Taking Responsibility and Making Amends – Practicing These Principles Workshop – Part 5 of 5 – Michael E.

Okay, these are the ones that are the survivors that can make it the whole day. We're going to get into step 10 because I think when you're really living in step 10 and you're actually making a step 10 part of your life, which a lot of people don't, they just kind of go over it in their heads but they don't make it anything formal. But I think if you really do a formal step 10, you can't help but practice these principles in all your affairs. I'm going to share a story with you which really still has to do with step 12 but i'm going to share it because i think i'm supposed to somebody here is supposed to hear it i guess um i have another another story similar to the burning bush story and it's another time that i had a surgery and um i had to put somebody else somebody else's needs ahead of mine because uh of what she was going through and uh it's called the ladybug story and there was a ladybug in the car so i said to cynthia i wonder if that means i'm opposed to share because I replaced it with the burning bush story you know you have to cut stuff out when you add stuff in so but then there's a live one crawling on my cup so I guess someone needs to hear this story I sponsor when I moved to Georgia I started sponsoring a woman named Vivian she lived in Hilton Head South Carolina and she had been in Alcoholics Anonymous for about four years but she did what they call the marijuana maintenance program and she thought if she could you know just smoke a little pot she would really have insight on the best inventory and so you know she always smoked this pot but she never got around to the inventory so anyway I started working with her and I had to let her know that as far as I was concerned you're not sober if you're smoking pot one thing that that I've had an experience in the past is I'm not wanting to make somebody change their sobriety date I think it has to be between them and God and I know they will if they're working the steps of the program as what happened to me. But I have seen people force people into changing their sobriety date over a pill or something and so they had the attitude, well I might as well have one last drunk and die out there not get back. So I don't ever want that responsibility. So, I told her it's gonna have to be between her and God if she smokes any pot from this point on I you know I can't be working with her but anyway so she finally changed her sobriete date a couple years later and I knew she would but I wasn't going to be responsible for her doing anything crazy if i changed it anyway um vivian was in a car accident uh you know as a result of her drinking and in that car accident her nine-year-old daughter died and instead of taking responsibility for her her daughter's death she blamed god it's all god's fault she was in the hospital for over a year with her own injuries and she never got to her daughter funeral her ex-husband brought her up on charges of manslaughter just a lot of things went on. And so she drank for another 14 years, blaming the death of her daughter on God. And when I started working with her, she had to list Tina on the very top of her list of amends to make. She finally had to take responsibility for her daughter's death that God didn't do it. And you know, that was very, very difficult for Vivian. It was very hard and she even became suicidal. You know, you're supposed to feel better after doing your fifth step. But I mean, she really became suicidal when she took on that responsibility. And I had just had another surgery, or one of the, actually it was the first surgery in Georgia, and I just knew she had to make amends right away, you know, that she had to get past this, or she probably was going to drink. And so I instructed her to write her daughter a letter, which it says in the big book, if you can't meet him face-to-face, you, you know, you write an honest letter. And we went to the cemetery, we found the grave, little, that was sad but it was a huge cemetery we finally found the grave and what she did is she dug a hole and she buried her AA chip and she read this beautiful letter and in this letter she asked her daughter spirit to stay with her and help her help other mothers get sober that so more children don't have to die of this disease and a lot of really spiritual things happened at the graveside I mean this wind started blowing I mean my hair was going back her hair was blowing back it was cool about 80 degrees and when we got there it's 105 it was June in South Carolina and a few other odd things happened that were spiritual for her but after she read the letter the breeze stopped as fast as it started it just stopped and because I was trying to recover from the surgery I went and I sat in the air-conditioned car and left her with her daughter's memory and what happened is a little ladybug came and it flew passed me and it flew on to Vivian and she was just mesmerized. I was looking at her from the car and she sat down and she's just mesмерized with this ladybug. Finally, she got in the car and she said that she could not leave while that ladybug was on her because when her daughter was alive, her very favorite things were ladybugs. And so that was a spiritual, had spiritual meaning to Vivien. And also right when the ladybug took off, she heard her daughter's voice saying, Mom, I've got to get on with my life. You have to get on with yours. And I don't usually share that part of it but I used to share this story all the time and a lot of things have happened as a result of the ladybug story. My speak-in at conferences and other women who have lost their children due to their drinking. I've been able to get them together with Vivian. Now she has a retreat that's really powerful. It's called the Ladybug Retreat and Polly and I do it together every November. But the last thing that happened to me about, I guess, about a year ago is I was, I don't know where I'm speaking, but Missouri, I think. And this woman came up to me and she said, she asked me