Big Book – 2nd Annual Stay Sober for Keeps Workshop – Part 4 of 5 – 2012 – John K.

All right, I'm still JK. I'm an alcoholic. I am in a pasta coma. That was good food. Whoo! Let me go get going. I mean, too many times, I mean this four-step where we're at it, I mean have you ever, somebody, I remember being in old school AA and somebody would say they were on their four-stepped and it was like the people in their group would be like doing Hail Marys and I'm like oh I'm so sorry, I am so sorry. We'll pray for you. This is not, I mean, it's best through my own experiences, as you know, as I got that last desire chip and I started on this path, and lo and behold, within two weeks, I'm at this point. My four-step is complete. You know, my sponsor after the third step gave me the hug, and he sat me down, and he went over the instructions for the four-stepp. And he uses these little forms to keep us focused on the task at hand here. But, you know, as good as I feel on the third step, right? And I've told you about some great experiences I've had doing third steps. As great as I fail after my third step there's still a whole bunch of garbage blocking me from God. And if I don't get to the causes and the causes of what's blocking me from God, I'm going to drink again. And that's why at the bottom of the page, it tells me next and at once vital and crucial, right? This is important. As good as I feel in three, there's a whole bunch of stuff blocking me. And as I related back to the third step, my job is to stay close to God and perform his work well. After I've done my third step. God wants to see me in action. and part of that action is me getting my pen and paper and writing my fourth step. Not thinking about it, doing it. My actions show God how willing I am not to pick up a drink and we use the little forms. I mean, the forms are based out of this book, right? Milk sour. Mom didn't bail me out of jail the last time. Her this, this, that. That's how I start the inventory. I just go down the list. Right. All the names first, the people play, you know, all of that stuff first. Then what did they do to me? I mean, it's laid out precisely in this book. I don't need the first fifth step I did was I mean as one of those cathartic ones. It was in 1996. I'd moved back from Puerto Rico and the guy told me how to do it. And I did it and I had like 63 or 68 pages front and back. Of my stuff. And when I went over to this guy's house on a Saturday morning and it was like a I mean, literally, it was an eight hour ordeal of me reading this stuff. And it was kind of cool for me because I hadn't shared a lot of that stuff. It was a nice cathartic experience at the moment of me dumping all of this garbage on this poor God's kid. I don't know why he didn't like hang himself from the ceiling fan but the problem with that is I did not understand the truth I was all into the justification well the milk didn't get here, it's supposed to get here on Monday it got here on Wednesday and it's this and it' s that I can make Dr. Phil weep on my story I'll do it but if I don' t understand the truth this is all for naught And so I get these things. Well, I don't have I had one guy. Well I'm a Buddhist I don'T have any resentments and I'm like, you know what pal if I if you were drunk on a barstool You'd tell me all about it. All right, so let's just cut to the chase here all right, we We say their prayers and we and we get our papers out and we start writing and I do the resentments first And then I go through the same thing with the fears Treatment center number one. I tell you I didn't wasn't afraid of anything Look at the crap that I do out there on the streets. I ain't afraid of nothing. By the time I got sober, I realized I was afraid of everything. Guys mask fear in different ways. How do we mask fear? Oh, we'll just beat you up for it, right? What are you going to fear? I'll kill you, all right? I had fear of staying sober, fear of not staying sober. Fear of being in love, not being in Love. Fear of this, fear that. Have you ever like pulled up to a place and saw somebody's car or you thought it was their car So you just went on down the road. Fear. That's a fear. I had fear, fear of midgets. I had it all on my. Just it was one of my things. I was traumatized as a child. I've all worked through that. I have fear of everything. And then ask me some questions in the book, the sex conduct, you know, too many guys. Myers, I have one of my buddies. He relapsed and he had one of the anyway, he relapsing, came back in and was got another sponsor and was doing it. And I literally I think he worked on his sex inventory for six months. I mean, he's going back through phone logs, emails. And my buddy, what's up? and he's asking me questions and I'm like, dude, you're missing the whole point of this exercise. This ain't a race, baby. God doesn't care. This is not who has the most or all. How did you treat them? You know, how did I treat these girls in my life that I loved? And that, yeah, it always gets quiet. Nobody's joking around at this point. Everybody's like sitting there like, oh no. But this is what I got to tell my guys. This is, it's laid out in a simple format. If you really want to get down to nuts and bolts how they did it a lot of times, if you were a Clarence Snyder guy back in the day, they got you out of the hospital. You did a third step prayer to get out ofthe hospital. They took you to the house. And when you sat down at the kitchen table, you thought the heat's off. They shoved you a piece of paper and said who you mad at. And then one afternoon you got out ofhospital. You dida step three. You didastep four. You didasteb five. you did your six, your seven and you're on your eight step list in one afternoon. Screw 30 days. All right. So this keeps us focused on the task at hand. This is not a lot. It's not fun by any means. The reason they have it done in this point is this stuff can be very traumatic. It can be Very painful. It Can Be A Burden. It Has Been A BurDEN On Our Souls And our spirits forever and ever we don't want to spend a lot of time writing out all this crap you know the little sheets that i use it's got a little column for the names it's not well it was the 5th of june and the barometric pressure was rising and we had heard our song on the radio and then she, no, Debbie dumped me at Christmas. Did you get it? We'll get into all the details later. I'm going to get a chance in my fifth step to plead my case. That's the beauty of this. I'M GOING TO GET IT A VERY SMALL CHANCE, BUT I'M GONNA GET THE CHANCE RIGHT. But we don't want to spend. And that's why they have it done the way they do it. We don't write left to right like we're used to. We do the columns one. It's very simple. Cliff told me the instructions that go home and start. You got a week to complete it or else. So I went home, I had my little sheets of paper and I have my pen. I said a prayer. Dear God, I'm starting on my fourth step. Please help me be honest. Column one, mom, dad, brother, sister, James, Joel, Debbie, Jeanette, blah, blah. Until I can't write no more. Tell God thanks. Now go back up to the middle column. Beside each name, write a little note to myself. Why? Mom didn't bail me out of jail. Debbie dumped me at Christmas. This, this, this. Tell God thanks. Go back up to the top. What did it affect? Did it affect my personal ambitions? All that stuff, right? Check, check, check, check. Right? Maybe I see it. Maybe I don't. But we're getting through it. Now we go to the fourth column. What is my role? Was I selfish? Was i dishonest? Was self-seeking? Was I fearful whatever maybe I see them all maybe I don't see any of them there was a few on my forcep I didn't see a one and I tell my guys don't write what you think you want I'm gonna you write what comes to your head if it pops in your head write it if it don't don't if there's something some extenuating circumstances and you feel the need in your little heart of hearts to explain it flip over the page and write it all out I don'T CARE the idea is to get it done to get it done. Why? Because the actions I take show God I am willing to go to any length not to pick up a drink. I tell God thanks. I move on to my fears, list my fears. Answer the questions. Sex conduct, list those relationships. It's not that hard. But if I sit and stew on it, I will make a mountain out of a molehill like nobody's business and I'll never do it. I'll ever do it left to my own devices. And so, you know, like they say, S rolls downhill. This is the way my sponsor did it to him. I know that's the way Joe McQueenie did it to him and I know that's why I do it with my guys and I give them the same instructions and the same parameters and we go over the same stuff and they get it done. If something pops up in the week, you know what I'm saying? I don't have a template on how to take guys through the steps. We don't Have, well, we're