The Third Step Prayer and the Gift of Being Reborn – Bill S.

Well, thank you so much. You just welcomed me. I can't even see with all the Hollywood scores going. I think it was Carol, right? Okay. Well, it doesn't matter. I'm here, you know. I was telling my God, I'm a gentleman. I don't go where I'm not invited and I don'T stay where I'M NOT WELCOMED. So, it's good to be here. I'M AN ALCOHOLIC AND MY NAME IS BILL. I'VE GOT A LOT OF FRIENDS ON THIS, UH, ON THIS PLATFORM. 25 OF THEM, BUT MYSELF INCLUDED, SO 24 OTHER FRIEND. I haven't met y'all yet. And congratulations to the celebrants. The lady with 60 days, I haven'T been here yet. When I have a certain moment or milestone in recovery, I go to every meeting, you know what I mean? I want to get my chips and let people know that I'm a member. Boy, a beginner's meeting or a newcomer's meeting, I was a newcomor for a long time. That's not the goal here at all, it's not. But it's my experience. and I may be one of those who suffer from grave emotional disorders. I mean, at least if I'm getting honest in my four-step, there's something not right with me, you know, and it's wonderful to be a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. I told Charlotte I was going to let you know kind of how my day went and sometimes I think I'd like some reference point and I was looking at these posts that the people who don't come on with their pictures because either there's a child sleeping or they're doing something behind the scenes and don't want to disrupt the meeting. And one of the badges said, Don't quit or don't leave five minutes before the miracle happens. And I heard that so many times in AA and I always thought that the miracle happened on Sunday. but i wasn't treating my alcoholism i didn't know any better i was not drinking and going to meetings and what happened is someone would offend me sometime around wednesday and they usually show up at a meeting i was at on thursday and i would be re-offended you'd call that resentful and by friday i should be so angst up thinking they were out to get me or something that i would pick up a drink because i had no defense and i drank right through the miracle i didnít find out until I got involved with people who knew the experience of spirit brought about by this book that the miracle happens at step 10 it doesn't happen on a specific date it's good to see my friend Louise here and Leslie and Maya I mean I'll even thank Paul for coming there sometimes I just want a bigger audience so I invite hecklers as well that's what he is and uh I remember we met Louise and she went through a tough time and me and Leslie talked to her early one morning in happenstance she wasn't even supposed to be at the meeting we were at and we know that she was supposed to me there because things weren't a divine appointment around here and uh my good friend Charlotte Michaels and Danny's here I mean if you make Christmas say you know you guys have all heard my story don't waste your time I'd like to close now and let you hear you have you say nice things about me because I always like that best way when I open my mouth sometimes I eliminate the need for the nice things. And sobriety, whether you have one day or a thousand days, you're an inspiration to someone. And sometimes even if you have a thousand and one days, you understand like if you come here and don't understand that this is not just about not drinking. And I woke up this morning. This is my second share today out of four commitments that I made. Sometimes I think that I have something to say when I realize that God just keeps me real close. He uses my defective character of loving the sound of my own voice. I keep saying yes to AA. It's just the way it worked out, and believe me, it's not because I have anything more important or different to say than anyone else. It is just the way it works out. And I woke up this morning. I was asked yesterday last minute to share at my home group which is Early Risers at 615 and I said yes to that and it was so interesting because usually the people out here that know me and have heard me before usually know that I'm real intense and manic and I don't have to be you know what I mean I don' t have to be sometimes I get excited I get passionate and I get emotional and maybe that's what what brings out a more intense uh or passionate version but i'm calming down in my youth you know what i mean uh it was 23 months ago today that i had my last uh drink or whatever it was that helped me to qualify i don't my alcoholism is not a substance specific illness i believe that's the the name of the spiritual malady that i suffer from i don't believe that alcoholics anonymous is a substance specific fellowship i have a guy that i've been working with for i've known him nine months now and for the last 18 months he's been collecting time coins and celebrating abstinence from alcohol and he went immediately got a medical marijuana card and you know what What I had to explain to him is it sounds to me like you've switched seats on the Titanic. And I said something the other night, and I hope I didn't offend him, but sometimes I open my big mouth because I was brought up to believe if someone's heading towards a cliff, if I can do it as kindly as possible, I might want to tell them he's heading toward a cliff rather than tell his mom when we're burying him that I saw him heading toward the cliff and I should have said something, but I wanted to be politically correct. We're dealing with lives here, we're dealing with real life here and I've been coming to Alcoholics Anonymous for