if I was Michael. And I said yes. And she said that she just wanted me to know that the ladybug story saved her life. That she was a mother whose children were taken out of the home. And instead of taking responsibility and trying to clean up her life, she kept drinking over the children being taken out the home So this woman gave her the tape, hoping that she would get the message, at least your children are alive. You know, you always stand a chance if your children are alive to repair that relationship. And so she listened to the tape and the ladybug story was on it and she was really impressed by the lady bug story but it wasn't a burning bush. And so, she finally decided she was going to make, she was gonna try and commit suicide. And she went under a bridge where nobody would find her, and she had razor blades and a bottle of alcohol which she drank. And she stuck the razor blade to her wrist, and a ladybug flew on her wrist right where the razor blade was. And because she had heard the ladybug story the day before, she could not cut. And when she came up to me, she told me that she had a year of sobriety. And so just, I mean, God is powerful. He can take a little teeny thing like a lady bug and change lives, you know, change lives and save lives. And we have a lot of ladybug stories. Vivian's getting ready to write a book on people that have shared some of these stories after the ladybug thing happened with her. I mean, they're really fun. It's really fun to play with it. But anyway, that's all part of applying these principles in all your affairs, all these things that result. Would you please, if you have your big book, turn to page 84? What time are we breaking? 10? At 2.30 we're taking a break, okay. I can find 84. Okay and this brings us to step 10. And 10, I used to say 10 was really a 4 through 9 on a daily basis but really if you read this paragraph and look at it, it's really a four through 12. Okay in the middle the page it says this thought brings us to step 10 which suggests we continue to take personal inventory and continue to set right any new mistakes as we go along. We vigorously commence this way of living as we clean up the past and I believe when I do a fourth step I do it in writing and so if I'm going to continue on a daily basis this inventory I'm gonna do it writing. So personally for me I do attempt that at night in writing and we'll go into the 12 and 12 a little bit because the first 10th step I started doing was out of the 12 and 12 and it was a balance sheet and my sponsor said I had such low self-esteem that I needed to do a balance where you list the assets of the day and the liabilities of the date because I really needed to take the focus off of the liabilites you know and focus on the assets which I had a lot of and never gave myself credit for so I don't know how many years ago I started during my tenth step according to the big book it's more powerful for me but I think I needed it in the balance sheet in the beginning of my sobriety because it was simpler we have entered the world of spirit our next function is to grow an understanding and effectiveness this is not an overnight matter you know when I was dealing with the fear this man named Bill Honeycutt I went up to him there's two brothers Bill and Frank Honeycutt who were the old-timers that were so instrumental in my sobriety I did have a female sponsor but these two really they were taking me on panels and they just drugged me around with them and it was a father image that I never had they were kind of like my husband as an image to the girls that I sponsored and he is not here I wanted you guys to see how wonderful he is but his wonderfulness he didn't want to come so no we brought our puppies with us. And so he is taking the puppies for a walk. Anyway, I finally went up to Bill Honeycutt and I asked him about this fear and faith thing that I talked about earlier because that man said I hadn't taken a thorough third step because I had fear. And in that case, he believed I didn't have any faith. And I was just kind of crying on Bill's shoulder. Actually, I was tattletaling what I was doing. But anyway, what Bill told me is he said, Michael, nowhere in the big book does it tell you you cannot have fear and faith at the same time. And he took me to the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous and he pointed out a sentence to me on page 68 and it's under the fear inventory and what that sentence says, it says all men of faith have courage all men of faith has courage and then he pointed out to me that you don't need courage unless you're afraid and then He took me into the bottom of that paragraph and it gives you that little fear prayer, you know, God remove my and direct my attention to what you'd have me be and I'm always directed to work with you know another person whether they're in the program or out of the program applying these principles and all my affairs means I don't just help people in the programs you know I got to take it out there in the world and that's how I get on airplanes you know the first time I had to speak I spoke in Duluth and I was so terrified of flying there are no words for my you know flying and I just knew there was no way I was going to get on that airplane and I had Ted this woman named Teddy and she was gonna take me to the airport and walk me through it and boot me on the plane and what happened is she had an emergency and so she took me to the airport and she just dropped me off and she had to leave and it was about six o'clock in the morning and here I am in my head dangerous place to be at LAX Airport and I'm just absolutely terrified you know I want to keep this commitment that I made to Alcoholics Anonymous but I just knew I couldn't get on that plane. I'm a person that has suffered panic attacks, I have a panic attack disorder and boy did it kick in and my legs were shaking so bad and I started hyperventilating you know and I just kind of fell back into a chair and I started crying which was good because that was a little bit of a release and out of nowhere I had an inner