starting on Monday and by, you Know, 183 hours we'll be, every guy's different. There's guys that I know that can read with the best of them. They don't understand a darn thing. So I've got to literally sit down with them and do page by page and read this stuff and explain this stuff to them. I am not rushing anybody. But if I understand step one, I've had my last drink. The clock is ticking. If I don't get to the power, I am going to drink. End of story. So that's why we don't waste any time. I mean it I guess I could pontificate on this a long time but it ain't that hard. When you have cliffs sitting there telling you it's pretty easy and shoving the paper your way, here's where the rubber meets the road. I'm either going to say the prayer and start writing or I'm going to do what I used to do and it start justifying and then I can start asking people in AA land well this guy gave me a week. A week? You can't do that in a week you need years no see thank God for Cliff Bishop and guys like him because he knows the truth and the truth was is I had a small window of time in my personal history to get sober. And if I'm taking a guy through the work, who in the hell am I to get between a man and his God? My job is just to arrange the meeting, right? Like Schwarzkopf said, my job is to arrange them meeting, right? All my job is to prepare them and give them the instructions so that they can do the work and so that by taking their actions, they will get to the power that saves their life. And I'm not going to try to keep them at bay and do this long, drawn-out, cathartic... I'm a man of my word. I'm no behavioral scientist. I have no idea what they do. I just do what we do, and it seems to work. And if there's something that I forgot or something that stuck in my crawler, if there'S something that comes... I was blacked out a whole lot of the 90s. There has been stuff come up after my fourth and fifth step that I've had to call on and say, dude, all of a sudden I remember this. You know, we have a way out. Right. And we it's clear cut. But the idea was was to get for Cliff was to give me in a position to where I was open up to the truth. and in seeing that and like Myers I can't remember exactly how you said it but getting rid of all the stuff that I think is me but getting to the real me and for me it was just wham bam and in you're out and see the truth and it was ugly but we got busy and we started doing it and that's the way my guys we do it and you know I've got one here today then he can attest to the same fact. We didn't, we wasted no time. Let's get in and roll up our sleeves and let's find out what's blocking us from God. And the actions I take show God I'm willing to go to any length. And I think that's probably where I'm going to end up. If you cats got any questions this would be a great time because I know four-step stuff there's probably you a million questions. Um, any questions? Anybody? Anybody Bueller? Yes, we have a mic coming your way. Is it? Okay. Now it's on. Oh, um, what if you worked or I have this girl that i worked with and we did steps one two and three together and then sent her away you know on her way she got steps one deux and trois started on her fourth but she between the week that i gave her to do her fourth she um drank again do we i mean it was like do i continue with the fourth or do i start with the first again or you know i guess i just no i mean and that comes up but obviously in that situation to me it would be like there might be something missing in one, right? I may not have a complete grasp of one in my true situation. Otherwise, you know, so we're going to say that, oh yeah, I totally get it. You know, lots of times people say that. I've said that. Oh yeah, I understand my situation. But as long as I had a plan, as long As I felt that it didn't fully apply, As long as I was special, you don't really understand me. Nobody's been where I've at. As longas I had that going on, I was always gonna gravitate towards not doing it. And so if I have a guy in that situation, we're definitely tap the brakes on step four. Let's go back and revisit step one and see where we're missing the pieces because somewhere out there, you seem to think you can drink successfully or you seemと think that you can control the situation or you can just pull up when you need to so you don't, and obviously that's not where I'm at. So yeah, we definitely backtrack. Yes sir? We got one up here? On page 66 there's a bottom paragraph It says we turn back to the list for it held the key to the future. My question is, is my interpretation and yours might be different, but I'd like to hear from you. We were prepared to look at it from an entirely different angle. How do you approach that? And what columns are you looking at or what are you Looking at from a different angle? Well, they're leading us into the fourth column. Here's my general assessment on my fourth step. Debbie broke up with me at Christmas. I hate her she must die right yes do we need to go any further that's my assessment of the situation me preparing to look at it from a different angle is is where did I go wrong what did I how did I contribute to that right it's not like she just woke up one day and said I hate JK now right so I got to look at it going on in that paragraph it says we began to see that the world and its people really dominated us you know so here I am stewing it because all I know is the first three parts she broke up with me at Christmas I hate her she must die I've moved on five years from now even when he ran into me at Homer Bound the first time That was still a topic in my head. It was this gal. This happened years prior. Guess what? She has moved on. I, meanwhile, am drinking myself to death thinking about something that happened back then. Right? I'll show her. What am I doing? Drinking myself to... She owns me and doesn't even know it. that those things, those resentments, those fears, those own me. So I got to look at it from a different perspective. The perspective of being of column four stuff, selfish, self-centered, egotistical, full of fear. How did I harm these people? You know, did I put myself in a position to be harmed? Was my own self-seeking motives, did it get me in that situation? Was I dishonest about the situation. Those are all the things that I look at. Too many times in AA land we say, well, I've got to look at my part. Well, that's not really true. It is my part, but having my part implies that you have a part. You may not have a part. I looked at my wrongs. We look for our own mistakes. So did I answer? The question is, and this is my interpretation, You can say it's – I'm looking at it from the perspective of that person looking at me in my faults, you know, and what my part was. For instance, she broke up with me at Christmas. I hate her. I want to kill her. You know, that's my inventory. The fourth being is just that how does she look at me and my selfishness, my self-centeredness and so on? And what I'm trying to say is that I'm looking at it from the person or the person's perspective looking back at me in that fourth column. How do you – I know you can put – you just check marks. That's what you're talking about. No, well, on the sheet, check marks, yes, right? Or however you want to do it. Or just write them out. I was selfish. But they're asking me where I was selfless. That's What The Book Says. not was i selfish the book is asking me where i was selfish right so that's a whole different thing it's easy to say i'm selfish self-centered egotistical full of fear where was i selfish where was I egotistical where was myself seeking those are the deep-seated questions in the fifth step it asks about we were to get to the exact nature of our defects it's one thing to understand that i'm selfish and self-center it's a wholly other thing to understand the innate that my selfishness carries many forms so yes we're looking at it from a different perspective whether it's through the eyes of others or more specifically what were my mistakes you know that's that's the new perspective just one up here i feel like a candidate at a debate my name my name is randy harris alcoholic chapter seven group um i had a question about between the third and fourth column do we are we able to actually have an honest look at our part in it without doing what was told me the fourth step prayer when we asked god that we could show them the same tolerance pity and patience that we would cheerfully grant a sick friend do we because I was, when I was taken through my four step, I top to bottom person cause affected. Then I asked God to help me from being angry at that person. That way I could take an honest look at, he told me it was called the bridging prayer. Is that something that the primary purpose group encourages or is that actually, because to me it looks like it does through the reading of the literature that, you