Early in my sobriety, my wife and I received our monthly credit card bill. My wife noticed that there was a $1500 credit. The credit was a mistake-it should not have been on our bill. This was a big mistake. $1500 then was like $10,000 now.
My first reaction was “Shopping spree!” My wife (let’s call her Mrs. Urchin) reminded me that:
- the money wasn’t ours
- we had an obligation to notify the credit card company of the mistake
- the credit card company was probably aware of it already anyway
She called the credit card company, and just as she had predicted, the company had already corrected the error.
I share this story with you because it shows that my first reaction is not my best reaction. I find it difficult to be honest sometimes. Dishonesty is one of my character defects.
I don’t think I am alone here. In the first 100 words of “How It Works”, the root word “honest” appears three times:
1) …”usually men and women who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves”….
2) …”they are naturally incapable of grasping and developing a manner of living which demands rigorous honesty”….
3) …”but many of them do recover if they have the capacity to be honest”.
In the first 164 pages of the Big Book, the word “honest” (or honesty, or dishonest) appears 38 times.
It must be an important part of sobriety.
Bill W. understood this. Several times he wrote about Fear, Selfishness, Resentment and Dishonesty in the Big Book as the primary character defects to be analyzed (and hopefully relieved).
My experience is that dishonesty with others is only part of the problem. I understand that it is wrong to lie to other people. I think I do much better with this today. But for some reason, I struggle to be honest with myself. The word for this is “denial”. I was in denial for years about my alcoholism. I have company here. I recently heard someone say that “my alcoholism was bad only for the last 15 years”. Only 15 years?!
I have blind spots in my life. There are things that are present in my life that I don’t want to see, so I choose not to see them. Then other people take a quick glance at me, and they see those things immediately.
My sponsor and my wife (two of my role models) help me with this. They gently nudge me towards seeing the truth about myself. They help me with those blind spots that I can’t see.
Lord, help me to be honest with others, and myself, today.
With Love,
The Recovering Urchin
