My credit score must be improving. I’m getting more and better junk mail. Here’s to clearing away some wreckage.
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I’m totally double dipping today. Sorry. I spaced it that today is Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement. I’m not Jewish, but I am fascinated by their faith, their culture, and their traditions. And this day is particularly important in the Jewish faith and it speaks to me in terms that I relate to my recovery.
According to Jewish tradition, God inscribes each person’s fate for the coming year into a “book” on Rosh Hashanah and waits until Yom Kippur to “seal” the verdict. During the Ten Days of Repentance, a Jew tries to amend his behavior and seek forgiveness for wrongs done against God (bein adam leMakom) and against his fellow man (bein adam lechavero). Read the rest of this entry »
This post was originally published Feb. 10, 2008 and was taken down pending adjudication of another case. Now that has been done and I am restoring the post.
To choose what is difficult all one’s days, as if it were easy, that is faith.
W. H. Auden
They tell me I seemed relaxed; that I did not seem bothered or distressed by the situation. On some level they are right. The outcome was in God’s hands. I was there to play the role He meant for me to play. I was meant to be accountable. Accountable is not a role I have played often. In fact, as I was having breakfast with my father yesterday morning I observed that this is probably the first thing in my life that I have taken accountability for without being forced by some external power. Going to court to account for my probation violation was all mine. Accountability – justice – is, after all, the essence of the 9th step and I did say that I am willing to go to any length for victory over addiction.
My violation was significant. They call it absconding from supervision. Of all possible violations this is the one they frown on most. They like those of us who are supervised to stay supervised. Most people who abscond from supervision compound the problem by also picking up new charges against them. Most people who abscond from supervision continue living the way they lived before. Most people who violate their probation and are sent to prison will tell you that the reason they are in prison is “they violated me”.
After the prosecution argued for imposition of the sentence underlying the original criminal conviction for which I am on probation, after my attorney argued on my behalf and after I addressed the court, the judge said very frankly that when he walked in to the courtroom he had intended to impose my sentence.
If anything, anything at all, had been any different, I would be in prison today. If I had not been sober for over a year. If I had been charged with any new crimes. If I hadn’t completed an in-patient treatment program. If I didn’t have the support of friends and family demonstrated by over a dozen letters and the presence in the courtroom of 8 people – 8 people! who took time off work to show that I matter to them (my sponsor, my sponsor’s sponsor, my roommate, a former employer, 2 friends, my aunt and most importantly my dad, who came up from Las Vegas to support me). If I hadn’t been able to demonstrate my commitment to 12 step recovery with attendance cards. If I didn’t have a job (even at McDonald’s). If when I posted bond to get out of jail I had done anything besides go directly to an AA meeting. If I hadn’t taken the 12 steps and if I hadn’t placed this at the top of my 9th step amends work. If I hadn’t been the one to initiate the process. . . if any one of these things had been different -and if I had anything less than a great attorney who believes in me- I would be in prison today.
I shouldn’t be surprised to receive a 9th step promise while making a 9th step amends, but I am dumbfounded by the degree to which God has been taking care of me all year. On my own I am not smart enough to conceive of such a perfect storm of good fortune. The only thing I did -the only thing- was that I became willing to place my trust and reliance upon God, a God of my own understanding, an infinite and loving God of all possibilities and to humbly do as I believe that God would have me do, and God has done for me what I could never do for myself.
“The essence of true friendship is to make allowances for another’s little lapses.â€
David Storey
I ran into a friend at a meeting last night. A friend who’s company I parted on not so friendly terms some months ago. A friend about whom I have written much 4th step inventory. While I have been diligent about much of ‘the work’, in the area of making (9th step) amends I have been a bit of a slacker. I’ve probably spent as much time googling my victims trying to figure out which ones are dead as I have contacting those who are living. The only area where I’ve shown anything like real courage is in the area of making amends to the State of Idaho. So there I am at a meeting that almost didn’t happen due to lack of attendance, the usual crowd away at an AA dance (I can’t even think about dancing sober, but I digress) when Corinne walks in. She sparkles. She is irrepressible. She is completely darling. When we got along, we got along so well.  When we parted there was much hurt on both sides.
It took me some time and some effort to stop seeing myself as a victim of the situation; to see that I had a role, perhaps a significant role, in creating the situation. Corinne and I have seen each other on a couple of occasions in the last seven months or so, but never really talked. I stopped going to meetings that she went to. I never mentioned her to mutual friends. I just kind of erased her from my consciousness. But there she was last night and that still, quiet voice told me that now was the time to clean up my side of the street.
After the meeting I got her attention, we sat down for a minute, I explained my understanding of what it was I had done that had harmed her and asked what I could do to make things right. And then, as I have learned to do, I shut up. I shut up and listened to the answer. Her answer was this. “I had a huge part in it, too, honey,” and she threw open her arms and hugged me.
See? Now that wasn’t so hard, was it?
Texaco, originally uploaded by Dr. Pudd LeBoy.
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