almost 43 years to the month and there's more people that I've met that have come to AA that are dead than are sober. That's a fact and the other night we were on a meeting and he said I've I've been on a dry drunk for 18 months, and I said, if you're doing other chemicals than alcohol that alter your perception, that's not a dry drug. It's called active alcoholism, and it's fatal. And if I don't say that, maybe for me to hear, maybe someone else needs to hear it. and I've tried to blot out my intolerable situation for 41 of those years coming to AA by everything that I could put between me and me because I didn't know what it meant to be alcoholic. I get a little emotional when you read how it works because it says in there, they seem to have been born that way and I thought if we were really born with the incapacity of the inability to be honest with ourselves what a cruel creator that we would have and maybe it means something's flawed genetically maybe I won't put the burden on God but the other day I was studying the instructions for step three and before we utter the third step prayer what a magical gift we've been given here here. It says we get to be reborn. So even if I'm born with the inability to be honest, Alcoholics Anonymous gives me a rebirth and guess what? Maybe just maybe in my rebirth, the ability or the capacity to be honestly will be granted to me. I don't know if I could tell you that I know what God's thinking or what he's doing or what He said to me, lock me up because I'm not weller than I think, but it's good to be here. Welcome to Alcoholics Anonymous if you're new. The early people, I'll let you in on the news bulletin because I did it for a long time and I didn't know better. If all you're doing is counting days or collecting coins, you will miss 99.9% of what AlcoholicsAnonymous has to offer you. And for so long I came in here, you know we read something the other day too in the book and they asked me to do a little lead share. Like I said, I don't say no to AA, especially when I get to speak. One time I drove 400 miles to York, Pennsylvania. I'm in Ohio right now. 400 miles just speaking at a meeting for a friend of mine. And the following week, six or seven days later, I drove over 400 miles in the other direction to speak in Illinois for another friend of my. Now if I didn't even drive around when I got to my destination that's 1,600 miles in one week to talk twice. My spouse used to say, you'll drive 2,000 miles in a week to hear yourself talk, but will you go next door to help a new guy? If all I'm doing is drawing attention to myself and I did that for a long time, I would go because I was trying to outrun my alcoholism in the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. And what that looks like is I'm a Model AA. That's a small imitation of the real thing. And hell, the way I was living, I had to go 500 miles so that no one would really know what was going on in my life. No one in my hometown wanted me to speak because there's a line in. I want to say there is a solution where it talks about when we get to the point on page 25 that there was nothing left for us to do but to pick up the simple spiritual kit of tools laid at our feet. and it dawned on me the other day I couldn't possibly pick up any new tools because I was clinging to the tools you call them defects of character my sponsor called them weapons of mass destruction. I was hanging on to the rules that I brought in here I couldn t possibly release those and grasp any other tools until I realized the absolute necessity. So I got up this morning morning and I went to turn off the alarm on my phone because I got up earlier than I needed to that kind of happens spontaneously but if I make an early commitment like I do a commitment at my home group every Monday morning at 6 15 this is the second three month period that I've done it and it's on step 3 and 11 which I love and maybe I'm going to talk about that for a minute it but i don't want to lose track of the story that i'm trying to tell if i forget to tell you later no i'll tell you now the third step in the 11th step gets so predominantly mixed up with each other it's step three i think is about god's will about defining god or knowing what he wants me to to do with my life. And what I've come to find out is that's a step 11 position. Step three is about me discovering that I'm the problem. There doesn't have to be a God, I don't have to believe anything, it's step three other than this. My way of doing things isn't working. Now some of my mates out here, that's my favorite word, I call my brother mate now, he said what the hell's mate? I said all my good friends in the UK teach me that, so they say what's up dude or what's up brother I say what's up mate but I like it because I'm easily influenced when I hang out with you I want to resemble you so I watch who I hang out with today they say stick with the winners and anyone in Alcoholics Anonymous is trying in my estimation as a winner but some of them and I can recognize it may be easier than others are still trying to hold on to their old ideas of their own toolkit and sometimes Sometimes I have to distance myself only because who I hang out with, I start to resemble. If I hangout with people that are watching stuff on the Internet that we don't want our moms or our wives or our girlfriends to see us watching, it's not AA approved, then what happens is I'm going to talk like guys who watch that stuff and I'm gonna say something appropriately, usually in a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous because I can't