voice talk to me and said Michael why don't you get out of yourself and try and help somebody and so that's what I did I ran around the airport looking for somebody I could help I do that all the time if my husband's not with me but I always zero on old people you know old people who are struggling you know and I try and to help them with their bags or help them get to concourses sometimes they don't know I'm trying to be helpful and they think I'm robbing them or something so it gets a little iffy I remember this one lady I got I had a layover I got off off the plane I had long layover and this other woman got off the plane and she had to get to another concourse and she didn't have time and she was really old and frail you know so I was able to help her you know I just grabbed somebody that had had a cart and I got her on it and got all of her bags on it we dashed onto this other concourse and we just made the plane just made it and I was just so excited I gave her a big hug and she goes my you're friendly in California but anyway so that's what I do, I always try and find somebody that I can help. And then the last paragraph, the last sentence in that paragraph on page 68, after the fear prayer, it says at once we commence to outgrow fear. It does not say at once, we outgrow fair. It says we commenced outgrow fair. So I'm 23 years sober and I'm still commencing, but that goes along with the big book, what we're going to read now, but it says it's not an overnight matter that it should continue for a lifetime so after we get to the part that says we have entered the world in the spirit our next function is growing understanding effectiveness this is not an overnight matter it should continue for a lifetime we continue to watch for selfishness dishonesty resentment and fear when these crop up we ask God at once to remove them we discuss them with someone immediately and make amends quickly if we have harmed anyone then we resolutely turn our thoughts to someone we can help love and tolerance of others is our code and that is a mantra for me is love and tolerances are code um that has saved me in so many instances uh of just trying to practice love and tolerant and we have ceased fighting this is called the second set of promises and they're very powerful and we've ceased fighting anything and or anyone even alcohol for by this time sanity will have returned we will seldom be interested in liquor if tempted we recoil from it as from a hot flame we react sanely and normally and we will find that this has happened automatically we will see that our new attitude toward liquor has been given us without any thought or effort on our part it just comes that is the miracle of it we are not fighting it neither are we avoiding temptation we feel as though we've been placed in a position of neutrality, safe and protected. We have not even sworn off. Instead, the problem has been removed. It does not exist for us. We are neither cocky nor are we afraid. That is our experience. That's how we react so long as we keep in fit spiritual condition. So that is a very powerful set of promises. But it says this is how we interact as long as if we keep and fit spiritual conditions. So how do you keep in fit spiritual condition? We read about it on page 14 and 15, a self-sacrifice with others. Working with others is how we keep in fits spiritual condition. If we are not working with others, we fail to grow spiritually very early on in the book. It is easy to let up on our spiritual program of action and rest on our laurels. We are headed for trouble if we do, for alcohol is a subtle fold. Okay, what does resting on our Laurels mean? okay resting on our past accomplishments that means we can't stay sober today and what we did yesterday we have to stay sober today on what we do today and I'll share a story with you at when I was 10 years sober and I was definitely resting on my laurels everything in my life was pretty wonderful you know from where I came from to where I was I was working for the theater. I had an education. I've got this impressive title, business manager. I'm hanging out with all these movie stars. I drive a brand new car. I got somewhat of an education for the first time in my life everything was perfect and I almost picked up a drink. You know I started resting on my laurels. I was going to school very important. I working hard at my job very important but I started missing AA meetings. I wasn't working so much with others because school and work is so important and I hadn't been to a meeting in two weeks and I started getting into some really stinking thinking. I was at a birthday party for Debbie Reynolds it was probably my first real thing as business manager to have to go represent this at this birthday party and you know I was very impressed at the time when I was a little girl Debbie Reynolds was my very favorite movie star and today I talk at meetings everyone's so young They don't have a clue who Debbie Reynolds is, and they're not the least bit impressed. You know, so but I was very impressed, and I'm with a lot of people that can drink safely. They can drink normally, and watching all of them, you know, and they are making drinking look good. It wasn't like where I came from. They're all drinking normally, and I started to think this is two weeks without a meeting. You know maybe now that I drive a brand new car, and have an education, and I have this job, and I'm not that girl from the other side of the track. Maybe I'm really not an alcoholic. Maybe I really drank because of all those things. And one healthy thing I've done for myself is I did not have anonymity at work. You know, everybody at work knew I was sober in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, thank God. Because I had enough respect for AlcoholicsAnonymous, I did want to drink in front of my coworkers and make AA look bad. So I did not drink that night. I decided I was going to drink the next day when nobody was around and just see if I could handle it. And I just think anybody who's worked those 12 steps as hard as I had worked those12 