The thing about changing
Writer’s note: This story is being shared with permission and deep respect for the person it is written about.
I walked in the doors of our building at Doc’s Recovery House one afternoon and saw Dan, one of our long-term residents, standing by the coffee. It was just before a group was about to meet, and I knew that Dan had been moving through the hiring process for an amazing job opportunity in the line of work he had studied years prior.
“Did you hear anything back about your job?” I asked Dan.
“Not yet,” he responded, smiling back at me kindly.
I retreated back to my office and didn’t think too much of the simple exchange, other than the fact that I was holding onto hope for my friend to land the job he’d been working hard for, with an employer he was excited about.
There was a knock at my door just a few minutes after the conversation, and when the door creaked open, I looked up and noticed it was Dan again.
He walked over to my desk, pulled out a chair, and sat down.
“I lied to you,” he said.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“When you asked me if I had heard back about my job, I told you I hadn’t. I lied.” Dan said. He quickly continued, “I did hear back from [the employer] and they couldn’t find my transcripts from my college, so they rescinded the job offer. I told you I didn’t hear from them because I was embarrassed, but I can’t lie about it.”
After acknowledging Dan’s honesty and integrity, we began talking about ways we could try to figure it out. There had to be something we could do, we both thought — this was Dan’s hard-earned education, and he was too far into the process of his recovery to let this deter him.
So he didn’t, and we started to think about a solution.
During the conversation, I learned that Dan’s school had closed nationwide sometime over the last few years, and searching for his diploma from the early 90s was a tough task given the school’s nonexistence.
On top of this difficulty, he shared that before getting sober and finding recovery, he had been in a bad living situation with bad people who had torn his diploma off the wall and thrown it away.
We sat in my office researching, emailing, taking notes, and came up with a game plan to make some calls the following business day and see what we could do to track down Dan’s hard-earned diploma, the piece of paper that would prove he had the education he said he did — and that he was telling the truth to his future employer.
For Dan, and for most people walking the journey of recovery, the truth of his word held an important weight in this moment — as it should, and as if to say, “I am who I say I am.”
The next day, I did more research, and despite my scrappy creativity, all I ran into were more dead-ends, just like Dan had experienced, too. In the midst of these dead-ends, I got side tracked with other urgent tasks of the moment, and another day passed with no answers, and no ability to connect with Dan.
Despite this, that Friday morning, I got a text that simply read, “I was able to get my college transcripts from the diploma place. Thank you for your help.”
Relieved, I picked up the phone and called Dan right back, who explained that someone from the diploma center called him out of the blue stating that they found his diploma.
He was amazed and grateful, because he hadn’t reached back out to them. It was simply someone, in the virtual world doing a virtual job, who went out of their way to find his diploma. For this human kindness, he was grateful — so, so grateful.
In that conversation, all you could hear was Dan’s gratitude for someone doing their job better than they could have or needed to, doing what needed to be done to find his diploma as proof of his education.
To them, a simple day at work, maybe — but to Dan, potentially life-changing.
God, I always like to say, is the ultimate ‘puller of strings.’ On that day, and for this friend of mine, I was so glad he was doing exactly that — working steadily behind the scenes, pulling strings.
As if to speak gently to Dan’s efforts, his character and his integrity: “I see you.”
Later that night, I saw Dan and walked up to him, offering up a high-five on the successful finding of his diploma, asking if he had told his prospective employer the good news.
“They still rescinded the job offer,” Dan replied.
Ugh.
He continued, “They said it didn’t matter if I had the diploma now because they found a traffic violation on my record from a few years ago.”
The disappointment was palpable, and not at all the ending I thought this story would have gotten. I offered my support, and a few expletives for good measure, making sure Dan knew that we were with him and for him in this moment of letdown.
But despite the empathetic response, Dan held his head high and said, “There’s not much else I can do about it right now, but I want to thank you again for helping me.”
As I reflect on it now, I think the most beautiful thing about changing is that you see it in these moments.
The process is usually slow and intentional,
formed through the triumphs and the letdowns,
but mostly the letdowns.
Around the circle in that candlelit gratitude meeting that night, Dan spoke up, sharing with the group more about what his week had looked like:
“You all know what I’ve been going through with this job thing the past few weeks, but tonight I’m grateful that someone went out of their way to do their job right and to help me find my diploma,” he said. “I still didn’t get the job, but I’ve been asking God what he wants me to do, and now I’m asking what he wants me to learn from this. And when that guy called me and told me that he found my diploma, I think it was God trying to tell me that maybe all of this was just so I could get all of my stuff together for the next job. So I could get my diploma and to have it with me to prove that I was telling the truth. Not having it made me feel like a liar, and I don’t want to feel like that again in my life. I worked hard for my education 30 years ago, and tonight, I’m grateful I have the proof of it again.”
Tears welled up in my eyes at the resolve in his voice and the clarity of that moment.
His words weren’t bitter or angry, even if they could have or should have been — no one would have blamed him. But instead, his words were filled with integrity, acceptance and everything a person would aspire to be in the face of adversity.
Human resiliency at it’s finest, as far as I’m concerned.
Jim, a colleague of mine from Hazelden and someone I respect deeply, has always explained the work of peer support in the best way I’ve heard, saying simply: “The unique thing about peer support is that when I share my life experience to help you, we both grow because of it.”
In this moment that Friday night, I knew exactly what he was talking about.
Because any simple encouragement I had given to Dan a few days prior had manifest in ways I had no control over — that work was just between Dan and God.
But then, I became an observer and recipient of those same gifts — the gifts of recovery, resiliency, and authentic change in action. That night, all of the good ricocheted right back at me — challenging me, inspiring me, and shaping me to handle things differently in my own life in the future — just like Dan did.
A very tangible, ‘We both grow because of it.’
As the meeting closed, Dan got up with that same smile on his face, and the peaceful resolve of a person touched by humility and gratitude.
A few of us thanked him for what he had to say, and with his cheeky, perfectly timed humor, he shrugged with a half-smile and said simply before walking out of the building, “Their loss!”
I smiled back and couldn’t agree more.
To my friend, Dan, who comes early, stays late, is the first to help and the last to leave a task unfinished — yes — their loss.