contain this. See, my mind doesn't know the difference of where I'm at based on what I'm putting in. My sponsor said, you know, if I read Playboy, I think about women in bikinis or maybe that's Sports Illustrated or naked women. You get the point. If I read the big book, I Think About Bill and Bob and the Miracle That Blessed Us 89 Years Ago. If I Read The Good Book, I Thinking About God and His Son and the stuff that goes on in that book. What am I putting into my mind? Because it affects my spirit, even if I'm not aware of it. so I guard my recovery I guard my spirit it's my job to put on the full armor right Leslie isn't that what the other book says put on the full armor protect your head and your heart and your soul and all that good stuff and you might want to wear shoes if you're running in the gravel you know and so I got up this morning I didn't lose track of the story I got up this morning and I turned off the alarm and before I asked God to get into my thinking I noticed a pop-up on the Google website latest is the doctor sentenced to 42 months in prison for running a pill mill i'm still an alcoholic and i said boy i wish i would have known that guy to probably save me a lot of money and then the next one said two women were arrested in sandusky which i'll be tomorrow for a 12-step workshop it's about 60 miles west of here they took an 80 year old corpse that they were living with the guy died they put him in the car and sat him up and drove through the drive through to withdraw money out of his account i said damn do i know anyone that's close to death that has a lot of money because i could do that too what i'm telling you is i've got to watch my thinking that's my that's what i wake up with thinking about myself and how i could get in trouble and what what i might have missed out there and immediately i said you know god please Please direct my thinking, because this could be the beginning of a bad day. And then you see where Jeff Bezos, one of the second richest guys on the planet, he donated $100 million to two people, $50 million apiece, because they were philanthropists. They just didn't have the money he had. And I was thinking of a way that I could tell Jeff Bezo, I'm a philanthropical guy, send me $5 million. Hey, I'm easy. me so what I'm telling you my first thought is usually about me and the book tells me my very life as an ex-problem drinker a guy who doesn't want to go back to the abyss it depends on my constant thought of others and how I may help meet their needs and I'll tell you what I made the commitment to speak at my home group me and Charlotte kind of arranged this situation it got I changed a few times because Leslie had a celebration. Congratulations. And so we circumvented the days and ended up here. And then I get a call, like I said last night, from Freddie at the Mustard Seat. He said, I think that you're an expert on step one and we're having a St. Pat's. You know, that's not a compliment if he says step 12. That'd be something to brag about. he said I can't think of anyone else who's burned their life to the ground more times than you and you come to the mustard seed tomorrow night at 8 o'clock and speak and a few weeks ago one of my friends from Moldy's Booklet he's asked me to speak tonight at 9 I'm set 9 at 11 o' clock and I said yes to all of them and guess what they're all going to get a different story but the same message and the message is simple a that I'm an alcoholic and I cannot manage my own life not drunk or sober it took me 40 years to get to that position probably 60 years on the planet before I realized that the guy managing my life which was me was running the ship ashore every time no matter what that no human power and I believe me I've exhausted every human resource possible jails strike wards rehabilitation centers detoxes treatment centers threats to the penitentiary guidance counselors therapy my mother's love the love for there's no human hour that can relieve what's wrong with me but God could and would if he were sought I have said the third step prayer with icons and Alcoholics Anonymous, I'm talking about world conference speakers that sponsored me and I didn't even know their reputation in AA it just happened that way and me saying the third step prayer is no different than me saying The Pledge of Allegiance if I don't follow through with some immediate action and And right after the three pertinent ideas, it says being convinced. Being convinced of those three ideas. It dawned on me, I was working with a guy the other day and I went back in my mind's mind and I said I was never convinced of the third pertinent idea. And I think what I did is to help him open the room and I'll say this to anyone else who might not be convinced, God could have would if he were soft. Because that's the premise. the three pertinent ideas which means they're real important in the very next line in our book says being convinced what dawned on me and maybe it was even paul i was talking to about this i might not have to be convinced all i have to do is be willing to be convinced because if i follow up the action until i get to step nine alcoholics anonymous is really a theory and if I recall correctly the big book is written by some people who took the action long before I met him and they're telling me the results that they got and they are telling me if I do what they do I'll get what they got but I don't know for sure till I do it so the good news is I've done it and now I'm convinced that God could and would if he were saw that no that god's the only one who's keeping me sober