted by the knowledge that there is no longer any darkness from our past to hinder us from the bright future we are promised through working the steps.