know, there's a prayer to be said before we actually look at the fourth column. And then what I don't understand is, it says we avoid a retaliation in an argument. Who are we retaliating and arguing with? Because this is our inventory. Are we arguing with ourselves? It almost looks like it's a preliminary to a ninth step of man's almost. Yeah, well... Thank you. No, that's good stuff. I'm going to try to get this out succinctly. When I'm in the physical process of doing the inventory, yes, these are my instructions, all right? And writing these stuff on the page can be troublesome. And we've got a prayer for that like you're saying. Obviously at that position I'm not I look at that little prayer almost on a day-to-day basis of hey, the world's full of knuckleheads and instead of playing ball with them I'm going to realize in my head and my critical thinking that these people are kind of twisted and I'm going to see where I can be helpful to these people. But the same thing applies to my, to my four step, but I didn't go into the, for me personally, I didn'T get into the depth of it because at that point in the line I could, my eyes were barely uncrossed. All right? It was a simple process for me to get the stuff on paper and look for the mistakes that I may have, may or may not or think I've made in those situations and try to be as honest as I can about each situation, all right? And like I said, there's some that I didn't check, have anything listed up. I didn'T see where I was selfish. This one lady, she, an illegal immigrant, ran a red light and totaled my car, okay? And I had insurance, and she didn't, right? I didn' t really see my part. I was not being selfish or dishonest or egotistical when I wrote the fourth. Fifth step was a different answer because there's a whole back story behind that. And I was all of the above. But did I answer the question? Now I feel like Rick Perry. That's why he's not running. Yeah, okay. I'll pass off. Listen, that's a great question. That's a good one. That's an excellent question on this stuff because unless we can understand it, it's interesting that if you start down at the bottom of page 66, we'll look at this real quick. We've got like five minutes. This was our course. We realized that the people who wronged us were perhaps spiritually sick. Now, this is a novel idea. They're introducing us to an idea that we'd never even thought of before. I'm only thinking of the drama. She's a mean girl. That's as far as it went. And now they're getting us to look at this thing from a different perspective. This is sort of answering his question too at the same time on this thing. Though we did not like their symptoms. This is column two and column three. though we did not like their symptoms and the way these disturbed us they like ourselves were sick too so now i'm beginning to look at these things from a different perspective that perhaps these guys are spiritually battling the same battle that i'm battling which which puts them in a instead of an adversarial kind of a relationship all of a sudden it puts us kind of side by side heading down the same path and it's an interesting thing how much drama you can get over with if you understand that they're struggling, too. And the saddest part about that stuff is, guys, is that oftentimes we begin to realize that they are struggling with the same stuff that we are without a program to deal with it, which is a death warrant for them. I mean, this is a disaster for those guys. At least we can see clear and walk through the deal. We ask God to help us show them the same tolerance, pity, and patience we would cheerfully grant a sick friend. Wow! What a great way to look at this thing as we begin to scoop up some of these ideas and address these things. Yes? You don't have a mic, brother. Why don't we talk about this right as soon as we get done off this podium, okay? Because the taping is going to sound goofy. Even goofier than me, okay. And answer that stuff, guys. I think so. Let's go take a break. And then if we come back, if we have some more questions about this stuff, then we'll talk about that. And we're kind of heading into the homestretch around this 12-step stuff, which is really the reason we came to talk about this stuff. Thanks, guys. Howdy, y'all. You know what's really cool is that other than some people going to sleep a minute ago, I mean, most of you guys are still here, which is a which is a big deal like that you know in in in europe the they had this this this idea that in these workshops um it's um what they want to do is they want to just dump as much stuff into a weekend as they can and so the the workshop start like at noon on friday and they'll go all day friday saturday they start at eight o'clock and they go all the way through to like eight or nine o' clock at night and it's just like it's like a beating i mean it's Just like you you just i mean And it's, I mean, I've got plenty to say. I mean I can fill some time and then they get up Sunday morning and they do it again and go until like 2 or 3 o'clock in the afternoon on Sunday. It's just too dadgum much. And so these guys that are organizing these things, we're saying, Guys, listen, it's not that we can't bring some stuff to talk about because we can. The deal is though is that I don't care how entertaining you are. I don'T care how engaging you are as a speaker. You physically can't sit there that much. You just can't do it. At some point in time, you just go clink and I'm thinking about, did I get the stuff out of the dryer? Did I, you know, I mean, I just got a million things. My head just starts going like this. And we're going to avoid that at all costs because the reality of what this is is what I'd like you to do is I'd like you leave here today feeling a bit engaged and a bit energized to go to your respective meeting places and this kind of stuff, and be energized a bit so that you can get a little bit of momentum going. That's what these things are fun for rather than a verbal kind of beating that just, you know, holy cow. So what we're going to do is I know the program says 530, but probably and truly I just, for you clock watchers like me, and I'll live by it, what we'll probably going to Do, I'm going to kind of move rather briskly through this idea of 6, 7, 8, 9, and we're going to talk specifically about some things that I think are important. We won't cover all of that deal, but what I'm trying to do is get this thing set up so we can spend a bit of time in the last hour that we're talking about this thing, talking about 10, 11, and 12, and J.K., and I'll split some of that stuff up. But really and truly, everything that we came to talk about was that. I mean, there's some other stuff that's important, but everything moves us to a place of those last three steps. And it's kind of ironic because in a lot of places, It's those last three steps that get kind of shortchanged, and we kind of skirt around them, and we talk about them very little, and мы do very little around them. And the miracle of recovery, the miracleof who we become as sober members of this deal, all is determined by that, by how active and effective we are in those disciplines of 10, 11, and 12. And so we want to spend a little bit of time with that. But I suspect we'll be clear out of here by even if we do Q&A, we'll be clear out of here by probably 4.30ish or 4.45 like this and maybe not even that late but I guess because you guys need to I remember doing a talk one time in Yakima, Washington and it was at the end of it was the end of winter and everybody was just like like I mean we were all you know and somewhere during the course of the day the day turned out just like this it was really pretty outside and the sun came out and some clown decided it was a good idea to open the doors and they opened these big sliding doors on one side and everything just kind of came in and everybody, everybody just went clink and just shut off. I mean, no, nobody was cause everybody was looking, these cats had been, have been cooped up all winter and it was the first good spring day. And they're going skinny guy from Texas spring day and it's just like, it's bad. And so we, we want you to, to leave with some energy and we'll do that. An amazing amount of questions and answers and comments, mostly comments around this inventory stuff that we talked about. I think that any time we approach this stuff and we look at it, there's a reason why this has been a real goofy part of our program and why it's been left up to a bunch of folks to move and manipulate some. I'm not saying that there hadn't been some exciting things that people have done in inventories. But by and large, I've seen this from both perspectives, both as a writing long and talking long and all this kind of stuff, and I've seen it doing it shorter and more abbreviated. And I can tell you beyond a shadow of a doubt that in a more