IS YOUR SELF INVENTORY OVERDUE OR NONEXISTENT?

Did you take a self inventory in January? Or is your inventory made at another time? June 30th? September 29th? Today? I mean an honest, lengthy, true or false inventory of where you are in life, what your problems are, what you have or have not achieved but still want to. Something like this, say in the category of problems?

T.F. I bite my fingernails to the quick.

T.F. I don't look persons in the eyes when I'm talking to them.

T.F. I don't let persons finish their sentences before I start talking.

T.F. I don't brush my teeth after every meal.

Or, do you dare to write down, where your own eyes can see it, something like this?

T.F. I am an alcoholic.

T.F. I use street drugs.

T.F. I steal, lie, cheat.

T.F. I am self-centered and indifferent to problems of others.

You say you don't have any problems? Nuts! We all have problems of some kind and to some degree. They may be something like those on the first list above or they may be big, beastly, family-wrecking, self-wrecking, soul-killing ones like those on the second list.

Why not, this inventory time, gear up like St. Paul? Put on the whole armor and go out to meet personal problems, smite them hip and thigh and wrangle them, pit-bull-like if necessary, into oblivion. Maybe come next inventory time a better letter could be circled.

Big talk? Well, big talk for big problems like those in the second list. Let's pick one. Alcoholism. Assume we have a half dozen alcoholics right here in River City. I hear you laugh. Two dozen? Your laughter continues. A hundred? since I still hear your derision, I'll stop estimating and say it is a big problem.

What would be the first line of attack for the alcoholic to move from T to F? Or F but in progress or continuing? I'm not schooled in such tactics as is Alcoholics Anonymous, but I would think that writing such a statement down on paper and staring at it might be some sort of a first step.

Alcoholics, I'm told, are so into denial of their problem that they probably wouldn't dare write down such a problem on any self-imposed inventory test. This being the case, they'll go on in their self-delusional way, fighting like Don Quixotes at windmills they think may tear away their hiding place. For it is a hiding place. Not like Corrie Ten Boom's Hiding Place, which hid the Jews from the German police so they could escape the Holocaust but a hiding place where they execute their own holocaust and in due time drag others along with them into the "ovens of death."

Someone who cares might rattle a key in the alcoholic's door lock, someone who loves him/her, determined to get in to help a friend, but the door has to be opened from the inside. The host must come to the door and say something like this, "Come in. Sit down. Let's talk. I have a problem. Help me." Sounds somewhat like William Holman Hunt was saying in his picture, "The Light of the World," doesn't it?

I've listened to recovered or recovering alcoholics and, fleetingly, I think of this picture, for they say, "I didn't want to open the door. It was my mask, my mask to keep from facing a problem I didn't want others to know about, didn't even want myself to know about, a false face put on to fool even myself. A false face that, when speaking, rationalizes, "It was my dad's fault. It was my fraternity brothers' fault. It was my Aunt Minnie' dog that got run over. It was a lot of physical pain I had. It was that I couldn't keep up with my peers. It was . . . it was . . . it was . . ." Finally, seeing the emotional/physical wreck he/she has become, seeing the pain he/she is causing others, the false face drops away and there, real lips say, "It was my fault. Help me."

Now here's where indifference comes in, number four of the second list. You thought that problem rather tame to put in with the other three, didn't you? Indifference to one who wants you to care can be a cruel and killing weapon.

I once saw a young lad, three or four years of age, run up, victoriously, to his mother and say, "Look, Mom, I caught a grasshopper," and the mother said, "So?" That word, "so," with the disinterested inflection at the end is one of the meanest words spoken. It is indifference incarnate. It is never one you want to use if someone tells you, outright or veiled, he or she has a problem.

Last week there was a letter in Speak Out by an acknowledged recovering alcoholic. A sad letter. He/she speaks of suicide because of depression. The depression may be caused by a feeling that no one cares about what he/she is trying to do. Should we think or say, "so?" with that hateful inflection? If you do, you've got a problem. Write it down. Maybe the recovering alcoholic can help you with it. The one who has overcome a problem is stronger than the one who has never been tested.

Hang in there, anonymous speaker. You had the guts to face your problem. You wrote it down and faced it. You may be the very one God needs to help someone else.

REJOICE!