Moral

I am a moral person. I have an inner sense of what is right and strive to follow that inner sense in all areas of my life. I am dedicated to living a life by ethical and moral standards that are based on honesty and truth. I am devoted to doing what is righteous in the eyes of God to the best of my ability. This is really important to me.

I am honest and forthright in my business dealings. I communicate honestly about what I want and need to the people I contract with. As I described in “Replace the Face,” I have had to work hard to be able to say what I mean, mean what I say, and stand up for myself in some of my business negotiations. This meant learning not to take things personally, keeping business as business, and learning not to place my past family issues on the people I work with today. None of this has been easy, but it has been well worth the hard work and learning that was required.

I pay people based on our agreements right away without argument, whether it’s a building contractor, the phone company, my mortgage company, the IRS, the Vermont sales tax folks, or the man in the toll booth on the highway. (Once I was driving home from Boston late at night and got into the EZ Pass lane by accident. I ended up having to call the highway department and pay a big fine. I highly recommend paying attention on the road and paying the toll. It’s much cheaper!)

I use my inner sense as an inner compass that points me in the direction of what is true and just for Juliet. If I am engaged in something that is dishonest, I can feel it. That is the God in me directing me toward the Light and away from the Dark. A good example of this is the incident with the CoDA meeting attender that was engaging in 13^th stepping that I wrote about in “Recovery in Program.” When I was on the phone with this individual and judgments were sent my way, I knew in my gut they weren’t right. It took me a minute to discern how I knew this and why it was so. It took me another bit of time to articulate this to the other person involved. But the inner compass was there working and it is of no credit to me that this was so. This was all God’s doing. All good in me comes from God. That is a gift from God to me. I am grateful. 

Now this doesn’t mean that I’m always right or that I always do the right thing. I think the other hundreds of pages in this book are testament to the fact that I do admit when I’m wrong and I’m wrong a lot. That is part of knowing what’s true and admitting it.

My inner compass also helps me to engage in demanding honesty when I do my 5th Step (5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs^[1]). I tell the truth about myself, what I’ve done, what I haven’t done, how I feel, how I think I should feel, and how worried I am about how the person involved feels or what they think of me. I must engage in this absolute moral truth when doing this work. Otherwise I am just spinning my wheels.

As a Christian Quaker, I get a lot of guidance on what is right for me morally from the bible. That is just what’s right for me.

I am grateful that God has made to be a moral person. I am so thankful to him for placing in me a dedication to living a life based on honesty and truth. I’m not perfect at it, but He knows that and loves me anyway. Maybe He appreciates the fact that I keep trying. I hope so. Thank you God for this inner compass. May it always be pointing me towards your truth and love.

^[1] Co-Dependents Anonymous. Co-Dependents Anonymous. Dallas, TX:  CoDA Resource Publishing, 2009, p. iv.