To hear people today talk about their conception of “tough love”, you’d think that every old timer and sponsor was like a Marine DI, shouting in your face,”Who’s your momma?”. They think that if they were told to sit down and shut up! take the cotton out of your ears and put it in your mouth, is the worst. Yesterday I had the opportunity to tell the group that it was the best thing that happened to me at the beginning. And it was.
Tough love to me is taking a butcher knife away from an infant who wants to play with it. No matter how they scream and protest, you’re obliged to do it so that it won’t harm itself. Of course it would be nice if you replaced it with a rattle or some other kind of non harmful toy.
And that’s exactly what an old timer did for me, when he told me to shut up, take the cotton out of my ears and put it in my mouth and listen. He took ! a lot of things away, which were definitely harmful from me. Didn’t I feel humiliated? Of course I did. After all I was sitting among a gathering of about 50 people, when he said it. My face burned and my first instinct was to leave or kill him. But something in the back of my mind told me to sit there and take it, because it was good for me. It was what I needed. Somehow I knew (don’t ask me how) that this was the beginning of learning how to have a modicum of humility. He knocked my arrogance and false pride right into yesterday. He silenced my over intellectualizing, didn’t know what I was talking about mouth, and opened my ears to what was really going on. How to stay sober.
This old timer cared enough about me to try to save my life. I was so wrapped up in myself that nothing else would work. Left to my own devices, I would have self destructed. I might have been! so blind that I would have stumbled back into the nearest bar. And then I would be dead. He took the butcher knife away and replaced it with a life saving program.
The people today would have stroked me, told me it was ok to say or do anything I wanted to. Their concept of “soft love” would have enabled me to be loved to death.
That was the subject of yesterday’s meeting; tough love. The other was on the concept of the fellowship. I thought that my story about the old timer, who opened my ears demonstrated what the fellowship was all about; love and tolerance.
To tell you the truth, I loved those old timers. They didn’t waste time going about Robin Hood’s barn to tell you something you needed to hear. They didn’t want to obfuscate something, so that it would be lost on you. They went right to the truth of things. They di! d it not to harm, but to love you into a new way of life.
Was it intimidating? Yes. But it was also instructive. I was learning how to deal with others who needed help desperately. At the same time, I was learning how to separate the true from the false. The surgeon, who is timid and fearful of cutting away the very thing that’s killing you, will probably leave you dead. He has to be decisive and unafraid.
The results are obvious.
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