steps, God had a chance to intervene. And the next thing I was at work and the executive director approached me and she asked me to go pay a 12-step call on a makeup artist who hadn't been at work in two weeks and he was held up in a motel. The motel was trying to get him out And so they called the executive director. So, I mean, what could I say? I've got to go pay this 12-step call. And I was not happy about it, but I did call another man and take a man with me. You know, and I just knocked on his door, and I identified myself Michael Alcoholic. And he knew me, but he didn't know I was alcoholic. And for some reason, he answered the door. Now, if that was me, I would not have answered the floor. But he answered The Door. And I stood there speechless. I mean, I didn't know what to say because I didn�t recognize him. I thought maybe I had the wrong room. You know, he was a makeup artist. He had all this blonde wavy hair, buff. I mean this man standing in front of me is bald-headed. He's ten times his normal size from just bloat. He's profusely sweating. He's bleeding from head to toe because he kept falling into objects. He smelled of urine. He smelled alcohol and he smelled of vomit. And as I stood there, I had another one of those spiritual experiences. I had an inner voice talk to me loud and clear, and it wasn't through the ears. And it said, Michael, this is you. You are not like the people you were with last night. If you drink again, you're standing in front of a mirror. And that man doesn't know it, but he's the one who paid a 12-step call on me because I got my fanny into a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous that night, and I recommitted to this program. Since that night I have gone to more meetings than I've ever gone to. I've worked with more alcoholics than I've ever worked with because I know beyond a shadow of a doubt the longer I'm sober the more I need eating. The longer I'M sober the easier it is for me to forget where I came from and this is the greatest gift you give me by allowing me to be up here as I get to remember where I come from. This disease is truly cunning baffling and powerful. Okay where was i oh okay it is easy to let up on our spiritual program action and rest on our laurels we are headed for trouble if we do for alcohol is a subtle fold we are not cured of alcoholism what we really have is a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual program our spiritual condition every day is a day when we we must carry the vision of god's will and to all of our activities. How can I best serve thee? Thy will, not mine, be done. These are thoughts which must go with this constantly. We can exercise our willpower along this line all we wish. It is the proper use of the will. We are required to use our will, you know, and I mean God gave us brains to use, you know. And it talks about this in step 11 and we are to use Our Brains but hopefully, you now, we just pray to have it cleared from wrong motives and you know staying in line with god's will for us but we are to use our will and we are used our brains much has already been said about receiving strength inspiration and direction from him who has all knowledge and power if we have carefully followed direction we have begun to sense the flow of his spirit into us to some extent we have become god conscious we have began to develop this vital sixth sense but we must go further and that means more action step 11 suggests prayer and meditation we shouldn't be shy about this matter on prayer better men than we are using it constantly it works if we have the proper attitude and work at it it would be easy to be vague about this manner yet we believe we can make some definite and valuable suggestions and so this is talking about what we do when we retire at night and it's under step 11 but that's really how I do my step 10 there are seven questions here and I write on them every night I answer these questions and that keeps me in a place of applying these principles and all my affairs one thing I want to I'm going to share something which deals with step 11 that is going on with me right now and applying these principles and all your fairs you know applies to sponsorship also i sponsor a woman right now named lynn she has a lot of years of sobriety she has 20 years of sobrietry but she hasn't been real active working with others and so i'm trying to get her working with other people and she's just took on this girl and i just think it's a god thing that she got her but she took onthis woman that she's having a really hard time sponsoring and we've had to really come to some decisions because she has to come to me and ask me everything to do but this woman is she got in a lot of trouble for drinking so she switched from drinking to cough syrup and she's a pathological liar and she slept a maniac I mean you name it I think she has issues outside of alcoholism but she had reached the point she has two children and once three years old and one's four years old. And she's reached the point where her husband took away the keys, she can't drive the car, no money, no nothing, she's trapped in this house. And not too long ago what she did is, she said it was because she was trapped in the house, but she wanted attention so she took a pan of boiling water and she poured it on her three-year-old daughter's leg. And her three-year-old daughter has been in the hospital for a lot of weeks she's had surgery after surgery after Surgery now she's never she didn't tell us when she came into Alcoholics Anonymous you know that she did this intentionally what she told us is you know it was an accident what she told me as she was looking for something and her daughter pulled it off the stove well as we went along I think she did have a point where she really wanted to tell the truth and and she did but I mean what she did to Alcoholics Anonymous is she just took advantage of us she abused us she was constantly having us buy her stuff buy her cigarettes take her to meetings which was fine take her two doctors appointments you know I was having some