I have two examples of courage and responsibility in my life that I want to tell you about.

I have spoke about my "ole fart" Mort.  He lived 16 years as a skid row drunk on Market Street in San Diego, before he got sober.  I met him about 6 years before I got sober and he was already a teenager in this program.  He was married to the woman who was to become my sponsor.  When I asked her I asked them both to be my "temporary co-sponsors".  He was till the day he died, she still is.

When I came into the program, he had almost 20 years and had been fighting cancer for the previous three years.  He went into the hospital about 45 days before I had nine months sober, never to leave the hospital alive.  But during that last 30 days, he was the most perfect example of the Big Book in action, it was unbelievable.  You can imagine the kind of meds he was on as they tried to keep him as comfortable as possible, and he was mostly in and out of consciousness.  When someone came to visit him, he might not recognize them, he might think they were someone from his past 20-30 years earlier, but he would rouse himself and listen to what they were saying and then he "spoke the Big Book" to them.  He gave them answers to their problems, chapter and verse right out of the Big Book.

He was such a perfect example of the "living" Big Book, that at his memorial they just put a copy of the Big Book up in front of the room and that was truly all that was required.

He died 5 days before I celebrated 9 months sober and at his memorial his wife, my sponsor, gave me my 9 month token which he had purchased specifically for me before he got so bad that he had to finally go into the hospital for the last time.  Still amazes me, he was dying of cancer and he actually thought of and took the time to go out and buy a token for me that
far in advance.  That is some kind of courage.

The other person is my very dearest friend.  She has a very serious illness that has totally turned her life inside out.  She does not have cancer and yet she still has to deal with taking a series of chemo like drugs, that make her very ill.  These are drugs which make her body defy her at every turn, as they fight to kill her disease.  But you know even on her worst days she always has a kind word for me.  No matter how bad things are for her she always has time to listen to me and my problems and she always takes time to hold my hand and walk through things with me when I am having trouble walking through them by myself.

My God, in his infinite wisdom, has put people like this in my life, just to help me walk through my life.  I am faced daily with courage beyond my imagination and this produces in me the responsibility of doing everything I can to give it back by passing it on.  I don't always live up to the example very well, but I do always try to or at least try to remember that I should. Some days are better than others.

Patience for me has been totally a result of the discoveries I have made in sobriety.  And like MAM talked about much of my discoveries have come through my 4th and 5th Step work.  

I remember when I first did my 4th and 5th Steps I really thought that all my problems, resentments and defects were my father's fault.  Believe me he played very prominantly in my written 4th step.  But when I finished doing my 5th Step with my sponsor, she said she had an assignment for me.  She wanted me to take the next 90 days a write a little bit every day on my resnetments against my mother.  Well, I didn't really see that I had any resentments against my mother.  My mother was a woman who I loved and respected, more than I could ever express. (Yeah Right)  By the end of that 90 days I had discovered or uncovered a notebook full of resentments against her, mostly the kind that I would now consider to be "sins of ommission".  You see for the most part I blamed her for not doing things or not taking care of things that she had no knowledge of.  But of course there is no way that the child mind can let go of that kind of stuff.  And many things I blamed her for were the very things I had kept secret from her for oh so many years.  

Today, I continue to discover that many of my own and other peoples "short comings" are totally the result of either denial or or out and out secrets and lies.  I have continued to discover that the more I am able to be "lovingly honest" with myself and others the better a person I am able to be and often times this results in seeds being planted which help them in the long run as well.  

The more I am able to work on myself and continue to grow into who I will/want to ultimately be the more patient I am able to be, both with myself and with others.  

Now that is a general statement and applies to me overall.  But like so many of us, it really only applies to my good days.  Because on my bad days, when I hurt and am depressed, lonely, sad, etc., etc.,  I have little to no patience or tolerance for myself or others.  The days that I feel this way and am still able to extend a loving hand to those around me and be patient and tolerant anyway are the days when I truly have the chance to see how much I have grown over the years.  

I think the very biggest discovery that I have made over the last few years has to do with my injury.  I have discovered more about myself as a result of having to deal with disability, than I ever could have imagined.  I have discovered fears I never knew I had.  I have also discovered strengths.  My world has had to slow down immeasurably, because I am physically incapable of keeping up with the way it was before.  This has forced me to become more patient and tolerant, with myself as well as with others.  There again, on my bad days I don't do it nearly as well as on my good days.  But I do it much better than I ever did before I was injured.  

All in all, as a result of this injury, I am much more pleased with where I am today, between my ears, than I ever thought I could be, even though I am also able to see some of how much farther I still have to go.  And so the journey continues.....