Another one of those lessons

I called my sponsor and another elder statesman in recovery the other night about a situation that is new to me. Below is the story and the feedback.

I started sponsoring Fred about 3 months ago, Fred is a periodic, and he doesn’t call on regular bases, only periodically. Fred is new to recovery so the periodic calling doesn’t surprise me, we have sat down and talked a few times, went through some suggested readings out of the Big Book, more or less pointed him in the right direction and figure he will call me when he needs to or is willing. I need to say that Fred has called a couple of time when something was going on he needed to talk about, so he does communicate just not as much as suggested, (suggestions are just that, a suggestion from people who have traveled the road before you and are living a good life in recovery but they are not commands and you don’t have to follow them if you don’t want to, freedom of choice). Fred called last night, he wanted to set a time to meet and talk, we decided to meet prior to the Tuesday night men’s meeting and ended up talking for little over a ½ hour. Fred was engaged to a woman named Linda; they had known each other for 3 years and been engaged/living together for about 6 months. I have known Linda for 2-1/2 years; she has been in and out of recovery, spent time in a halfway house, and spends time in and out of the mental health hospital. Linda is one of those sick people who craves attention, jumps around in relationships and cheats a lot, if she doesn’t get attention she does things to make sure she gets it and some of those things aren’t very health. She is bi-polar with manic tenancies; she goes off and on her meds depending on her moods. I don’t think she has ever had much more than 6 months of clean time since I have known her. She has a hard time getting along with sponsors because of wanting to things her way or wanting to be babied, she is compulsively dishonest too which doesn’t help her relationships with the people who try and help her. Like the elder statesmen said last night she is one of those sick and lost souls. Fred is aware of some of this but the old saying “love/lust is blind” pretty much applies to how he sees things; he is realizing some things though so the blinders are opening. Last night Fred told me about all the games Linda was playing with him. My response was to not communicate with her and remember that both of them are sick people. Both have been going to a couple of meetings a week mainly at the local meeting house and Fred is afraid of running into Linda at a meeting, I suggested going to different meetings which we are blessed to have around here.

Now here is where sponsorship and using the network of solid people in recovery comes in to play. I called the elder statesman to get his views on Fred’s honesty, Fred worked for the elder statesman for quite a while, he told me to take what Fred says with a grain of salt, o.k. so now I can hopefully weed out what Fred is saying and not buy into the exaggerations. Linda has a new AA sponsor; she also has an NA sponsor who she seems to be fairly close with and from what she says uses. The AA sponsor just happens to be my sister. This created a whole new dynamic to me sponsoring Fred. I am not overly close with my sister, in fact since she has gotten sober we have drifted further apart, she is part of the Christian sect of the local AA scene and I am not; I am very active in service work and receive quite a bit of attention from it and also from being insightful so I perceive there is a bit of jealously going down, as I have said before my ability to do service work and my insightfulness are both gifts and I down play them as much as possible. Having said all this my sister is still my sister and I want to look after her best interest. My sister doesn’t know Linda at all; she has only been to a couple of meetings with her. My sister is very naïve; she is sugary sweet, talks a lot about God and not a lot about basic Big Book recovery, she isn’t well versed in AA literature, so her recovery is based more on what her sponsor says, what she picks up in meetings and stuff from her Bible study and Christians in Recovery group. I have a feeling Linda choice my sister because she is so nice and probably subconsciously Linda feels my sister will baby her the way she likes. The things that were going through my head where; do I tell my sister what I know about Linda and maybe save her some emotional turmoil, do I let her know that I am Fred’s sponsor, just in case a hassle surfaces? While waiting for my sponsor to call me back I thought to myself “if Marilyn wasn’t my sister how would I react?” The answer was that with the exception of a couple of very close friends I wouldn’t say anything; to the close friends I would only mention to be careful. The thing with sponsorship is that as we sponsor people we learn things about ourselves, we may not be able to keep the sponsee sober but we keep ourselves sober, we get a bigger picture of our strengths and weaknesses, sponsoring has amazing highs and bitter lows but if we see these highs and lows in the right light it becomes a wonderful act of service and an opportunity for more spiritual and recovery growth. My sister has a good sponsor to talk to, she will have use the tools she has to be as effective as she can with Linda and she still may fail in helping Linda work the steps and stay sober. When I was talking to my sponsor he said that if someone is BS’ing us not being honest, eventually we figure it out. He agreed with my assessment on whether to tell Marilyn what I know about Linda, yes we want to protect our siblings but are we really protecting them when there may be a life lesson to be learn, our selfish desires shouldn’t get in the way of learning about life on life’s terms. Something else we talked about is anonymity and tradition 12; anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our traditions ever reminding us to place principles before personalities. I am responsible for Linda’s anonymity, what she has said in the meetings, what I have observed and heard from her are private matters. What Fred says to me is private, this is something I am very strong on, I don’t have serious conversations with the people I sponsor when others are around, I don’t share information that is told to me in confidence with others with the exception of my sponsor or trusted elders and then I don’t give the persons name. Whatever happens between Fred and Linda is in the hands of the future, if there is “my sponsor says this. Well my sponsor says this” incident which brings some kind of confrontation between my sister and myself then I will deal with at that time and hopefully have the awareness and insight to deal with it a constructive and compassionate manner. I am sure I have probably read too much into the “what if’s” in having my sister sponsor someone who is a complicated relationship with one of the guys I sponsor, but for me the best thing to do is talk it out with someone I respect, also non-action is a great help, just sitting opening the mind to what is going on and seeing all views of the story.

Don’t know if any of this makes sense but another way me to understand things is in writing them out. Grow is so important spiritually and in recovery and it is things like the above that give me a chance to grow, to see a couple of defects that need attention and once again to practice living in the moment, stop projecting and kick your expectations to the curb.