health problems so my husband was taking her a lot too enough from meetings and she would always have him stop at the store and you know i didn't i didn t know that until finally he said you know she just drives me crazy she has me stop at the store every time and she's in there forever and i said well why would she have you stop at this store her husband doesn't give her any money he said what i said she doesn't have money she's not allowed to have money so what we found out is she went into the store stole cough syrup went in the bathroom and drank it and would come back and get in the car so there's a big joke about my husband driving the getaway car, you know, so, but anyway, this is just how she's just used this and abused this, and finally when she got real honest with Lynn, and she told her that she had intentionally done that to, you Know, to get attention, you Now, Lynn was just besides herself, and You Know, she came to me, and we talked about it, and You Now, because that's something very awful you know and we just didn't know quite what to do and Lynn just bonded with these kids she's one that lost a baby not too long ago so she's attached to these little girls and and she knew they weren't getting fed they're very they're developmentally I mean retarded I mean they're just they can't speak right they haven't had any attention and so Lynn and I talked about it and she told Stephanie the truth she said no as long as your work in this program and if if you do the things i tell you to do which is to report in every morning she gave her guidelines get up at eight o'clock get your children out of bed get them dressed and feed them she never done did those things she slept all day and the kids went and watched tv and you know were on their own and she gave a guideline and she told her that if she ever thought that she was not following through on these guidelines that she would have to do something about having her kids taken away she was very honest and stephanie said that's good you know that's what you should do you know and uh a week or so later uh lynn was out of town and i'm con you know trying to get well for my surgery so she called two of the other girls that's in our network and what happened is she went and she got cough syrup these girls didn't know all the details she laid on the couch at their house the whole time the kids were totally neglected i mean and they saw something was wrong and the one girl thought she was acting so weird she looked in her purse and saw the cough syrup so anyway they came back to us with all this stuff and uh what lynn says is that's obvious she was putting out a cry for help that she would do that around aa people but you know that was the last straw and this comes with step 11 we both prayed with all of our heart to know god's will and the power to carry it out because there's a part of you you know something's given to you confidentially, and you feel like you're not being a good member of Alcoholics Anonymous if you, you know, report them for it. But, I mean, if you're praying to know God's will and the power to carry out, you know it's just sometimes you might have to stand for something. And my sponsor says if you don't stand for anything, if you stand for nothing, you'll fall for anything. And so Lynn had to do that. She called DFACS, and she called the police, and she reported her, and a lot of things have happened. The police went there that night, and they don't just go in there and take your kids away unless they see something. You know, they went in there. There was no food in the refrigerator. One of the officers took the little girl aside because she's always saying, my mommy burned me, my mommy burn me. And, you know, they said just enough where they removed the girls from the house. And so we just got a call that they are prosecuting her. You know? And it's sad, you know, because we're not looking. AA is not looking really good to her, but if she ever gets into the truth of it. And she does have a disorder. They are prosecuting her on a disorder called Munchausen syndrome. Huh? Byproxy? I don't know. But anyway, that's the disorder they called it. It's somebody who does things to their children to get attention. And we had another case in our area where a lady was actually going to the hospital and giving her daughter little bits of poison to get more and more attention from the doctors. And this is the disorder that they have tagged on her, and so they are going further. And she's already got charges of shoplifting. So many things have happened. She'd go shoplift with the two little girls. I mean, just ongoing. And so that's where we are right now. And it's a very heavy load for Lynn and I to carry, especially for Lynn. It's avery heavy load. But there's a part of her that feels relief that at least those two girls are safe right now. And they are with other family members and, you know, they are safe. That's a real hard thing to have to go through in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous where you feel like you're divulging something that was given to you in confidence. But sometimes we just have to do the next right thing. Okay, this is how I do my tense stuff, and this is when we retire at night. Now, in the big book, in The 12 and 12 Steps, 10, 11, and 12 are really co-mingled. They're very co-mingled. And part of that is just the way they were in such a hurry to get the big book written that he had to go back into The 12 and 12 and add stuff. But anyway, when we retire at night, we constructively review our day. So there's a big difference between constructively and destructively. And that's what a lot of us do. We destructibly review our days. So we're going to try and constructively review our day. Resentful, selfish, dishonest, or afraid. And so that's what I do at night. I write about it. I look at my day. And obviously if I catch myself at the time, I take care of it at the time. But how many of us can do that? Sometimes we have to kind of step back and just take a look at our day. And so if I find that I was resentful, selfish, dishonest