milestone

to the best of my ability i have truly and honestly finished step 9 today. i am a puddle.

Step 9 - Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

i have been praying for the past couple of weeks that god would bring to mind any other amends i might have missed - but today i finally received a response for the amend i had been putting off for years.

and it was the most gracious, loving response - from someone i love dearly - and i have grieved the loss of this relationship for over a decade. today i feel like i might have it back. it means the world to me.

this man was my boss during my 10 years in hamilton. he was the most engaging, passionate, intelligent, fun person i have ever had the honor of working with. he was also the first man who really truly listened (minus my husband, who still to this day struggles with this, but his heart is there) to me, sought my input and honored my skills. i loved him dearly, and he loved us back.

he was also incredibly generous. we owed him money. money we just could never seem to find to repay him. so it just got easier and easier to avoid that contact, sometimes it even dropped totally off of our radar screen like it never happened. but then cracks would appear in the denial and i would grieve again the loss of the relationship and the shame of the debt would drive me back into my addictions.

we even at one point sent a letter that went unanswered - and so i assumed that my effort was enough. it was not. i knew in my heart that i was not done with this. i have googled his name 100's of times, hoping to find an email address that could find it's way to him. i finally found one a couple of weeks ago and sent it. it was a email address where applicants could send their resumes to the company he owns. it was a shot in the dark hoping it would get to him - and today, about 10 minutes ago i received a response.

i called liam in from the other room as i just couldn't read it alone. my stomach was flipping and my hands were shaking. the subject line said "great to hear from you" - so that was encouraging, but still it was scary to see if the friendship once shared was strong enough to endure the silence of this past decade. he was so excited to hear from us and updated me on all of his kids and how much his business has grown and then he wrote this:

As for the money you owe us I would forget about it-it's long gone and it
appears for a while there you really needed that relief from financial burdens so forget it happened and so will we.

Please keep in touch and hopefully if and when you're in the area we'll be able to spend some time together and catch up.

grace received is such a beautiful thing.