and the way i know that is because she's the only one i asked i don't ask my sponsor anymore i don' t ask my ex-wife she's been gone a long time i don''t ask my probation officer i'm off probation because he violated me because i couldn't keep my commitment i did my time in jail i don´t ask the medical doctors because they found me in a position where there were things that were wrong with my liver that medical treatment couldn't treat and I have some people in my life that stand on the word of God that's another subject for another day but they believe in the healing power of a living God and sometimes I theorize about him in Alcoholics Anonymous you know it's interesting I could be robbing someone at gunpoint on Tuesday and me and Paul talked about this too there's a meeting where there's not a lot of good stuff going on It's almost like a cheerleading concept, except for the fact that a lot of people that are coming there are doing things a little stronger than alcohol. And I don't mean that one drug is any different than the other. Don't get it twisted. But what I mean is one micro grain of some of the stuff they're messing with can take them out of the game forever to where there's no recall. There's no coming back. And and they sit around with two weeks sober. and someone's reading the literature with them and then they talk about this being rocketed into some dimension which I haven't, I'm scratched the surface and I've been coming here for decades and they're well by Thursday and I believe it cautions us in the literature of the 12 and 12 don't get well by Tuesday. You didn't get sick overnight. In fact, the book talks about it. The book talks About Living in a World of Spiritual Make-Believe. Yes, God wants us to have our head in our claws but not up our rear ends. You know what I mean? Have your feet on the ground with the travelers. But when you go through a tragedy, right, my friend Leslie, when you lose a child and you stay sober through it, when your house gets foreclosed on and you're homeless for 25 years of sobriety and you Stay Sober, when someone serves you with divorce papers, they were the love of your life, and you find out they were sleeping with your best friend and you stayed sober. It's a lot more credibility when you tell me that you went to the power, that you found in the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. It's real credible because sometimes I profess faith and belief in a God because that's what we talk about here and I want to sound like you so I can be like you. And sounding like you as I told you already makes me a Model AA. That's a small imitation of the real thing. I'm not a model AA, I'm a member in good standing. I told a story one day and someone looked at me and said, you're not the same. My sponsor said, the guy telling the story is no longer the guy in the story. Yeah, we'd come in here and the only time I would lie is when it was absolutely necessary. The only timeI would steal is if I had to because I went to the casino and blew my paycheck in two hours. You know, it's embarrassing when you get caught taking money out of the basket. It's about being self-supporting through my contributions, not through yours. I would cheat if I believed I wouldn't get caught. And I couldn't connect the dots enough from violating God's principles, which are the ones you guys offer me to live by. The nature of God does not change. I don't believe he punishes me. I don' t believe he condemns me. I don't believe any of that nonsense that I was told for a long time and I'm not here to take away from your beliefs if you've got a God that's going to send you into the pit of fire at the end of the road where there's weeping and gnashing of teeth if you enjoy that thought enjoy that God you can have any God you want here but what I found out is when I violate those principles my perception of God changes he becomes he becomes someone that i don't want to contend with and i learned that by paying attention in the rooms one of the gals came to my home group one day and said i just gotta tell on myself sometimes telling on ourself is not as productive as asking for forgiveness i had a sponsor once who said i'm tired of being your confessory you do it and then call me afterwards to get relief for your guilt. Alcoholics find it easier to ask for forgiveness than permission. If I come to my sponsor and say, I'm married, but I found this hot girl at AA that thinks I'm all that, what do you think? I'm probably not going to commit adultery. But if I put myself in a position where I'm a human being with instincts and I've had a fight with my wife and some sick newcomer comes in and thinks I'm all that, which she doesn't. But if she doesn't, I act out on that. That's when I've got to come back. And the way I used to do it, let me tell you how seedy I could be in my little alcoholic mind sober. I would have to wait a few weeks to tell what I had done because I was embarrassed that I did it. And then I'd make up some story, oh yeah, I forgot to tell you a long time ago, which means two days ago, I did something I'm ashamed of. But she came to the meeting and she said, I need to tell on myself. She said, if I lied to my business partner yesterday, we had this customer that I wanted to get off the schedule. He just was difficult to deal with. And rather than share that with my partner, because I believe my partner said, deal with it. It's a customer and the customer is always right. She said, I lied to my business partner and told her that the guy didn't have any money. And she said, great, get him off the