abbreviate inventory, if you'll try it and trust the process, you'll begin to see that the stuff gets moved away quicker and cleaner. Um, um, I'll tell you a quick story. Is it, it'll be story 10 minutes. I want to tell you the story and, and, um while y'all just sit back and doze and if you snore I will poke you a little bit but you're welcome to sleep. Um a guy asked me on the break this is a little bit out of place but i want to bring it here and set it right here because i won't have another place to put it and um the there was a guy that asked me about doing multiple fifth steps earlier and we were talking about that some and we Were talking about the idea of revisiting the idea of of uh of uh fifth steps um i'm i was raised in from uh the the sponsorship lineage where you did one fifth step god bless you we did sponsorship lineage one time we did the the inventory one time, and then that was it. We were done with it. And you never did it. You stayed current in 10, 11, and 12, but you only did one inventory. Okay. And then my twin brother on the other side of the equation, the evil twin, Chris. Chris is from a sponsorship lineage where they do multiple fifth steps over and over and again over a period of time. Okay, now, and I've got no, I've come to a place in my recovery where I've looked at this thing from both sides and can no longer judge either way uh as being the end all be all i see it's kind of like a double-edged sword i see both sides of this thing and um so so i'll tell you this story that the um five or six years ago thereabouts we were in alaska chris and i were in Alaska doing a workshop and it was a long weekend kind of deal and we what we decided i don't know whether chris decided it or i decided it but one way or the other we were going to be done on saturday night about eight o'clock And the sun was still up, I mean, at 8 o'clock at night, 9 o'lock, 10 o'cock. You could read a newspaper at 4 a.m. And we were—I just said, why don't we just go to the airport tonight and we'll save the conference, the fair on the hotel room again, and then we'll just catch the flight at 6.30 in the morning. And we had just finished doing this talk, and I thought, we're up and it's okay? You know, you've got a little energy about you? And I'm thinking, this is going to be great. Well, we get to Anchorage International, and the people are waning. There's just not very many people there, and we're starting to talk. And I'm grousing like a big dog. I mean, I'm cussing everybody. I'm telling Chris stories about our family, and I'm hating my sister, and I'M HATING THIS, AND I'M HAITING THAT, AND WHY IS MY MOM THIS WAY, AND THIS KIND OF STUFF. And Chris is just sitting there kind of looking at me. I don't think Chris said anything the whole time like that. For like two hours he's listening to me rail against everybody I know, And I'm thinking we're just making brother conversation, you know. It never occurred to me that he wasn't talking. I just like selfishness and self-centeredness, comma, is the root of our problem. So finally Chris looks at me like this, and he's got his hands on his knees, his elbows on his knee, and He looks over at me like this and He says, how long has it been since you did some inventory? And I went, it's none of your business. And I just started looking straight ahead like this. And Chris goes, no, really? And I went, I don't know, 14 years ago? Something like that? And he goes, okay. He didn't say another word. Now by that time there's nobody in that airport. There's nobody there but me and Chris. There's a guy way down on the other end of that terminal with one of those floor sweeper things going like this. And that's all you can hear in that terminal is Chris and me and that guy down there. And so finally after about 30 minutes of just sitting there looking at this wall, I said, if I write some inventory will you listen to it? and he goes, yeah. And so I look around and there was an envelope in my big book and I picked it up like this and flipped it over. And I said, you got a pen? And he gave me a pen and I just started writing it on. That's why I term these things, uh, um, envelope inventories. It's not big drawn out notebook after note back up notebook on stuff. It'S AN ENVELOPE. And IM JUST WRITING THIS STUFF DOWN. AND SO IT TOOK ME ABOUT 25 MINUTES TO WRITE DOWN THESE RESENTMENTS I HAD WITH MY FAMILY AND with some of the stuff that was going on at work and some of this other thing like this. And I'm just kind of writing this stuff down like this, and it's real quiet, and finally I get it, finish it. I look at Chris, and he says read it. So I read through it like this,and he makes very few comments. There's a couple of times he looked at me and he goes what about this? And he made a suggestion, and I went okay. And a little bit later he made another suggestion, but basically that's just about it. And I remember sitting down like, that's it? I said yep, that'S it. AndI put it in my big book, andI'm just sitting there looking straight ahead. It's all quiet in there like this. And I'm thinking, I think I'll run to the bathroom real quick. And I get up and walk in there and I'll go in this bathroom like this and I'm standing there in front of this I'm going to the bedroom. I don't know why I get myself in these cul-de-sacs I can't get out of. So I'm just sitting there like that. And all of a sudden I turn around and I am washing my hands and I look in the mirror and all of the sudden I look at myself and I went, holy cow! And I am telling you guys I felt like I was brand new sober and clean as I've ever been you understand what I'm saying it was this this weird kind of deal I just like I just I felt like like big old dumbbells had been just lifted off my shoulders and I just dropped them clunk on the ground and I walked out of that bathroom let me tell you how as I was walking out of the bathroom some guy showed up in the terminal and he walked in the bathroom just as I Was coming out and and and he's looking at me and he goes like this when I walked by. And it took me a minute, it took me a couple of steps on the outside of the bathroom to know that I must have been grinning ear to ear when I walked out of that bathroom because he's looking inside the bathroom and he's like, I don't know if I'm going to see if there's somebody else in there with me, but he's just like, but it's just, the reason I'm telling you this story guys is this area of fourth and fifth step stuff is an area that sometimes I think us older guys and gals tend to ignore. We tend to go, I did that. I don'T need to do that again. And I understand the wisdom around staying active in the disciplines of 10, 11 and 12, except that my experience was that I needed to go back and look at it again. I needed TO GO BACK AND INVESTIGATE THOSE THINGS AS I WENT BACK THROUGH. AND I REMEMBER WALKING BACK TO CHRIS AND IT WAS LIKE I WAS FLOATING DOWN THAT TERMINAL LIKE THAT. IT WAS JUST THE CRAZIEST THING IN THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD. IF YOU'RE, IF YOU'VE BEEN AROUND FOR A LITTLE WHILE AND THINGS HAVE GOTTEN A LITTER STALE AND FLAT, EVEN IF YOU ARE CARRYING THE MESSAGE, GUYS, I MEAN, I'M A 12-STEPPING FOOL. I'M still doing a bunch of stuff but even if you've done this i think that it's possible to daily build up this sort of patina of ugliness in our life something they're not big big goofy drama there's none of that going on it's just little little little crazy things somebody said something a little resentment here's a little bit all of that stuff begins to stack up and begins to kind of kind of haze things over and pretty soon trying to feel that sunlight of the spirit is getting harder and harder and you're feeling more distance and this kind of thing try that see what happens it'd be the be the coolest at the end of this inventory deal they gave us a um they gave us some instructions bottom page 75 top page 76 they they they it's an interesting deal we go through this thing and we do this this fifth step we got the fifth step promises in the middle of 75 and then they give us some instruction and they say returning home we find a place where we can be quiet for an hour carefully reviewing what we have done we thank god from the bottom of our heart that we know him better taking this book down from our shelves we turn to the page which contains the 12 steps i gotta i gotta tell you when i did my inventory with chris i mean with clifford when i first got to primary purpose group and i read this thing when we finished like this and it said that that deal like this i asked cliff believe it or not the steps are in here because when the group I was the steps were always on the wall I didn't know the 12 steps were in the center of this book I'm just telling you man some of us are sicker than others and some of it's just flat ass ignore it and if nobody's holding you accountable we just assume that everybody