I’m gonna tell you a story about jail, addiction, a scenario that transformed me immediately, and about things that sound impossible:
But first, we’ll start at tonight.
I saw the moon, but the light emanating from it formed a perfect cross. It was a luminous first-quarter moon directly in the center of four bright beams of light, exactly horizontal and vertical from the center, the moon.
Is it illuminating the fkng ecliptic? What is that?
I could go off on how the cross (with the Sun/Son in the middle) is an actual representation of a solar eclipse, but I won’t.
What I will share is a story I haven’t before, not outside the context of person to person conversation.
I began to think about the Christ Spirit, the “Transformer” as Beinsa Duono says, the spirit of Love, and the experience I’ve had with it.
Here’s where the story comes in:
The first time I ever saw a Bible was when I was 20 years old, and in jail.
I was in there because I had robbed someone. Technically, two people.
Two people lived at the house that me and my boyfriend/fiance at that time hit. This was at the very end of my addiction. This was November 24th, 2009. My sobriety date is November 27th, 2009.
I was in jail, detoxing from heroin, and out of my mind.
At some point they let us out of single cell (a 5x7 concrete box where you’re in there 23 hours a day. If you’re lucky, they let you out for one hour, into a slightly larger box). This is often called being on a 23/1, but never mind all that shit.
When they did this, I barely remember anything because I was so dope sick, but I asked one of the other girls in there what the hell was going on. She said, “Library!”
What the fuck is library?
Well apparently in jail they let you get a book and take it back into your box.
I picked up a Bible. Have no idea why. But I did.
When I went to rob that house, it was because I knew what was in it. There was a person who was being targeted. The name of that person is Gideon.
I never knew anything about Bibles, nor did I know there was a type of Bible called a “Gideon Bible”. Guess what I opened up to and saw?
I’m likely paraphrasing, but it said:
“The Bible of the Gideons”
I saw that and was like …..
what.the.fuck.
It would be a long time before I knew a “Gideon Bible” was a thing. Still not sure what the difference is, but that’s beside the point.
I remembered this when looking at the sky tonight. There was another person who lived at that house that we robbed. I didn’t know he also had a biblical name, but he does. His name is Matthew.
I started thinking. Remembering how unbelievably full-circle things can come:
The only reason I use their names (I will not use their last names) is because we are far from being on bad terms.
When I eventually made it to my first 12-step recovery meeting, guess who the greeter was?
Matthew.
I had just robbed his house weeks prior. I was out of jail on furlough and in a drug treatment center waiting for sentencing. Conditions of release were that I was not to be within 2 miles of him or his house. Yet there we were, face to face.
I had NO idea he was in recovery. Long story short, when I thought he’d kill me for what I’d done, he gave me a hug and told me he was glad I was there.
He said a lot of things, and I’ll never forget them, or that night. That was the first time I felt forgiveness and redemption. That was the first time I started truly believing there was a God. I didn’t understand it, but I believed after that.
The feeling of knowing I had a second chance at life, after running into a man I had just robbed and being met with a hug, forgiveness and genuine kindness… that is something words cannot describe.
I lived my whole life thinking I was a wretched waste of space and all things negative.
To be shown such grace like that… that changed me.
Nothing was the same moving forward.
Matthew is still a friend of mine today. I will always have so much love for him. Funny thing? Many many years later, I wound up doing some house-keeping work so I could make enough money to move out of Oregon (and also survive, because tyrants shut down the economy under false pretense).
Guess whose house I wound up cleaning on multiple occasions?
His.
Does anyone else see how insane that is?
Because of the power of real miracles and transformation and love, years later he trusted me to not only have access to the key to his house, but be in there by myself and cleaning it?!
I remember dusting objects he had on the wall that years prior, I had stolen and thrown in my trunk to take to a pawn shop to get dope money.
Now? I was around them again, but I was there to clean and do a service for the home, I was not there to steal or invade. Holy shit.
I even had the privilege of doing a natal chart (astrology) reading for him. That was an extreme honor.
Gideon:
A few years after the incident, I ran into Gideon too.
I ran into him at a recovery meeting.
When I saw him, I immediately burst into tears (just like I did when I saw Matthew at my first meeting).
He smiled, just as Matthew had smiled at me. He gave me a huge hug, just as Matthew had given me.
He wasn’t even angry. I apologized and was also so relieved to see him there. There was so much love, it’s so strange to think people can do these things to one another (rob their homes) then be friends and love one another later?
It brings tears to my eyes to think about it still.
I remember thinking how wild it was, because after I saw him at that meeting, I’d later start giving him rides to the meetings I was going to.
I’d pick him up at the same house I used to get high at, and the same house I once robbed. But this time, we were going to a meeting of recovery. This time, drugs weren’t a part of it. Sobriety, change, love, a new life, those things were it now.
