A 9th Step Amends ... the Rest of the Story

This story follows a man’s journey from childhood thief to spiritual restoration through the lens of recovery. As a youth, the author stole church offerings to fund his childhood gaming habit eventually spiraling into a life of alcoholism and atheism. His journey through Alcoholics Anonymous led to a profound spiritual awakening, prompting him to return to his father’s old parish to offer financial restitution. The story concludes with a moment of clarity, as he realizes that volunteering to count his current church’s tithes serves as a living amends for his past transgressions. Ultimately, he finds peace and humor in a life once defined by guilt, fully embracing a Higher Power that transformed his character.

True Stories of Alcoholics and Addicts.  Struggles, insights, physical, emotional and spiritual recovery.

Transcript

Daryl 0:11

Hey, welcome to Miles of Recovery. Today's episode is about something a lot of us carry for years. Guilt, the kind that doesn't just go away. I'm Darrell 18 years in recovery, and I'm Kim, 16 years in Al-Anon. Today we're sharing a night step story that brought real lasting emotional relief. So whether you're deep in recovery or just wondering what a sober life even looks like, we're glad you're here. And just a quick note, this podcast isn't affiliated with AA or any other 12 step program. We simply share stories of what it was like, what happened, and what it's like now. This one's called a Ninth Step Amends. The rest of the story, My father was a disciples of Christ minister in a small town in Northern California. My mother was the secretary and treasurer for the church Sunday offerings. Came home to the parsonage where we lived, and as I got older, I was able to help separate and count the monies. Eventually I was also able to separate and count the monies I pilfered into my pocket. I don't know how much money I stole, but I know it continued for at least a couple of years and included some mailed in tithings. I figured out along the way who sent checks and who sent cash so I could nab the cash envelopes before they were accounted for. Now, as an alcoholic, you might think that I was taking this money for booze or drugs. Very reasonable assumption. But the reality is I had not yet had my first experience with either of these. I was, however, already addicted to pinball machines at the bowling alley. Another fairly important part of this story is that at 18, I did have my first drink, and it was life altering. I felt I'd found life's panacea. My fear of people was washed away, and my need for the God my father introduced me to had no further usefulness I could comprehend or accept. This led me on a path that allowed me to convince myself that there was no God. I decided it was a contrived entity, which I wanted no part of. I could then continue with a selfish and self-centered course, seemingly without the guilt that came with religion and an all knowing God. No more God, no more church, no more Bible, no more guilt, and essentially no more morals. Just fun. This was my new world, my new life, a good life. Fast forward to 2007 based on my life's expectations and desires. You'd think I'd finally made it. I had a wife, a young child, beautiful home on a river, couple of boats, great dog companion, and an impressive title. All the things I'd worked so hard to achieve and I might add. These things came along. With a serious case of depression, paranoia, and loneliness, that 30 years of what I considered the good life had me at the proverbial jumping off place. I had reached a spot in my life that I no longer saw any reason for my existence, my cure-all booze, no longer satisfied any of my needs. Then one random morning, I had a powerful spiritual experience, and with AA guiding me, I got sober, found a higher power. I had some serious difficulty with the word God in particular, and other terms I related with religion, but there's a sentence in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous on page 47 that reads, do not let any prejudice you may have against spiritual terms deter you from honestly asking yourself what they mean to you. Reading this was and remains a powerful reminder for me to check my history and my own prejudices. I had to reconsider how I perceived all these terms and with some difficulty. I was finally able to call that higher power God. I was fully convinced that he, though I don't perceive God in any gender form, was absolutely at the core of everything. As part of the AA program, I was working the ninth step required that I return to my hometown church to make financial restitution. My father long gone. My mother no longer a church going. My new wife and I visited that church where I spent so much time during my early years. I did my best to come up with a dollar amount I'd stolen from the church over those years. I brought that wad of money and an anonymous letter that I'd written outlining the details of my actions and why I was making this financial amends. I dropped them in the offering basket as it was passed along the pews. I was teary-eyed throughout the service and was so grateful to have had the chance to do the right thing. Thank you, God. And check one off that eighth and ninth step list. I still had no plans to initiate a practice of attending church ever again. Alcoholics Anonymous, our big book, and those AA that came before me were all I needed to continue my spiritual growth. As I reflect on my time in recovery, I find that my absolutes, those things I am most certain of often are just the challenges. God needs to help me with my seventh Step Humility Project through a series of events, God directed events. Combined with my burgeoning willingness and open-mindedness, I ended up agreeing to accompany my new wife to church. It's something she needed and wanted, and I was now so willing to help