knows all this other kind of stuff guys and I'm telling you there are a lot of guys here that don't know anything sometime when you meet Chris R. when you met my twin brother personally ask him how long it took him to figure out what a big book was I mean, he's all over town in Barnes & Noble asking people for a big book. And they're looking at him going, well, how big a book do you want? You see what I'm saying? I mean we just assume that everybody knows these kind of things. We don't. We don' t. It's just crazy like this. They're going to ask us some questions at the bottom of the thing. Carefully reading the first five proposals, we ask if we have omitted anything from our building and arts through which we will walk a free man. At last, is our work solid so far? This is great, great information, reflective information. Are the stones properly in place? Have we skimped on the cement put into the foundation? Have we tried to make mortar without sand? All of these are wonderful mortar metaphors from Bill's experience with his grandfather who was a brick mason. And a lot of this stuff comes to bear. I mean, it's just like pretty cool stuff. And so if we can answer these to our satisfaction, we then look at step six. We've emphasized willingness as being indispensable. and look at the way that this is written i mean i can think of a hundred ways to write this and none of them are as effective as the way it was written are we now ready to let god remove from us all the things which we have admitted are objectionable guys i think that the reason that god does not remove things from us is that we don't think that they're objectionable you see i think a lot of times this is why this exercise here is so amazingly powerful because for some of us this is the first time that we got to put a bead on it and and see and and and um come to grips with the fact that it's simply objectionable and that we need to have this stuff removed they'll ask us the question and then can he now take them all every one that's a question we don't necessarily have to answer yes i mean as the more and more you sponsor the more and more will realize that there are things in our life that sometimes we're not willing to get give up. Have you ever sponsored a guy or have you ever sponsored a lady who's having an extramarital affair with some guy and she's not ready to give that up yet? It happens all the time, you see? I mean there are a lot of things. Guys, have you sponsored guys like this and they're twisted up in porn and they'll give up anything but I'm not ready enough to give up the porn? It happens all the times, you know? It happens every time, it happens all the time. You see? Because for them in this situation that's not objectionable yet. But it will be. Trust me on this. it will be if we if we still cling to something we will not let go we ask god to help us be willing what an amazing amazing paragraph that is even if i'm not ready to have this stuff gone i'm gonna have uh submit to the process until until uh god makes me willing to to get rid of and it's an amazing thing to see but a lot of this stuff i'll tell you a quick story this is a weird, a weird kind of a deal. But we had one of the things I didn't want to give up was that I used to do a lot of deliveries in town in Dallas and there was this bunch of strip joints. Now these strip joints were kind of part of my old life and I knew a lot of these people in here. It was kind of social sort of a thing too. There's a lot of girls in there naked and it was just like, it was like, I'm not going to make, I'm not going to lie to you that it was all this big fellowship-y thing because it wasn't. But so we get, I do this inventory with Clifford and I'm looking at this thing and one of the things that came up and I went, nah, I'm just not ready to give that up. And so there it was. But I was willing to be willing. I mean, I was asking God to help me be willing on this thing because I wanted to be done with all this. I knew that this was no way to live and I knew it. And so as funny as it would be, about four weeks after this all happened like this, I went into town. It was really cold in Dallas and I remember going to town and making a delivery about 2 o'clock and it's starting to sleet. And I'm thinking, man, we're done with work today. I'm going to go by and stop in and see these folks and these friends of mine. So I go in there and I Remember getting out of the car and feeling a little uncomfortable and I walked up to the door and I get right to the door and open it up like I've done 100 times. I opened it up, and I walked towards the door. And as I opened It up, I felt like I had been abandoned. Now, guys, I don't have any other way to explain it. I went, huh? And I closed the door, it's freezing cold out here, guys. The wind's blowing 100 miles an hour out there, typical Dallas winter day. And I'm just, and I open the door again, and as I step in, it was like God was standing there, out there going, okay, slick, rock on, but you're on your own if you go in there. And I went and closed the door again, and I'm standing on the outside. My hand's still on the door. And one more time, I opened it up, andI'm holding the door open, and these girls in there are screaming. I mean, they're mad because I'm holdingthe door open and they're freezing in there. And finally, I just went, dang. And I closed the doorknob, and then I opened the door, and I walked back out in my truck, andi just sat there and just got, I mean I just satthere, and i finally started the truckup and drove home. about a week later I was same kind of situation and I remember pulling back up into the parking lot of this place and I stopped my truck swung out of the cab of that truck and my feet hit the ground in the parking lot of that place and the same thing happened the exact same thing and it was like it was rock on if you want to do okay but I'm telling you I've never felt so alone and so hung out and so vulnerable and I did standing in that parking lot he wasn't even going to let me get to the door this time. He's going to stop me as soon as my feet hit the parking lot. Now, listen, I'm not here to expound any morals on anybody else. I'm not trying to push anything off on the thing like this. But but I think when God's ready for you to be done with something, he's ready für you to be done mit something. Whether it be that or whether it be overeating or whether it be smoking or whether be whatever the way it didn't matter whatever it is, when he's read, if you're gonna be done and I had no more say in that in the man on the moon like this. I just know I was ready, and I hadn't been in one of those places in 15 years, which is just fine. I didn't have any business being in there in the first place. But man, I'm just kind of blown away. The process works if you just simply submit to the process. When ready, we say something like this, and they give us this great seven-step prayer. They end it with an amen, and we've completed step seven. And then look what they say in the middle of that page now we need more what action once again we're implored there's there's a momentum if you go back sometime when you don't have anything to do just go back and read from the beginning and start moving through the book and what you'll see is is that every every time you get finished with a step there's something that conjoles you momentum wise to keep going to keep it so there was never intended for us to just sit okay i'm done with that i'll rest a month or two i didn't say that now we needs more action without which we find that faith where that works is dead. Let's look at step eight and nine. All right, look. When we were doing your inventory, and I'm listening to your fifth step, I got a piece of paper laid out on a table in front of me. And as you're going through this thing, I'm making a list of the harms you've done other people, the things that I'm seeing. I'm going to ask you about these things, you see? No matter how convoluted it gets, I can always see it a little clearer from my perspective about where all this stuff lays. And so what I'm going to do is I'm gonna help you form your eight step list as we're doing this thing. If I think that you've harmed somebody, or if it appears that maybe you owe somebody an amends, I'm good to make a little note about it and we can talk about it later. Step eight said that we, that we made a list. It didn't, there wasn't a lot of thought process to this stuff. In meetings, you hear people talking about this ad nauseum. I'm working on my aid stamp. I'm working. No, you're just wasting a bunch of time. It takes you about an hour. Did you hurt them? Listen, here's what we'll do if I was with somebody I'm sponsoring. If we're in a room like this, I'm going to say, okay, listen, what I want you to do is I wantyou to imagine everybody that you know, regardless of whether they were on your