or afraid and afraid was a big one for me. You know, I was always afraid, you know, and I write about it and one thing that happened for me, another thing that's happened to me as a result of this, you now I used to suffer terrible panic attacks but for some reason I didn't feel the need to share it with my sponsor because I had a new sponsor and there's so much other stuff but I'd have panic attacks when I drove. And so I would drive to work, to home, and to a meeting and I couldn't go any further than that. never drive out of Long Beach I couldn't get on freeways I was just a prisoner to this disorder and this has really helped me about writing if I was afraid you know and because of this I started moving on because I used to do an inventory on the balance sheet it was this where I really got into it that I started moving and I was coming to terms with these panic attacks and maybe I should talk to Polly about it I was at a meeting where I had never been at this meeting before and there was a girl there that shared about she hadn't been a median in two years because she had agoraphobia which is a fear of fear starts talked about it starting out just like it did with me that she became housebound and when she talked about becoming house down lot leaving the house in two year I knew that I had to take some actions you know and I did a six and a seven on it and then I called my sponsor and we prayed to have this defect removed and I'm sponsorship for me is is they the sponsors I've had has given me direction and so my sponsor gave me direction what to do the next day I was supposed to get on the freeway and get off on the first exit the next I get on two freeway you get off on the second exit then I get onto the free way and get up on the third exit so that started the progress of my recovery with agoraphobia then I got dropped kicked into speaking you know I never spoke before I'm afraid of people I cannot read how it works at four years of sobriety and my want my sponsor wants me to go speak And I kept telling her that is not in the big book. You know She doesn't care, but what finally happened is she was very ill and she couldn't go to one of her speaking engagements And so she talked me into going and keeping this it was in Long Beach wasn't a big deal So I went to that speaking engagement for her and I spoke. And from that engagement where I spoke and I shared my story, I was asked to speak at three other places and you know and I was required to start driving out of the city of Long Beach and I just couldn't do it so we packed the car full of AA people and it was like you know a joyride or something and you know we would get me to another city and they'd all be there and I'd be able to share my story and I get back in the car I felt the safety net of all these people that would go with me you know and gradually i got asked to speak more and more and the people got sicker and sicker of hearing my story so they started uh not coming with me you know in the day came where i had to make a two-hour drive all by myself and it was so difficult but i mean i was so committed and i just put in a bunch of a tape i can't tell you the feeling i had when i made that drive all myself and i got home it was such a big accomplishment you know it was such a big accomplishment and so i started making that journey and then i got to ask to speak at a convention where oh god now i gotta get on airplanes this is not fair you know so somebody asked me you know how do you get to be a circuit speaker and i say well i don't know all i know is i'm afraid to fly and i'm scared to talk and i turn my will and my life over to god that's it you know that's all i know so but it's been one of the greatest things for me because i get to meet people like you and I would never have met my husband. I would have never met the life I have today if it wasn't that willingness to walk through fear and the sponsorship I've been blessed to have in The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. I didn't think I'd get this emotional. Okay, were we resentful, selfish, dishonest or afraid? Do we owe an apology. Now this is, this is where if I owe an apology I'll write it out but if I caught myself right at the time and I made that apology I mean I have been directed to give myself credit. I've got to give my self-credit in black and white and so if I know I took care of something when it happened instead of beat myself up for doing something inappropriate I give myself credit for catching it and making my amends quickly you know I'm just doing what step 10 tells me so I give myself credit if I made the apology and if I have to make the apology I prepare to do it have we kept something to ourselves which should be discussed with another person at once well I would say yes I'm having panic attacks every day and have I ever shared that with my sponsor? No. So that was something that I had to correct and it was a result of doing my inventory out of the big book, my tenth step. Were we kind and loving toward all? So now it's asking us to look for the good things. You know it's a constructive view not destructive view so we don't just look at the bad things now we're looking at the good thing. So if I was kind and loving to everybody but one person I still give myself credit for that kind and loving toward all but da-da-da, so might not have been everybody but it's progress not perfection. Were we kind and love toward all? What could we have done better? That has been the most powerful tool for me to use. Sometimes I don't know how to change my behavior unless I know what I can change it to. So writing on what I could've done instead or what I would've done better I get to look at how I should act next time so that I can act instead of react. Were we thinking of ourselves most of the time or were we thinking about what we could do for others and what we can pack into the mainstream of life? But we must be careful not to drift into worry, remorse or morbid reflection for that would diminish our usefulness to others. And that's something that I think we really need