her that I would even go so far as to attend church with her. Fast forward again, a couple years later, my wife and I were now regular weekly attenders at a community church near our home. We were asked if we would consider becoming counters for the offerings at this church. She and I discussed the pros and cons. We were committed to the church. We were on a new spiritual journey, but one Sunday a month for three hours after the final service. That is a lot to ask of us, so we decided we were going to decline, but we did sit on our decision for a few days just to be sure. During this brief reflective pause, I was at my daily morning AA meeting, and the night step came up as the topic and I was asked to share. I shared a couple of experiences, including the very moving experience I had going back to my father's church to make my amends. At that moment, it was like lightning struck. It was one of those wonderful moments of clarity. I saw the whole picture as a child. I stole money intended for God's use. I paid that back as a direct amends and now he was giving me an opportunity to engage in a living amends for that wrong from so long ago. I laughed. Thank God for making it obvious to me and for allowing me this opportunity to make it right. I told my wife about this epiphany. We laughed together over how that higher power does have a way of making things so very clear. Sometimes. We committed to being a member of the count team, and after a couple of months actually became the count team leaders. So every fourth Sunday we sat down a locked room at the church, fired up our computers, set a prayer, and began the painstaking process of carefully processing the offerings down to the last penny. I was able to smile thinking of how I got there and say thanks to that understanding for giving, and loving higher power that I call God today. I thank him for all the opportunities given me, and I maintain such appreciation for having been given a sense of humor around the lessons provided instead of the guilt, shame, and remorse that I once lived with. Thank you for today's story, Darrell. I love the ending. You often put in your prayers and please make it obvious. God really did this time and still we almost missed it. You grew up a pk, right? I was a preacher's kid. Your dad's the minister, your mom, the church secretary. It's basically the family business. Yeah. And frequently, back in those days, the tithes and offerings were simply brought home to be counted by your parents and later by you as one of the trusted family members. You're funny. That is a lot of trust. It's also known as temptation. When it's put in front of a kid, it really is. And I can just picture Junior Darrell taking that deep well of trust and quietly siphoning off those Sunday offerings to fund your secret underground addiction, which is. Well, not what we might assume, right? Because we aren't talking about drugs or booze here. No, we're talking about pinball. It sounds so wholesome, but actually it sort of set off this chain reaction in my life. My fairly innocent childhood cunning, which was honestly just an obvious solution to my desire to have more time on the pinball machines. Kind of pretends my 30 year battle with alcohol. The secrets that life requires for that. Mm, and lands us at a surprising redemption. That honestly felt a little bit like a cosmic joke. I think it was. And here's the deal. No matter how big or small or transgressions, they have a way of hanging over our heads. I believe I used alcohol not only to feel more comfortable with people, places, and things, but to alleviate the guilt I held onto over a lifetime. I love how the universe often known to many as God sometimes offers us the exact if ironic opportunity we need to balance the scale. So let's go back to those childhood Sundays. Church funds were just sitting in your living room waiting to be sorted, counted, and deposited. That's right. It was actually at the kitchen table. My parents trusted me to help, which was really an honor, I would think, but also a temptation. Yeah, a temptation. I fully availed myself too. And you were strategic, weren't you? Yeah, I was. I was pretty strategic My, he was starting very early in my life. You didn't just grab handful of cash. You actually figured out the underlying mechanics of the whole system, didn't you? Yeah. Including who reliably mailed in cash and then you intercepted these envelopes before they were ever officially logged into the ledger. Yeah, I was a pretty calculating kit. I took dimes and quarters and then I got some dollars that were sent in the mail to the parsonage. Oh my. So you were basically running a high efficient. Uh, little embezzlement operation right under the noses of your parents. Yeah. Never got caught. How else was I gonna fund my pinball, you know? So as a child, how did you rationalize stealing from your own father's church just to play an arcade game? Well, stealing from a church sounds malicious to us as adults, but in my child mind, it wasn't some grand moral rebellion. It wasn't a rejection of theology, it was just a very practical problem solving exercise. The problem being, I need more pinball quarters, so the solution becomes equally simple. They're unaccounted for cash envelopes in my living room. You didn't view your actions through the heavy lens of adult morality. I was just focused on, well, not getting caught. Right, but of course, childhood ends and the stakes get significantly higher. I turned 18 and I had my first drink, and I found what I truly believed at that time was a cure all, which implies that before the drink touched your lips, there was already an underlying issues, anxiety, a deep discomfort that you felt desperately needed. Curing. Exactly. It entirely changed my worldview. I deliberately started shedding my old beliefs, my moral compass. I convinced myself that there was