schedule. And he said, I felt bad. She says, I know that God loves me. And I started to think I'm going to get a car accident today or get a speeding ticket. And so she says, so I wanted to tell you guys to get relief, you know, talk to Tela myself. And afterwards because she's a friend, I said, if you want relief go to your business partner and tell them that you lied don't come and tell us we can't give you relief and don't make us an accomplice but even so you could come here and tell us anything don't get me wrong but here's the message what dawned on me is when she lied to her business partner the loving god the ultimate authority expresses himself in every meeting i've ever been to her perception of that power changed and he went from being a the loving God that was out to help her, to one that was going to punish her with an accident or a speeding ticket. And that's the way I lived my life until I took a fourth step, which is an inventory of my thought life and then some of my behavior that stems from my thinking. My concept of God was one of punishment or closed-mindedness, prejudice, where I had a belief that I knew the only way to get to God was my way it was the right way and if you guys disagrees I would wait for him to get even with you for your blasphemy what I'm saying is my thinking was so flawed because of what I could talk the philosophical and moral values that I held you accountable to that I couldn't live up to myself my life was out of order and I didn't know it well that I discovered after 40 years, trying on my power to relieve myself of my alcoholism. The greatest gift I ever got is that I could not take step three without God's help. Gal said to me in Florida before I came up to Cleveland after I ended up in that crisis unit 23 months ago today. She said you can't have a relationship with God without God. God. And pages 60 through 63 describe my life and the relationship with God without him in it. I'm a self-will, I'm a producer of confusion, I've stepped on everyone's toes trying to get my way. Sometimes I'm nice and sometimes I'm an asshole. But either way I'm trying to get my own way and when that doesn't work I sit around like politicians and reformers complaining about everything. I am so blocked from God and I can't contain what is in my heart comes out of my mouth I gave a I was a chairperson for discussion meeting at my meeting back in Cleveland at the secret club and one day I brought up the topic of love because that's the word we use how we get a taste over we'd love everyone oh I love you give me I mean you know what we make best friends the book says and I get that but love is a powerful word and I brought up the top because we use it so much and I said let me get a definition that i believe comes from a reliable source and i went to the good book and it gives the different manifestations of love it says love is patient love is kind love is long suffering and it got down to the seventh or eighth stance and it says love keeps no record of wrongs it does not delight in evil it's just not glad when it It does not gloat. Oh my God, I was so full of envy and if I hated you I wanted something bad to happen so I could laugh at you. That's the soul sickness that I had. I could never admit that until I owned it and shared it with another human being because I didn't want you to think ill of me but what it did is kept me so sick. And when I looked at my fourth step I realized why there was no love in my heart because I've been keeping records of wrongs that I thought everyone did to me all my life including God. And when I looked at my A-step, I saw that I had been keeping records of all the rotten things I'd ever done to other people in my life and had never mended it. As I move forward in this process making amends, what happens is both lists begin to vanish. When I get down to both lists with no names on them, I will be the epitome of God's love. Like I said, who I hang around with and who i'm influenced by is who i begin to look like i hope when i go out tonight that i look like you and i look him instead of looking like me beginners meet welcome here i love y'all keep coming back get a sponsor that's someone who knows more about staying sober than i do anyone in a4 about staying so very my first meet but like my sponsor said get the best one Get the one who's had an awakening of the spirit. You can tell because you look in their eyes and there's light there. They're not looking over their shoulder. They're carrying the message. They're the ones who are there early setting up, airing down, making coffee, volunteering, getting active. They're involved in service. Get a big book. That's our basic text. It was sold by a pharmacist in Illinois. If I don't study the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous, I'm at the mercy of those who do. I've heard some outlandish stuff in the fellowship and people attribute it to the big book but because I study it, I know that it's not there. I thought if I don't read the bigbook and Paul doesn't read it but he says it's in the big book and I don t check it out, if we both get drunk, I'm at the mercy of an idiot. That's me because I know how to read and I can afford a book. I got a new car, I got insurance, I came without a car, without teeth, without a license, without about a retirement, about a girlfriend, and no hope for any of those. I got about half of those now. I still got hope for a girlfriend. I'm going to come visit my friend Charlotte soon. Thanks so much for letting me share. I don't want to say no more because I'm about to get in trouble.