inventory, I wantyouthink about the people that youknow. Go back and look at address books. Go back andlook at annuals. Goback, do whatever youwantto do. But as these names come up, I want youto picture them walking through that door right there and walking around here and then walking right back out that door. Now, listen, if the man or woman that you're thinking about walk through this door and you look down, his name needs to go on that list. You see what I'm saying? If it made you uncomfortable to look at them when they walked in, you need to at least investigate the fact that you owe them an amends and write it down on the deal. And then he'll go out at the end like this and just keep on doing it until you've got a pretty good old list of stuff there. And Then we'll go back and we'll revisit the list and then we'll see whether that is bona fide or not. The problem me here, guys, is that sometimes we find ourselves in situations where my head is an amazing thing about talking myself out of an amends. Well, he screwed me more than I screwed him. I don't owe him anything. I mean, that's a popular one, you see? But it didn't talk about like this. If I harmed them, I owe them an amens. Guys, let's look at this thing real quick here as we slide into this night step stuff and we look at this um the text says now we go out to our fellows and we repair the damage done in the past we attempt to sweep away the debris which is accumulated over our effort to live on self-will and run the show ourselves he didn't talk about booze again they're just talking about just being being goofy here okay didn't mention the booze if we haven't the will to do this we ask until it comes remember it was agreed at the beginning that we would go to any length for victory over alcohol. If we haven't the will to do this, we ask until it comes. Every one of us almost every one of use has issues in our past, things that happen to us that we just simply don't want to address. We don't want to go there with this thing. The trick is Mark Houston used to always say how free do you want to be? And this is one of those kind of situations guys where I think we all need to ask that question. Is it good enough just to be okay? Or is there more? I just, it's one of those kind of things where I think that it's like, this thing is like, it's like somebody telling you about sex and then you have sex and then they're like, and then you go, wow, they left out all kinds of stuff. You know what I'm saying? I mean, there's more. There's more and this sometimes I think is a place that we get ourselves into around this amends process because nobody's coming after me with dogs and pitchforks and torches before because the blowtorch is backed off a little bit and i'm kind of comfortable in my skin again i don't want to go stir anything up i don' t want to look at anything where i might owe somebody an amends and yet there's amazing freedom in this ability to simply go do it does it take courage yes it takes courage i think the mistake that that you and i make in this thing is that we think this is about us And this has got very little to do with us. This has got to do with God's ability to affect change in our life and all that we had to do was is just exert enough courage to go take the action. The healing is about God. The healing is about what He's going to do. And so when we look at this thing a little bit, this is not another lame-o way for you to manipulate somebody. This is a way for us just to say I made mistakes. I did things that I wished I hadn't do. I owe you an amends for what I did, for how I treated you. I mean, how hard is that to say? Well, sometimes it could be pretty hard. But a lot of times it's not. A lot of time we just get lazy. And the thing that bothers me the most, guys, is that within our fellowship worldwide, what happens is a lot times is that sponsors stay really dogmatically, really focused on guys up through step four, and then they hear their fifth step, and then just let them go. They just free wheel out there like this. And these guys run out there a couple of days and they realize that nobody's going to hold them accountable, nobody's gonna say anything to them like this, and those amends just go by the wayside. And so the experience of reconciliation that is so powerful is just right there, but we just don't have the courage to go do that. From a sponsorship standpoint, guys, what I'm imploring you to do is grab these little guys and gals that you're sponsoring and hold them a little closer through this process and be asking them. Once they get some amends made, once they start the process, stay with them. What's next? Let's talk about this tonight. What's Next? You see? Don't let them stop. because once they stop trying to get it prompt again, primed again, it could be hard. It could be never. And so if you can just kind of keep them going, I mean, I means stop and remember in your own experience when you made an amends, what's the first thing you wanted to do? Go make another amends if you could. And So this is the reason why sometimes these, sometimes these amends lists are so undaunting. I mean they're just like, they just go on and on and so, so help them. Um, would you want to look at a minute at a men's list that looked like some of the guys you sponsor? No way. No way, and so what I do is when they bring me an eight-step list, I say we're going to review this thing. This is like within a week after he does six and seven, at least within the next three or four days, I'm going to look at the list, and he's going to bring me this list of names, and I say, okay, help me organize this. I want you to tell me who you owe money to, and let's put them over here, and then we're gonna move the list around. I want to isolate who you own money to because you're flat broke and you're living in a halfway house. You don't have any money, so I'm gonna move. You obviously can't make these amends yet. Let's move this over here And then let's take these over here and I want you to pick, let's pick out three that you can do right now. And they'll pick out 3 and that's okay. Now these are what you need to do this week. These are what your going to start with. And then lets just see where we are. Listen, I'm not losing, I am not missing the fact that God drives this. This is not, this is not. I am missing that fact. But we need to stay proactive and engaged as we go on through this stuff. You know, you see all that, right? I mean this is pretty, pretty easy to do. And then as he begins to go through this thing and see, you folks that have sponsored guys and gals doing this thing, do you understand how you've seen the experience of what some reconciliation can do when people get clear in your own experience too? You get clear of some of the stuff that you've carried for years and years and you get it set right. And it's an amazing deal to watch these guys walk back into the room standing three inches taller. I mean, it's just the craziest thing. And it had nothing more to do than just a willingness to submit to a process and get on through the deal. We'll talk about that thing. At the top of page 77 is probably the most important part of the stuff that we're talking about around this amends stuff because I'm thinking, okay, listen, I want to get these guys off my back. That's the reason I'm doing the amends. And they're getting ready to dash that against the rocks. At the moment, we're trying to put our lives in order. Yes, we get that, okay? We all understand that. But this is not an end in itself. Our real purpose is to fit ourselves to be a maximum service to God and the people about us. Sweet. This is the... There are two reasons to do amends, two concrete reasons. There may be others, but two that we're going to talk about. One, this idea of aligning ourselves with God's will. God doesn't want us frustrated and at odds with our brothers and sisters. So we're going to figure out a way to do this kind of stuff. This is how we get up close to God. We do what he asks us to do. The second thing is that in order to do amends, in the process of doing amends I can quit being a phony. Okay? I mean listen. How can you sponsor effectively and tell the guys, the protégés that you're working with to what this process is about If you're still sitting on 10 amends that you haven't made. This is why sometimes, especially guys our age, my age, that are older in this deal, really, really need to be careful with this stuff. We need to go back and revisit this thing. And sometimes I think we just need to find a place, get quiet, get on our knees, and say, God, can you show me again who I need to make an amends to? And then sit down with a piece of paper and a pencil and rewrite another inventory. I mean, rewrite another eight-step list so that we can get current again so we know who we've got to go see. I think it's an amazingly important. I think that sometimes