The Wreckage of the Past
“The wreckage of the past becomes the wreckage of the future if we do nothing with it today.” -Anonymous
I have yet to meet an alcoholic or addict that didn’t have to face up to some fairly unpalatable realities upon sobering up. Let us never forget what we did when we used:
We stomped over everybody. We lied, cheated and stole. The ends justified the means. We pushed to get our way at the expense of others. We made promises we never intended to keep. We borrowed money and we didn’t pay it back and oftentimes, never had any intention to. We betrayed trust in the most cavalier fashion. We were the kings and queens of entitlement. We trashed our most valuable relationships to the brink of collapse. I have yet to meet any one of us that doesn’t have a long litany of yesterday’s mistakes. Just because we sobered up does not wipe our slate clean. The real work begins when we inventory the mess we made and develop a plan to correct it.
This is a hard discussion to have, so please bear with me…
It has taken me over six years of diligent work on my recovery to make amends and restitution for a lifetime of mistakes. The worst part is they weren’t mistakes. They were decisions that I made impulsively driven by my addiction that demanded that I be treated extremely well. With that guy making the decisions, today we find out just how bad they were since we remain responsible for them.
I adhere to the axiom that the spiritual must precede the material. To do so, the order of things must be God first, people second and me last. With this as my compass, I got straight with God. I quit messing around and stopped hiding from Him. If it is possible to hurt God, I hurt God. He repeatedly offered me opportunities to live a blessed life a long, long time ago. I said no and it likely made Him sad. Here He offered me an incredible existence and I said no thanks. What the hell was wrong with me? Oh yeah, addiction. But that was then and this is now and now, we are doing it right.
I then made amends to the people in my life. To my surprise, most everyone accepted my apology. I did that simply by being genuine, kind and honest in everything that I did. I made a sincere apology and never acted like that rapscallion again. I became a rock for them, stable and unchanging, always ready to serve when asked. They were able to see the spiritual shift that took place in me and believe it to be real. That is because it is.
That just leaves me and the money.
My first sponsor warned me that turning over to God our will and our lives meant that we give Him everything. If we hold on to anything, we hold on to everything. He went on to say that the last two things an alcoholic turns over to their Higher Power is their money and sex lives. This is where the true nature of control and the internal battle that it creates in an individual is played out. Until we turn over ALL of our control issues to God by putting Him in control of EVERYTHING, the wreckage goes nowhere and frequently, continues to pile up even more. Refusing to acknowledge the wreckage of the past is what creates the wreckage we experience today.
Finally, don’t worry about the money. This isn’t about the money. The money was just the medium that we used to please self. This is about living a life of accountability today doing what we can to make up for the mistakes we made and living a reasonably happy life in the process. We do this with dignity. We don’t climb up on the cross and hang there. We simply get on with the business of right living. If we are living a spiritual life, God will do with money what he is done with all of our other problems: solve them permanently. When you are ready to handle your money responsibly, God will give you the money.
In many ways, this process is even more painful than quitting drinking. We have to face everything we feared and avoided our whole lives and do it sober. If we knew we were going to live this long, it would’ve been nice if we had been more thoughtful. But since we weren’t, we convert all that past chaos and crazy into a foundation of a much better life that we will progressively live each and every day. That was how it was explained to me, how it is done.
Action Plan Today: Grab a shovel and start digging.
Thank you
Jim
James A. Francetich is a freelance writer and author. The opinions expressed are solely of the author and do not represent any community based recovery programs, private or public entities or any governmental agencies.