That is wild as shit.
Once upon a time, there was Matthew who was in recovery, but I didn’t know he was. He wasn’t around when we were at the house doing shit we weren’t supposed to be doing.
There was me, my boyfriend/fiance at the time, Gideon, and often a few others, and we were all junkies.
Shit went sideways as it always does in that life, and I wound up robbing the house to get money for dope.
I got caught, arrested, life got saved, then I ran into Matthew at my first meeting, started believing in God and praying daily, then later I’d run into Gideon, who had gotten sober too, and I got to go to meetings with him.
We actually got to be friends, actual friends, not just people who shared a common “bond” because they shared a common need - the need to get dope and stay well.
Now we all had a bond that was rooted in emergence of shared struggle, forgiveness, love and compassion. That is so wild to me, and it’s such a beautiful story that I believe it needs to be shared.
I’m highlighting how compassion / forgiveness changed the course of multiple lives. I hope whoever is reading this understands that you are capable of giving and receiving these exact same gifts.
All because of what I saw in the sky tonight, I remembered one of the most beautiful things I’ve experienced — the complete and in some senses, immediate, transformation and defiance of all things related to “statistics” of how “people like us” turn out.
We do recover. We do stay sober. We do become capable of love. We do get honest. We do genuinely choose to do the right thing, not because we’re afraid of a consequence, because we feel in our hearts what is right and wrong and act accordingly.
We do forgive. We do get forgiven. We do get a second chance at life. Matter of fact, we get second, third, fourth, fifth, etc — renewal is always there. Nothing is impossible.
Everything they tell you about how addicts / alcoholics / people with PTSD / people with violent tendencies / criminals, etc…. everything they say about how we never change and only get worse, that is not true. We are living proof of that.
I will also say that those assumptions are there for a reason.
I can’t solve the riddle, it’s the most heartbreaking thing in the world because I have seen it my entire life. If you look at who I’ve been able to help versus who I’ve had ZERO ability to do anything for and had to watch die, holy fuck — the scales are so far tipped in the death direction.
It’s something I can’t talk about with anyone, unless they too have lost that many people. And that is rare. You’d be amazed at how clueless and insensitive people are when they don’t know death.
Death is the Leveler. My uncle wrote that lyric. I will also add, Death is the Ultimate Heart Check. For people who’ve been to prison or certain county jails — you know what I’m referencing.
Death will shape you, form you, and test all of you. You will be seen. Your character will be revealed. And if you need to be made stronger, softer, wiser, less of this and more of that, (ultimately more honest is what it does), then so it shall be.
Death will show you what it means to be human. Death will show you what it means to love. Death will remove all the illusions of the world and show you the one thing that is real. And none of this can be explained or taught, unless by the Reaper himself.
I don’t know why miracles happen where a person is physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually transformed, completely unrecognizable to all who have known them in their past, and why others fall down the hole and never stop until they die.
I have no idea.
I can take some “educated guesses” — but at the end of the day, yeah I don’t want to go too deep into this topic because this was supposed to be a message of hope.
I suppose where there is great light, there are also great shadows.
At the end of the day, a person has to want it for themselves, and to such a degree that they will go to ANY length to achieve and maintain sobriety, which includes emotional sobriety.
Physical sobriety is only the first step. The rest of it is something different.
It means not cherry-picking which thing you will do for your recovery and which you won’t. You literally have to do all of them. And you cannot stop.
The biggest thing?
The most lethal thing anyone can do is keep secrets. Even if you’re doing stupid shit, make sure at least one other person who has more sanity than you do at that moment knows about it. Because the time will come when the bottom falls out and you need help, and that phone will weigh 1000 pounds.
But it won’t be so heavy if you know you don’t have to extensively explain yourself (while in the middle of a crisis) to someone who thinks everything is “fine”.
If someone already knows what you’re up to, first off they can call you out and likely snap some sense into you, and if not, at least there’s someone you can reach out to who already knows the deal when you’re ready.
The honesty piece is the most crucial to survival.
The second would be connection, combined with the work one must do on themselves. Pride and shame are killers. They are lethal beyond measure. So things must be consistently done throughout the rest of ones life to bring both of those things into the light when they crop up, because I have yet to experience life without noticing either one of those.
The blessing is, neither one of them run my life anymore.
It’s now just a game of whack-a-mole, and I’ll take that any day over living in hell with no hope.
Sounds to me like y'all had a soul contract. I'm really happy for you that it was fulfilled! And congrats on your continued sobriety. It takes a shit ton of courage to stay away and you are killin it! Thanks for sharing your story!
Great message! God places people in our lives for a reason!