A Failed Confession

A 12-Step Reflection

God help me become willing to let go of all the things to which I still cling. Help me to be ready to let You remove all of these defects, that Your will and purpose may take their place. AMEN. - 5th Step Prayer

Confession is a challenging practice. The vulnerability it requires astonishes me. I don’t fear humiliation. Rather, I fear being seen. I do not wish to be known and to be found lacking.

I believe so strongly that I will be found lacking.

I could not have been more than 12 or 14 or so when I found myself sitting on the living room floor with my step-mother’s prized collection of arrow heads. She had spent years collecting them. Principal among them was a larger, narrow, light brown arrow head which she treasured. I don’t know what overtook me in the moment, but I wondered to myself how the indigenous peoples of Virginia chipped away at a stone in such a miraculous fashion. Could I do it, too? Perhaps so!

I found a round stone and struck the pristine arrowhead assuming that I would just chip away at it like the maker did. Nope. I snapped the arrowhead in half. I ruined it. I was mortified and ashamed. I could not believe I had been so daft. I was old enough to know better than to mess with someone else’s Precious Stuff. So, I did what any self-respecting adolescent would do, I hid my deed. I buried the arrowhead at the bottom of the jar of arrowheads hoping that no one would ever know.

I don’t know how long it took for her to notice, but notice she did.

“Oh no!” she cried.

“What’s wrong” I responded alarmed.

“My arrowhead. Someone broke my arrowhead.”

“Oh no!” I cried. “How the hell did that happen?”

She was visibly upset. I felt only greater shame. So, I hid myself and lied. I denied having anything to do with it even when she asked me directly. “No! I’m so sorry this happened, but I don’t know how it did.”

And that was the end of it. She never brought it up again and I never confessed my wrongdoing. Forty years later, I can still feel her disappointment and my shame. I am certain she knew that I was lying.

It was such a small mistake in retrospect, nothing like the litany of wrongdoings or defects of character in The 12 and 12. But it still bothers me. My inability to be honest with her, to own my mistake, haunts me still. It is the principle of the matter more than anything else. I certainly have more serious misdeeds to confess.

Can I be honest when my back is against the wall?

No. That is the simplest answer. I cannot. I hide. This is the foundation to my emotional and spiritual isolation. Sobriety, for me, is the end to isolation. It is the end to hiding.

In Genesis, Adam and Eve are ashamed. God is looking for them in the garden, but they have covered their nudity and are hiding from him. They are ashamed of themselves and have no desire to be seen by their God. They fear. God does not shame them. God is not ashamed of them. God olds no truck with shame. Instead, it is their own shame that drives them, their expectations, their remorse, their sense of lack.

I have spent my life wrestling with the demon Shame. Some days, I do not cover myself and stand before my God vulnerable and without shame. Sobriety. Other days, I cover myself and hide knowing nothing good can come. Addiction.

The twelve steps are suggestions, guidelines. Why? Because the perfection that they outline is not easily won. It is, rather, a gift that is given by one’s higher power. Failed confessions will happen. Our work as addicts, however, is to open ourselves to receiving that gift and ending our isolation once and for all.