The Hole of the Pit

One warm summer morning 29 years ago I found myself walking to work on a Saturday morning when I literally stumbled across a building labeled as the "Alano Club." Associating the word club with bar, and not having to be to work for over an hour, I attempted to enter the building for a "couple" of morning drinks to ease the jitters. 

I found the door locked but could see two large posters with the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous. I stopped long enough to read the Twelve Steps but only three words from Step One made any sense to me. I read the words, "powerless over alcohol." I asked myself if that was truly my lot in life. Am I really powerless? I convinced myself otherwise and finished my walk to work. No, I had not seen a sober day in over five years, but it took another two years of "research" to determine I really was powerless. That meant seven years without a day of sobriety, until July 17, 1989 when I hit rock bottom and drove by the same building about ten minutes before eight on a Monday night, not knowing the Monday Night Beginners' Meeting was beginning in ten minutes.

In the Book of Mormon, Jacob teaches from a selection of Isaiah chapters with an invitation: "Hearken unto me, ye that follow after righteousness" (2 Nephi 8: 1; Isaiah 51: 1). In the next verse a pattern is established, "Look unto Abraham your father, and unto Sarah that bare you." Abraham began his journey describing himself as "having been myself a follower of righteousness, desiring also to be one who possessed great knowledge, and to be a greater follower of righteousness, and to possess a greater knowledge" (Abraham 1: 2). You get the feel of a cyclical pattern that more righteousness leads to more knowledge, and more knowledge leads to more righteousness. And it cycles upward into the eternities.

But 27 years ago today, as I attended my first AA meeting, I would have been more interested in the sentence sandwiched between the "followers of righteousness" and "Look unto Abraham your father, and unto Sarah that bare you." The message in the middle is "Look unto the rock from whence ye are hewn, and to the hole of the pit from whence ye are digged" (2 Nephi 8: 1).

I was way down deep in the hole of the pit, and escaping looked impossible to say the least. Nor could I perceive future days when I might look to the rock, who was hewn after the Rock. I could never imagine a dear wife who would sacrifice her days, doing her best to make my life happy. Nor could I imagine a son who would be diligent in a service mission, or imagine a daughter awaiting a mission call to serve. I could never imagine the feeling of the Holy Spirit as I read the scriptures or the sweet peace available in the temple of our God. I could not understand any of these things, because I was stuck in the pit.

Usually digging in the dirt is a tedious job, and quite messy. But my Savior was willing to go digging. He must have seen something I could never see. Things harvested from the ground could have potential in time. And jewels hewn out of the Rock could even sparkle with some refining, purifying, and polishing. After all, we are patterned after some pretty good stuff, and in the image of Someone divine. And if He can "make her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the Lord," there may be hope for even a self-centered drunk like me (see 2 Nephi 8: 3).

The choice is quite clear. Either I can stay buried in the hole of the pit or I can become one of His jewels, shiny enough to reflect His image at times, and I can be spared (see Malachi 3: 17).