to take heart. That's something that, in fact, I would highly recommend that if any of you really want to work on applying these principles in all your affairs, that for the next few days or week, just read page 84 to the end of the chapter, you know, and just try and make it a part of you that you will do this stuff without having to read it, that it'll just be something you'll intuitively do. And the main thing that I thinking about is I've got to be careful not to drift into remorse or morbid reflection because that's something that I can do very easy. I just beat myself up when I'm less than perfect. After making our review, we ask God's forgiveness and we inquire what corrective measures need to be taken. And a lot of times I get my corrective measure from my sponsor, like getting the directions to get on the freeway and get off on the first exit, get on the freeway and get up on the second exit. Sometimes it depends on how big the situation is. You know, if I can tune myself into God, you know, when I'm in despair and I'm into calamity, I feel disconnected from my higher power. And that's when I so desperately need all of you, you know? Because if God's deep within me, God's steep within you. And sometimes those corrective measures come to me from God through another person. That's just how it works for me. on awakening let us think about the 24 hours ahead we consider our plans for the day before we begin we ask God to direct our thinking especially asking that it be divorced from self-pity dishonest self-seeking motive I always start off my prayer meditation with asking God to divorce me from self pity dishonest of seeking motives being married is a gift especially with somebody being in the program my husband and I will say the third step for the seven-step prayer together and we'll say prayers for other people that we know are in need of prayer but then I do a form of meditation on my own where I really try to listen to God I really just try to it's a formof meditation that's called Japa getting into the gap and how this came to me was a series of those God coincidences but I really just try still my mind which is really it's really hard to turn this mine off but it has been something that has been very helpful to me lately. Under these conditions, we can employ our mental faculties with assurance. After all, God gave us brains to use. Our thought life will be placed on a much higher plane when our thinking is cleared of wrong motives. I think I'll just share with you right now how I came to terms with God and it's dealing with my daughter's rape because I just really, really had to keep working with step 11, even though I took actions contrary to the way I felt. You know, being angry at God, not knowing which way to turn, I still really depended on step 11 to get me through this and for God to reveal the truth to me of where he falls in the line of this kind of stuff. Okay, so my daughter's three years sober. She and her girlfriend are leaving an AA dance. A man came up to him with a gun, and he forced him into the car. gunpoint and kidnap them. He had totally knocked the one girl unconscious and brutally raped my daughter for over two hours, and I hate the word rape because rape sounds like it's just about sex but rape is really about terror and it's about violence. And the whole time that this was going on my daughter knew he was gonna kill her anyway and she was so angry at God it took her over two years to remember that she did say a quiet prayer to live. She was, this man was drinking he had a bottle of alcohol in his pocket he drank throughout the whole ordeal thank God because he got quite drunk and at the point where he is forcing my daughter to the trunk of the car she somehow got the courage you know to make some kind of an effort to try to save her own life she had to try something and she caught him off guard she slugged him in the face as hard as she could he tripped fell down the gun slid under the wheel she ran down the street naked and she got away at that point he got back into the car took off with the car with the other girls still in it that eventually rolled her out into the street so both girls lived but the road of recovery was really long and it was really hard my daughter and I felt absolutely betrayed how could God let something like this happen to us I'm going to tell you something I was I was sharing this story at a conference once and this man came up to me and he said I hope your daughter knows you're sharing this stuff and I said she does and he says well why do you act like it hurt you so bad it happened to your daughter I mean obviously he's not a mother and he didn't have a child living with her for two years that woke up every night with nightmares and wouldn't leave the house for two years I mean you know oh boy I had to practice love intolerance because I just wanted to punch him so anyway she ran down the street she got naked she got away the other girl was rolled out into the street um dealing with the ang the anger we had at god how could god let this happen to us we were both sober in the program of alcoholic synonymous how could God let something like this happen test we were working these steps as hard as we could and this is a spiritual program but the hardest thing for me to deal with was a sentence in the big book you know it was on page 449 in the third edition I'm not sure, what is it in the fourth edition? 217? 