no God. He just didn't fit into my new lifestyle. As you mentioned in your story, no more God, no more church, no more guilt. Yeah, just fun. You call it the good life, and it was for quite some time, but as I learned very hard to sustain when our actions don't align with our deeply instilled values, it's trouble. It's so uncomfortable being in that state of friction. A person generally has two options. You can change your behavior to match your values, or you change your beliefs to accommodate your behavior, which is often the path of least resistance. Yeah, I took that path of least resistance. I rejected God so I could drink and behave without guilt or the lingering shadow of those stolen envelopes, right? I tailored my reality to fit my addiction, but over time, alcohol your panacea. Becomes your prison. Yeah. It turns out you can't simply flip a switch and become a joyous atheist. The guilt doesn't just evaporate. It doesn't actually vanish just because you declare God a contrivance. It just went underground. That's exactly right. So for much of my adult life, I was no longer just drinking for fun. I was drinking to medicate a constant low level anxiety, and over time, alcohol stopped being a party. The walls of guilt and denial got heavier to hold up, which brings us to the inevitable collapse of those walls leading you to your powerful spiritual experience. And then with the help of aa, you miraculously got sober as part of that recovery. Your program suggests you find a higher power. But you'd rejected all that, hadn't you? Yeah, I had for 30 years I've been running from all that. It just represented guilt to me. Thankfully, I was able to separate the actual word God from the heavy authority figure of my childhood to the supportive guiding higher power. I now feel is the core of everything. But church doors were permanently closed in your mind. No question. We all know the danger of dropping absolute lines in the sand, don't we? So you find yourself doing the very thing you swore you would absolutely never do. And we started going to church together. We did. And I got handed an ironic full circle moment. But first you got to make a living amends to your childhood church and clear your conscience. But God was not finished with me yet. No. And honestly, we could not have scripted a better story. Well go figure. God does that kinda stuff. Do you remember how honored we were to be asked to be on the count team? Mm-hmm. But also like spent three hours every month in a windowless room counting the offering. Oh hell no. Yeah, I remember thankfully my higher power made it obvious that very weak at my morning AA meeting and the topic was on the ninth step, making amends. I shared my experience of going back to my family's church to drop off the envelope of cash. And you had your big epiphany. Yeah, I did. As a kid, I stole money intended for God's use. As an adult, I made amends by repaying the church, and now God was making my next move very obvious to me, giving me the opportunity to count the offerings with integrity and making a living amends. A living amends. Can you explain the distinction between a direct amends and a living amends? Sure. Paying back the stolen money was making amends for something in the past. Joining the account team was a practice for the present. And going forward, sometimes circumstances don't allow us to make a direct amends, so making a living amends is another way to make things right. And that was the feeling after you had made these two types of amends? Well, the guilt, the shame, and the remorse all lifted. And we were able to laugh about the whole thing too. You and I, I laughed about how incredibly clear God makes things when I'm willing to pay attention. So the release from this burden of guilt isn't just about erasing mistakes or writing a check to clear the debt, right. It is also about finding the humor and the purpose in the mistake or crime, if you will. It is about allowing your past, even the darkest parts of it, to become a tool for service rather than a weapon of self-destruction. Hmm. I love that. Before A, I didn't have the tools to manage life like I do now. I just drank away my guilt and problems. Today. I have the steps and solutions, but not the hangovers. So basically you went from a kid skimming from the collection plate to a cynical booing adult running from your conscience to finally a sober. You were able to find humor and redemption in the exact same act of counting church money. That's right. So to wrap this up, I want to challenge you listening to this right now to take a look at your own past. I spent so much of my life trying to outrun the worst versions of myself. Maybe you can relate. We build these walls of absolutes saying things like, I will never go there again, or I will never do this again. What if the universe's ultimate test isn't about how far and how fast you can run from your past? Right? Sometimes the most useful thing we can do is to walk back into the very room where our transgressions began and this time act differently. Thank you so much for joining us. We hope this story brought some humor to your day, as well as some insights you may have had similar experiences If so, the solution is simple, right? Making an amends can take a lot of courage, but it is simple and the relief is undeniable. If any part of this story felt familiar, just know you are not alone, and if this episode meant something to you. Share it with someone who might need it too. And if you feel so inclined to help defray the costs of producing this podcast, please donate at buy me a coffee.com/miles of recovery. And lastly, we'd love to hear your story. You can get those to us by emailing Darrell at da r@milesofrecovery.com. It's about progress. One step at a time leads to miles of recovery. We hope you'll join us next time for a story about the ninth step in God's time.