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One time I heard somebody at a meeting say, “Make sure you always forgive the living s**t out of people,” and that saying popped into my head yesterday. Because I needed it.
We pulled the kids out of school and took them to a Great Wolf Lodge. It’s a hotel with an indoor water park that’s about two hours from where we live. I told everybody the night before that I would go get them Dunkin Donuts in the morning as long as they promised me they’d be able to walk out the door with all their stuff at 10 am because there was a snowstorm coming and I wanted to get out ahead of it. Everybody said they could do that.
So I got back from Dunkin at 9:45, warmed up the minivan, and everybody got in and we got rolling. We got all the way through town and onto the highway when my wife said, “Oh my god, I forgot the bag with all the swim stuff in it.”
I thought my head was full of fireworks and was going to explode. Not the shitty Walgreens fireworks, either. I’m talking about the illegal stuff you get in West Virginia from your uncle’s doomsday bunker.
But I didn’t say anything and I tried to take a few deep breaths. By making it 15 minutes into the trip, that meant I had to drive the same 15 minutes back to the house, then back the right direction another 15 minutes. It meant we were going to be cutting it very close with the storm that I had carefully tracked. My whole amazing plan was going down the drain and somebody was going to PAY!
During those deep breaths, I remembered that saying of “Forgive the living s**t out of people.” That’s a really hard thing even at this stage of recovery for me. Because as much as you don’t want to keep score in marriage or any other loving relationship, it’s almost impossible for me. Those kinds of longterm relationships often involve lots of compromises, stuff like I want Chinese food for dinner and my wife wants pizza, so my wife will say, “Let’s get pizza tonight and Chinese food tomorrow night.” I don’t want to be keeping score… but tomorrow night, we’re getting Chinese food, okay?
This screwup on the way to Great Wolf Lodge was a great test, because I could have easily done some dunking on my wife. I mean, come on, she forgot the one bag we had to have. But she was deeply apologetic and was beating herself up already, and I was glad I was able to be present and notice that. I didn’t have to pile on.
And here’s the thing: Those are the moments where I can really assess my recovery—when I think I have the right to be angry. It isn’t those 50-50 situations where you need some forgiveness, too. It’s sort of like the idea that you can tell someone’s heart by how kind they treat people they don’t have to be kind to at all. I don’t want to be one of those people who punches down in life.
As usual, the morning snafu didn’t really matter. We got there a little later than expected, but it didn’t really impact anything. I’d love to tell you that I took a few deep breaths and let it all go. But I was actually a little grumpy on the entire ride as I worked through it. Eventually I did, and we had a really fun time as a family.
Could I have done a little better at the beginning by not having my head almost explode? Yes, for sure… but hey, maybe I’ll forgive the living s**t out of myself about it.
This newsletter is a place of joy and laughter about the deadly serious business of sobriety. So, as I will often do, let me close with a joke:
HEARD AT MEETINGS
I went to a party when I was 17 and the next thing I knew, I was 35!
(Credit: AA Grapevine, November 2007, by Michael K. from Haverhill, Massachusetts)
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