Blog entry for:

the love, and the experience that my sponsor has given me, is a debt i can never repay and i am grateful that each of the men who have sponsored me, unconditionally gave of themselves, to guide me along this journey. my only hope is that i can give the same to the men who call me their sponsor. it has been a year since i wrote my last FOURTH STEP and began the process of exploding the lie that my life was based upon. the FIFTH step that followed shortly thereafter, has brought me to a spot where i can start to see that the regrets i feel for the life i “might” have had, are just smoke and mirrors to keep me from moving into this new manner of living, free from the garbage i carried for so long. i have to thank Carlos for encouraging me to dig deep and get rid of this particular nasty bit of my reality. i truly was not ready before a year ago to accept what i was and what i carried with me. worst of all, i can now see that my regrets are causing barriers in certain aspects of my life that i will need to dismantle if i have the desire to grow.
this morning, what came to the surface was a bit of concern about those who call me their sponsor. there was a time when i was willing to invest more their recovery than they were willing to. the last of my sponsees from that paradigm, is currently missing in action. part of the reason i invested so much of my time in helping him along his journey, was that he was a ward of Boulder County and then the State of Colorado, and as such, lacked the ability to come and see me. since leaving the care of the state, his contact with has dwindled down to nothing and when i texted him a week ago, i got no response. in my experience in recovery, that is usually not a good sign and all i can do is hope that he has not spun down into a life that will lead him back to the welcoming arms of the State of Colorado, once again. i have absolutely no power in this situation and am letting go, it certainly is part of a pattern of behavior i have seen in the past and the outcome is never good.
what i am feeling, as i approach the end of this exercise is because i am grateful for what i have today, that forgiving those who have trespassed against me, may be where i need to go. i gave of my resources willingly. the fact that some choose to use what i have given them and others do not, is certainly not my stuff and nothing i need to carry forward into this day. i have ignored my sponsor enough in the past, that i am hardly blameless in that respect and my new routine of reaching out on a very regular basis, is helping me to rebuild and relationship that has foundered more than one, due to a lack of effort on my part. just for today, i can be present for those who are willing to give me what they have and give willingly to those that want what i have to give them.

∞ DT ∞