we'll find things that we needed to do that we hadn't done in the first place that we should have done. The book itself, I'm not going to get into it, but the book itself breaks this thing down paragraph by paragraph and it tells us what to do in specific situations around money, around divorce, around jail, around the rest of this kind of stuff. And the deal has always been how free do you want to be? If you want a free life, if you want be free, You're going to be a lot more diligent at the amends process. If you don't really care, you'll soft sell it. You'll kind of skirt around the outside like this. I'll tell you a quick story and then I'll be done here. There was this guy that I sponsored at Homeward Bound where JK hailed from. And it's an indigent place. It's just not much. No fancy schmancy stuff. No saunas. No spa. it's just guys come in right off the street they have nothing they get sober um and and it's it's cool and so i'm sponsoring this guy there and and jim is an interesting guy i've asked him if i could tell the story and he said yes and the the the here's the picture of this situation jim had just got out of jail out of the penitentiary and he's got arian brotherhood tattoos on both arms he hates everybody. It doesn't matter if you're remotely, if you were wearing a different color shirt, Jim hates you. I mean it doesn't mater what the deal is. He just hates you. Long greasy hair, real bad acne, bad breath, just horrible little guy and just this and naturally he asked me to sponsor him. Okay, I get these guys. I means they just God loves to bring those guys into my life and so we're working through this stuff and he embraces the steps, he gets through this stuff. Two or three weeks after the deal, he's through his stuff and he's ready to go do his amends. And he's just like kind of an amazing sort of transformation. He's coming to all our meetings. He is doing all the stuff he is supposed to be doing. And you can tell that the work is profound enough that it is changing. We get down to this amends stuff. And I had listened to his fifth step and I knew he had this resentment against his dad. And his dad was just the marquee to side and um i mean he's just just horrible kind of guy and and and lives way out in in west texas and um and and i knew that this was going to be a struggle i knew that at some point in time we were going to have to deal with this amends process with this with this dude and um there was a there was along litany of problems of grievances with his dad but one one i'm just going to mention one of them um on a regular basis my guy we used to hack this guy off. He used to piss his dad off, and his dad would beat him with one of those great big old western belt buckles that was about like this on the end of a belt. He'd used to beat him with this thing until he was bloody, and then he'd hold him in a bath of salt water until the kid passed out. Now, I know, I mean, I just can't fathom that kind of anger, and I can't fathomb that kindof cruelty to a kid, but he lived through it. And I thought he was making it up, andI said, brother, are you serious? And he said, hell yeah, I'm serious. And he took his shirt off like this and he's standing there in front of me. And I'm telling you right now, he looked like a man made out of hamburger meat that they had just put together. His body was tore to shreds by that dadgum buckle. And i thought, man, man man, can't do this. And so now I'm freaked to the max. I'm freak times 10 because I don't know what to do. I mean how do you get past this kind of abuse and this kind o stuff? And so we set out to deal with it And he's got one day free, and he said, I'm going to go down there and make this amends. I said, okay, buddy, but listen, you do me a favor. You call me on the way down there. You call мне. You've got a brand-new cell phone. You let me know what's going on and let me Know what's happening, and I'm Going to talk you way down There, and if you get down there And this thing starts going south, if you start making, you know, Trying to justify your behavior or any of This other kind of stuff, You stop and come on home. There's no sense walking into A buzzsaw. And he said I'm cool. So the little crap, he leaves and he doesn't call me. And I know how long it takes to get from where I live to where his dad is. And so I know How Long It Is and I'm just, I mean, I'm like pacing the floor. I'm Just Like, Why Isn't He Calling? Why Didn't He, It's Like One Of Your Own Kids Out There Like That. Well, About An Hour After He's Supposed To Be Down There, He Calls Me. And He Said, Well, I'M Finished With My Dad. and I said, oh, Slick, that's not the deal we made, man. You were going to do this different, right? And he said, well, I know, but I got down there and I decided I was going to, well, you tell me about it now. I want to know how it went. And he says, well... He said, I pulled up in front of our old home place and I walked up to the door and this old guy answered the door. And I said what do you mean this old man? And he goes, well my dad, but he's gotten old. And I say, okay, we do that. And he said, yeah, I know, but he wasn't as threatening as he used to be. And I went, okay. And he says, and I just, you know, we sat there and we talked for a little bit and I told him the things that we had talked about. I told Him that I was sorry that I had disappointed Him, that there were decisions that I made that I knew were a disappointment and that I just wish they hadn't happened. And I said, you notice my dad, you deserve better. And He said, my dad just sat there, and all of a sudden he started crying and he just wept and he wept and he wept, and he said, Myers, frankly, I got tired of hearing him cry. He just kept crying. And I said, Jim, come on, man, really? And he goes, man I just like, um, and then there's this silence on the phone and I'm going, are you okay? And she goes, yeah, I'm alright, but I'm not telling you the whole truth. And she said, why don't we try that just as a novelty, okay? What I didn't tell you was that I was lying to you when I told you I was going to go make my amends. What I was doing was I was gonna go kill him and I'd had a pistol stuck in my back when I walked up to the house because I was gunna shoot him for what he did and I just went, God, Jim, Jim. What changed? And he said, I just couldn't do it. He said, To be honest with you, I don't know what my dad looks like but when I saw what God had as an image of what my Dad was, there's no way. There's noway I could shoot him. There's no way I could even say something unkind to him. What I saw in front of me was a man who had been struggling with his own demons for his entire life, and he simply didn't know what else to do. He handled it all wrong, but he handled it the best he could. And I just went, holy cow, man. And I said, are you okay? And he said, yeah. And he says, I don't think he's going to be on my Christmas card list every year. I don't know that we're going to be buddies forever, but I'm okay with what happened. And I said, well, all right. That would have been enough for the story, except that Friday, the following week was a Friday, and they coined out of that treatment center, that little treatment place. And so that's his night to coin out. And so we're standing there. Sorry. It always just freaks me out telling this story. we're we're standing there at uh at this coin out and and we got there's like 60 or 70 clients in this thing like this and they're all cramped down in this in this cafeteria and we're standing real close like this and i look across the room over here and jim is standing there with two black guys one guy over here and one guy over here holding his hand and they are saying the lord's prayer and we say the lord prayer and i can't even talk i'm just looking across the room at this Aryan Brotherhood guy who hates everybody in the world, especially black guys. And he's holding these guys' hands and when he gets done, they drop hands and I'm looking at the thing. I didn't even pray. I'm just sitting there. I can't take my eyes off this guy holding these hands of these black guys and at the end of the deal, one black guy scooped him up and gave him a big old hug and told him he loved him and the other guy scoopED him up, told him he loved them. He's a little bitty guy like this, littler than me. And they just sat there and hugged each other. And I'm just thinking, guys, see, we come in here, guys. See, this is the thing that kills me. We come in hier as haters. We come en hier just it's not about the booze anymore. It's not abut that stuff. It's about being different. It's abut being transformed into something that we could be. And you can't make sense out of it. you can't think your way into this stuff the only way you can do it is to take the necessary action most of us get here hating and conniving and doing all kinds of crazy lame old