Asked Higher Power for Guidance at a Job Site and He Said Why Don’t You Google It 😅 – Pat R.

About This Speaker Tape

Pat R. shares on Steps 10 and 11 at his home group in Boca Raton, grounding the maintenance steps in his daily lived experience rather than abstract theory. He opens by affirming the first two steps as non-negotiable foundations — he drank and lost his kids, proving no human power could keep him stopped — then explains how Steps 10 through 12 are really Steps 4 through 9 applied continuously, moment to moment, to stay conflict-free.

The emotional center of the talk is an unrehearsed miracle story about his mother. After she came out of a coma and asked why he couldn't get along with his sister, she later developed sepsis and faced amputation of both feet. Pat and his wife Shannon prayed over her blackened feet that night; by morning they were pink, and the surgery was canceled. His mother lived three more years and ultimately entrusted her end-of-life decisions to Pat — the same son who once crawled into her bedroom to steal rent money while she slept. He called his sister that week, closing a circle his dying mother had opened.

Pat walks the room through his actual daily routine: morning readings from multiple sources, dropping to his knees for the Third Step Prayer, then immediately losing his spiritual condition on the Sawgrass Expressway when someone sits on their phone through a green light. He's disarmingly honest about the two versions of himself that show up — the road bully who shoves cars out of lanes with his truck, and the version that puts on a blinker and waits. He describes his nightly inventory in detail, sharing the twelve-plus questions he texts to his sponsor every single night, including one borrowed from Karen at a recent Step 4 meeting: instead of asking what instinct was affected, ask how did that make me feel.

The talk is practical, funny, and grounded in specific scenes rather than slogans. Pat's central teaching is that maintenance means growth — you maintain a building by keeping it the same, but you maintain something living by promoting its growth — and that conflict is the enemy of the internal condition, addressable only one moment at a time through continuous inventory, confession, restitution, and service.

Topics

Timestamps

• 0:00 Opens with gratitude for recovery through the 12 Steps, congratulates Dave on a milestone
• 2:30 Explains why Steps 1 and 2 require total conviction — lost his kids and still couldn't stop drinking
• 5:00 Reveals he second-guesses every talk on the drive home, realizes he still doesn't fully trust Higher Power to speak through him
• 8:00 Tells the miracle story — mother's coma, sepsis, blackened feet, prayer with Shannon, feet turning pink by morning
• 13:00 Mother entrusted her life to Pat — the son who stole her rent money — not to his siblings. Called his sister Tuesday night.
• 16:00 Core teaching: all problems stem from defective relationships driven by selfishness, self-centeredness, and fear
• 20:00 Steps 10-12 are Steps 4-9 applied continuously — maintenance means growth, not stagnation
• 25:00 Morning routine: readings from Sheldon, Big Book George, Oswald Chambers, Bishop Barron, then Third Step Prayer on his knees
• 30:00 Sawgrass Expressway as spiritual battleground — three versions of himself that show up when merging into traffic
• 37:00 Nightly inventory: twelve questions plus four he added, texted to sponsor every night, including Karen's reframe about feelings