Adapted for a more personal fit, from June 11th's Courage to Change in Alanon.
I invite you to share your amend misadventures....
I invite you to share your amend misadventures....
Step Nine says I need not make direct amends to those I have injured, if in doing so, I might cause further injury. How do I recognize those opportunities where not making a specific amend is the correct action?
Prayer may be the best way to discern when direct amends are appropriate. Otherwise I can just trust the action of the Eighth Step, knowing that if I take time to become truly willing to make amends, the opportunity to make a given amend will arise naturally at the time when I am ready.
Or I may decide that making an amend will only hurt me further. This can happen when someone is a bully.
I am thinking in particular about the amends I'd like to make to a friend who was once my Sponsor. I so wanted to heal a misunderstanding that came up in email correspondence with her. Yet, I had good reason to fear her rejection, because she had decided the program had done nothing for her, and she wanted me never again mention my gratitude for her role in my life. When I realized the hopelessness of the situation, I chose not to apologize, but to take care of me instead. I did my own inventory around my need for acceptance and approval. Almost two years later, I still think this was the correct thing to do.
Should I ever see this woman again personally, I will take my cues from my Higher Power as to what to say and do.
I will pray for courage and ask my Higher Power to help me find the words. And I will look for the miracle of healing in me, not her.
It helps me to realize, that "my Higher Power does not put any challenges before me that I am unable to face. The comfort I find in that knowledge can overcome my fears."
"The lure of the distant and the difficult is deceptive. The great opportunity is where you are." John Burroughs
I think I sometimes use this as my "out". A way of not having to make amends. I also know that if I truly am doing God's will, not mine, whether to make the amends or not, will be revealed to me.
ReplyDeleteYes, I wondered if I too used this as my way out of making an amends. And then, I remembered, when someone is a bully, it is most unlikely that my HP wants me to suffer again at their hands.
ReplyDeleteThere are other ways to make amends. Sometimes it is me that needs the healing, more.
Just honoring her wishes may be enough. I think that living amends are a good thing.
ReplyDelete