stuff like this and here's this guy who was so transformed that he got over years and years and years of bigotry and hate he realized that he was out of the judgment game forever that the judgment was in God's hands that all of that stuff was God's business to deal with and I can think of no finer place on God's green earth than right there. I don't have to judge you. I don'T have to be involved anymore in that game because it always ends bad. It always does. I love you guys. You want to come talk for... No, 10 minutes if you want to share something real quick, and then we'll take a fast break, okay? Thank y'all. well so you want to hear some of my lame-o amends i mean he did a great job of describing that and i remember that um you know our real purpose is to fit ourselves to be of maximum service to god and the people about us. You ask people and say, well, my job is to be of maximum service. I don't know how to be a maximum. My job isto fit myself. How do I do that? By taking these steps, by walking this process. You know, the more I had my list, Cliff had me divide up my list as well. You know, it ain't in the big book. Take it for what it's worth. But I had the ones I'm ready to do right now. And then I hadthe ones that there was. Yeah, but right. There was this extenuating circumstance somehow, right? And then there was a third column I had over there. There's no way in hell column. And we went over this and this is why, you know, my sponsor at this point is an insider in my life. He knows me better than anybody else. So he sits down with me and he guides me through this process. I'm not taking my, I could take my amends to all my little buddies out there and say, well, what do you think I should do about it? No, I go to my sponsor and he gives me clear cut directions. They give us a little template in the book and we, he turns me loose and I start knocking these things down because see in my pea brain, cause I had a long list of amends and I had all this stuff. A whole bunch of financial amends. And I had some amends where I thought the people could kill me and get away with it back in the day. I don't really necessarily want to seek these people out, but I harmed them. The actions I take show God how willing I am. The more actions I take, the more faith that I get me looking me with my little finite brain, looking at all my amends, it's a very, very daunting task. And I look at all the outcomes and they all suck. But it ain't my job to fix the outcome. My job is to trust God and take the action. And when I started, Cliff gave me those first little three. Hey, these cats are in your day-to-day world. Let's do these guys. I'm like, yes, sir. And we talked about it. We prayed about it and I went and did it. And once I started doing it the next one started rolling in and we started going then all of a sudden some ones cropped up that i don't know how they were going to work but they were there staring me in the face and so we talked about that we prayed about that and i went and did it and even on the way to do it i thought there's no way this is this is going to be ugly and i remember always saying another little prayer and putting myself in front of this person and going through the amends process and guess what God does his perfect job Tom Ivester says it best I mentioned to somebody out there in the parking lot he says it the best and I told him I was going to steal this every time when faith and preparation collide the results are what God does and the more actions I take the more faith that I get the more amends that I got done the more faithful I got so that when these big daunting ugly ones even if it's in my head when those arose I have the tools necessary to trust God and go do that and God does the healing wasn't my words wasn't that I was slick like Meyer said I wasn't trying to manipulate but God put me in a position to take care of it and God helped heal those relationships you know they're not ducking me I'm not duckting them and I can't stress enough because I mean if they tell you on 66 and then they tell you again on 79 this is where we're going to slow down it's typical but I have a sponsor who thank God holds me accountable I try to hold my guys accountable we get the list we start going and we start doing this stuff so that they don't flounder you know because it sucks to get this far and then all of a sudden you get stale because i'm not doing what i'm supposed to do i mean i've i can't say that i've done 100 of my amends but i've knocked out on my original amends list i have knocked out everything that is on that original list with the exception of one and it was one of the girls that i was told that i can'T seek out he said when god wants you to make amends to this gal she will appear there was another one on that list god saw to it that i get in contact with her she got in contact with me and that was one of those mind-blowing amends because this is one of the gals that could have got away with it back in the day you know I harmed her mercifully with my words and my actions and I had made amends to some other people I used to work with and they were blown away shocked that I was alive and we did the amends and I gave them my contact info and I told them if there's anything I can do for you guys just please let me know and we went our merry way and it was done right lo and behold unbeknownst to me several months later they were out to dinner husband and wife and they ran into this old girlfriend of mine and they were catching up and they're like you're not going to believe who he ran into and they told him a brief story and said here's his number and I get a call out of the blue from this chick and I'm like let me step outside and I went outside and she kind of told me some stuff and I'm like like I don't know where you're at I don't work you know I know she'd done some spiritual retreats and I was like if you got to pray about it do whatever you do I need like 15 minutes of your time face to face I'll do it in a public setting whatever whatever you want to do but I need to speak to you if it if you would be so kind to see me some point and she says well I'll think about that and she said by the way you sound good I'm like okay I hung up the phone and a few days later I get a voicemail from her saying Mimi at Starbucks in Lakewood is six o'clock on Saturday and I had gone over to Cliff's house on that Saturday and my buddy this is a biggie damn so we went over it together we prayed about it I don't know why I'm crying But we pray about it and I get to Starbucks and I Get there early and I see her drive up And I make this amends and it was really, it was a cool experience And we didn't spend a whole lot of time after that catching up or anything But you know we chit chatted for a few minutes but you know Cliff had told me Get in, get out. Right? We're not here to catch up on tenure We used to live together. We're Not Here To Catch Up On All That. Get in and get out man Stick and move, baby. And so as I'm walking her back to the car, as I'M walking her back tothe car, man, that's like this, like he's saying, stepping out of the car into the parking lot and he feels God. I'M WALKING HER BACK TO THE CAR AND I'VE GOT THIS LITTLE VOICE IN MY HEAD LIKE, DUDE, THIS WAS YOUR GIRL. DO THIS AGAIN. AND I STOPPED HER AT THE CAR. AND I SAID, LOOK, I used some stuff in our deal to harm you mercifully or however you say that word and I put you in horrible positions and I don't even know how it came out and I said you're one of God's princesses and I had no right to do that and like I said I don' t know how how it all came out and she stopped me when I was done and she just kind of like dumped my chest and she's like dude you rock and i gave her a hug and it was good never dated her never called her we email occasionally i mean it's been years but god fixed that i'm not ducking her her family she's not duck in me her and her family know that they have a friend in aa now you know throughout the years but she's still in the restaurant business throughout the year there's been a couple times where she's emailed me, said, hey, here's a buddy of mine. I'm going to have him give you a call, you know? I've gotten to talk to their family and clear up all that wreckage. That's what God does. That's not what J.K. does. Left to my own devices, I'm like, well, screw them and move on. But no, I needed to take care of that, and God fixed that, right? And so I've got one more out there that's like that. Don't know how that's going to go. I'm ready to go. But see, this is the stuff we put God to the test. You know, my buddy Kurt says test God. I don't know how it's all going to work out. They may throw me out of the office, but my job is to rely upon God and walk through this program and walk through this process. The results are what God does. And that's all I got on that. Anybody? We're going to have a break. Thank you.