417 in the fourth edition. Anyway, on that page it talks about acceptance and I still like the part on acceptance. I really do but that one sentence says absolutely nothing in God's world happens by mistake. Clancy says alcoholism is a disease of perception I'm still an alcoholic, I get into my disease of perfection because I perceive that to mean, that if nothing in God's world happens by mistake then that had to be an act of God. It had to be in active God and I wanted to leave Alcoholics Anonymous and I want it to leave God. I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt I didn't want any part of the God that could operate like that. I talked earlier about a man named Bill Henicutt. He came to my rescue again. He took me by the hand and he said michael god is good and good as god and if it's not good it's not of god he said man has free will that man was acting on his free will and your daughter was just a victim he said if man didn't have free will we wouldn't all be sitting in a meeting of alcoholics anonymous we'd all be perfect people and when he told me that i had a spiritual release and i knew he was telling me the truth and i came to terms with my god again But I still had so much trouble with that sentence in the big book. I could hear somebody talk about that sentence, talk about something wonderful about that sense, say that saying, and I would feel absolute rage. And I sponsor a lot of women in this program, and because I have the story I have, I sponsor lots of women who have suffered major tragedies. I mean, some of these tragedies are too gruesome to even tell you from the podium. but this one woman she made the mistake of telling me that her tragedy must be God's will because in the big book it says absolutely nothing in God's role happens by mistake this woman desperately needed comfort and I went off on her like a crazy woman and I started screaming at her that that wasn't written by the first hundred alcoholics that's not in the first 164 pages of the big books I took the big look I slammed it down I said that's not even in the first two editions of this book and I made this woman cry and as she was crying I knew that I had a problem I have a resentment about something in the big book but this resentment is not only hurting me now it's hurting other people and because it was hurting other people I came to a place of really being willing to give it up and so I started praying for God just to help me with that sentence. And I was in a meeting about seven or eight years ago, I was already getting on airplanes and sharing my story but I was with my sponsor Polly and I'm still praying you know for God to help me with the sentence. She's a speaker in this small meeting and she was sharing about a tape out that Clancy does and it's not addressing alcoholics he's talking to doctors and the name of this type is alcoholism disease of perception and if she was here she would order all of you to go up to Roger in order this tape and it really gives the most wonderful explanation of our disease of perceptions that I have heard and right in that meeting when she said the words disease of Perception I had another spiritual encounter and I think this is the last huge virtual encounter that I had and I had that inner voice talk to me and it says Michael and everything was like a big bright white light I couldn't see anything else in the room and I couldn' hear another word Polly said all I could hear was this voice and see this white hazy light that boy said Michael you know when it happens in a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous is part of God's world what happens when you're working to 12 steps as part of god's world the progression of all good is part God's World what happened in that car nine years ago was part of man's world. So I came to a place of being able to separate man's worlds from God's world, I came to a play to be able to say absolutely nothing in God's world happens by mistake it's God's World that got me to the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. So two weeks after I had that spiritual experience through you know those series of God coincidences I found myself sitting down at a dinner table with Dr. Paul and Dr.Paul is the one who wrote that sentence in the big book you know and I'd never met him all of a sudden he's sitting right next to me and we're eating dinner and I was at such peace I did not have to go off on this man and tell him all about my resentment because I knew at that point it didn't matter what he meant when he wrote it what mattered was how I perceived it and sometimes I have to work on my perception so whatever that perception is it can work in my life and that might not work for you and that's okay because I truly believe that God works for each one of us at our own level of understanding. I once heard if you take one step towards God, God takes ten steps towards you. And in this lifetime, as we know it, we will never ever reach God's level of understanding. But once we're on a spiritual path, God does not want to lose one of Us. So He comes to each one of us. He works for Each One of Us at our individual level of understanding. And that's why what works for you might not work for me. What works for me might not work for you, but the beauty of Alcoholics Anonymous is whatever you believe, it will work within the 12 steps. And since that day, that man's heard my talk. We've had lots of spiritual talks. We've talked at lots of conventions together. He even became my spiritual advisor. And I talk about Paul like in the present tense, but we lost him three years ago, May 19th. But when I talk, I still feel his presence. and what he told me about that sentence is he did not mean anything like that when he wrote that sentence. He told me he was not thinking of man in humanity to man. He said my explanation, my spiritual experience was the best explanation he could think of as to why evil exists in this world and I am so thankful I paid attention to something I read in the 12 and 12 which hopefully we'll get into. It says restraint of pen and tongue because when I found out this man was still alive, this is how spiritual I was, I cannot tell you how many countless times I sat down and I started to write him a hate letter and tell him exactly what I thought about him and exactly what i thought about that sentence and if I would have followed through I would've missed out on this gift because this man became a gift in my life and he used to get lots of letters about that sentance and he would get lots phone calls about that sentence all from people who have suffered terrible tragedies and what he did a lot of times he just gave him my phone number so okay we're going to take a break until how long