When Direct Amends is Impossible or Ill-Advised

What do we do in situations where the direct amends are either impossible (death, don’t know how to contact them, you are reasonably sure your contact would be unwanted) or unwise? We make a living amend.

I know a guy who sexually assaulted a woman during a drunken party in a fraternity house. Years later, he has gotten sober and this story and his bad acts haunt him. He does not know the girl’s name and contact is impossible. He has chosen to make his amends by making financial restitution for her suffering by giving generously every month to a local organization that specializes in supporting women who have been sexually abused.

Another gal I know has been ordered by the court to have no contact with her children. Her parental rights are terminated. Sober and financially successful, she went to an attorney and figured out a way to set up a college fund for each of her children. This fund will be made available at the appropriate time and the source of the funds will remain anonymous. Her weekly contribution to these funds serves as an offering of love to children she lost because of her abuse of them while she was using. As she makes the deposit each week, she prays for her children, expresses gratitude to the adoptive parents for their love and care for them. This act of restitution has become a sacred moment for her at the end of every week.

Sometimes a letter is the way to go. I have a friend who wrote an amends letter to her deceased father and traveled across the country to sit at the foot of his grave and read her letter to him.

In each of these situations, my friends received wise counsel as they wrestled with whether a direct, or indirect amends, was the way to go. In all cases, the decision was made based on the potential of harm to the offended person or others.

The World Upended

Do you not see how necessary a World of Pains and troubles is to school an Intelligence and make it a Soul?

John Keats, letter to George and Georgianna Keats, April 21, 1819

What might be lost if we avoid our pain and suffering?

Currently we are living under the weight of a global crisis. The coronavirus has swept in and taken possession of our land. And we watch others respond.

I saw a family respond with creativity and hope while their 80 year old father was isolated in an ICU - far from them physically, cared for and ultimately healed by the grace of God and the competency and care of his medical team. In spite of the crunch the nurses were under, they helped the family communicate. They held up the screen that allowed him to see his family send him messages of love; they taped the love letters to his wall.

And after the crisis was averted, it was his wife I loved the most. She kept making amends for what they had not known. You see, they had been in Florida and returned home to Virginia upon the advice of physicians. Symptom-free, they drove carefully up the highway and assumed they were returning to the safety of their retirement community. In the process, they exposed 288 people to the virus. And they are extremely sorry.

They did the best they could. They followed the guidelines of late February. They suffered a great trauma of their own but still found space to worry about their own wrongdoing - even though no one could blame them for what they did not know. They did not shy away from their suffering or the opportunity to serve as a cautionary tale as they confessed their own mistakes.

This is the kind of humility and willingness we need right now - and those who learn how to listen well, love large, and admit their mistakes are the kind of courageous people who will help us all not only survive, but thrive during this pandemic. Our skill sets matter.

There Are Some Things We Cannot Fix

A wise woman from Tekoa was brought in to have a conversation with King David - who was relentlessly mourning over his broken relationship with his son Absalom. This schism had gone on for three years and King David’s political handler, Joab, was concerned about the implications of this dispute for the kingdom over which David ruled. Joab called in this woman to counsel David in a sneaky attempt to get David and Absalom reunited. She starts out by telling a story and getting David’s advice. When she has him trapped by his own words, she says:

“Haven’t you been hurting God’s people? Your own son had to leave the country….We each must die and disappear like water poured out on the ground. But God doesn’t take our lives. Instead, he figures out ways of bringing us back when we run away.

2 Samuel 14:13-14 Contemporary English Version

We must fix what we can fix. But not everything is fixable. Although David did bring Absalom back into the fold the story ends poorly. Absalom plots a coup, David and he go to war, Absalom ends up dead. David mourns the loss of his boy, which was very confusing for the army who had saved David’s behind by killing his boy. What a mess.

There is a level of brokenness that we just cannot repair. There is nothing we can do or say or barter or buy that will take away the pain we have caused others in some situations. This is the time when we may need to return to Step Three and remember that we made a decision to turn our lives and wills over to the care of God.

Sometimes brokenness is so profound, a direct amends is not advisable.

Meditation Moment

I hold a five-year diary that my mother kept

For three years, telling all she does not say

Of your alcoholic tendency. You overslept,

She writes. My god, father, each Christmas Day

With your blood, will I drink down your glass

of wine? The diary of your hurly-burly years

Goes to my shelf to wait for my age to pass.

Only in this hoarded span will love persevere.

Whether you are pretty or not, I outlive you,

Bend down my strange face to yours and forgive you.

Anne Secton, “All My Pretty Ones”

Today, give yourself room to breathe; to allow your pain to pack its bags and move on.

The Specifics...

Remember the four defects of character? Selfishness. Self-seeking. Dishonesty. Fear. These are the shortcomings that created the drive for us to do wrong. Whether or not we INTENDED harm is not the issue. No one really cares about our intentions unless they are making excuses for our bad behavior.

It is easy to get distracted from our good work of amends and restitution by making our own set of excuses. We feel like we are being punished or condemned or dying because of our past misdeeds. We confuse ourselves by declaring our substance use disorder a disease (which it is) but twist that knowledge and use it as an excuse for bad behaving. It is not. Once we know better, we can practice doing better. Amends is a part of our spiritual practice of doing better.

When we disclose our wrongdoing, we need to be specific. Here are a couple examples:

* If we borrowed money we promised to repay and did not, we repay the money. Sometimes it is better to repay the money BEFORE we attempt an amends. Actions always speak louder than words and often grease the wheel of resistance to any form of communication.

* If we slandered someone or tried to destroy their reputation to protect our own, we need to set the record straight in the exact same manner we tarnished the record. We do not do this in secret if our offense was in public. That’s not restitution.

* If we have compulsively lied, we begin to get just as compulsive about telling the truth.