The Hazelden Blog

My passion for giving to others is rooted in family, faith and gratitude. As I was growing up, I was taught to share our table, feed the hungry, shelter the homeless and reach out to anyone who suffers. I was taught to be mindful of the common good.

Then it happened. The disease of alcoholism visited the home of my husband, five children and me. Through the gentle voice of a woman who lived the Twelfth Step of AA, I learned of Al Anon. She saved my life and my family.

There were the AA guys who traveled 80 miles to sit with my husband, sharing their experience, strength and hope. It took 35 years, 17 inpatient treatments, a stroke, heart attack, paralysis, loss of our marriage and his children until he listened. But because so many reached out, he is alive today.

In the course of those 35 years, my five children and I were left alone due to the ravages of this disease. After being left homeless and turned away from many places because of the number of children, someone finally “saw with different eyes,” an apartment building owner by the name of Bill Bianco. He said, “Yes, give this family a home.”—followed by boxes of food, shoes and clothing left on our doorstep from an unknown “someone.”

As I raised my children, there were large numbers of men and women who reached out through the Big Brother/Big Sister Program, Cops and Kids Fishing Program, Jaycees and our parish. The list could go on and on. What I do now is a small token in comparison to what we have been given.

When we say “yes” to helping others, there is a trickle effect. When we feed the hungry, visit the imprisoned, reach out to the suffering and love those who have never known love, lives change. Mine did.

My faith, passions and spiritual life interconnect with everything I do, am and believe because “to whom much is given, much is expected.”

I have traveled to Haiti, where I hold and feed the children in a children’s home. At this home, you’ll find three to four little ones sharing a crib the size of a large vegetable box. When I laugh and cry with these children, they teach me more than I can ever teach them.

When working overnight in a men’s shelter in Minneapolis, we volunteers rise early to prepare pancakes, sausages and eggs so the residents can fight the elements to survive one more day in hopes that things will get better.

As a police chaplain, I have done death notifications to families who have lost a loved one, often due to either drug use or the disease of addiction.

Each time, I give thanks for the face of God living in their faces.

Thirty eight years ago, I was given the Big Book, Alcoholics Anonymous. Shortly after, I encouraged a man to seek treatment for addiction, and a miracle happened in that man’s life and the life of his family. Today, as a spiritual care coordinator at an addiction treatment center, I am witness to the same miracles every day.

I have a deep attitude of gratitude for those who have laid the Twelve Step foundation, including Bill W., Dr. Bob, Lois W. and Anne S. They passed it to us. We now are called to do the same.

Annetta M. Sutton, MA, AAPC, is a spiritual care professional, speaker, writer and educator who works at Hazelden Foundation in the Spiritual Care Department, as a volunteer Minneapolis Police Chaplain and as an adjunct professor in the Police Science Program at Saint Mary’s University.