Character Defects as Weapons – Jennifer K.

Hi all, my name is Jennifer Huddleston Kelly and I am an alcoholic. I've been kept sober since December 5th of 92 and that's my miracle and the Frisco Group in Frisco, Texas is my home group and it's an honor and a privilege to be here. I have a sponsor and I'm a sponsor, and that puts me right in the sweet spot, I'm just saying, that's how we do it. I want to thank, I love it, Brent picked me up at the airport and then said, I don't want to introduce her so that's a good sign um i want to thank the committee i want to thank some of my canadian sisters who came to see me that's fun um and and everybody who shared so far and who will share later on i i get to hang with some of the coolest people on alcoholics anonymous and let me tell you i didn't come here with not one pure motive i am not one i i just was trying to make it look good for a judge and um because i'm not good at jail i know you look at me and you go man she's tough i am NOT and uh i'm big freaking weenie i was uh i was a drunken preschool teacher and um that is a true story you work with them kids and see if you don't do some drinking. And I once went to a crack house wearing a denim jumper with an apple on the front. I didn't even smell crack. I just was going on a field trip, and the crackhead said she got to go. We don't know what that is, but that does not belong here, and I look like the world's worst undercover cop, and so that is a true story, by the way. I'm going to try and tell the truth. We'll see how it goes. So, I got here because I like to drink and go places, and they'll put you in jail for that, especially if you're driving your own car and um and I kept going to jail uh not intending on being there until I got me a felony and um that's when it sort of seemed serious and uh by then I was saying I was drinking to have fun but I hadn't had fun in a long time I was getting dressed up and hoping for the fun and um and it got scary because the people I was some of the people that I was drinking with and who were doing the exact same things i do started dying and i was having a hard time telling myself how my story was going to end differently than theirs for a while i you know i'll be smarter and i'll be more careful well that didn't pan out and um and i came to alcoholic synonymous really not even knowing what an alcoholic was but knowing i was in big trouble and I needed to get out of it. And the good news is that AA brought its best to me. And within one meeting, I knew I belonged with you because a guy described the phenomenon of craving in a way that I could understand and he nailed me straight to the wall. The more I drink the thirstier I get, it begins with the very first drink. And so the whole ball game for a drunk like me is how do I not pick up the first drink? And apparently it takes all 12 of the steps. I mean, I get to talk about the coveted six and seven, which, by the way, is two freaking paragraphs. One of which is the prayer that's already been read. And I get To Talk About Six and Seven a lot because I've done super dumb things sober. And I Get To Share About It a lot. and um which is good news honestly I um I'm glad I have experience strength and hope that's useful to y'all because it's embarrassing to me um when I when I worked when I attempted to work the steps the first time my sponsor hadn't gone through all 12 and I didn't know that I didn'T survey you know I just ask a nice lady to be my sponsor you know i'M twitching and crazy and they told me to find somebody I could relate to, so the first person I asked to be my sponsor had four days of sobriety. Stop telling people that. I mean, what? She's the only one in the room that made any sense. And so my second sponsor hadn't worked all 12, and so we didn't get very far. and right around the time I got a year I was let loose on the AA dating pool yikes and my first AA date didn't go well it didn't as a matter of fact A Prime was committed and I wound up with a sponsor that works the steps out of the boat because I had a secret in Alcoholics Anonymous and I had an awful bunch of shame that I put myself in a situation that was very similar to a situation I would get into drunk and I didn't act or react a bit different. And, um, and I started working the steps like my life depended upon it because it did, uh, because I didn'T want, I DIDN'T want to drink. I was in love with you and I wanted to stay. And I didn' t know if I could with that level of guilt and shame and, and Iím still sitting in the meetings with that guy, um who did something. I told him not to. I understand that there are many situations where consent can be confusing. There was no confusion about consent, and so now I got to work the steps serious, and when we come to a step, we take it, and I got get real real on my inventory, and and I share that inventory with a sponsor, and it was so weird. I mean like coming all the way clean with somebody who knew her stuff. I picked a sponsor because she knew the big book. My first sponsor just kind of used it as supplemental material, you know, occasionally we would read something out of it, but we certainly didn't go line by line. And my second sponsor, that's how we did it. When we came to a step, we took it and we said the third step prayer. And then immediately a notebook came out, which I thought was overreacting a smidge. And I wrote an inventory, and I shared an inventory. And then we got to six and seven. The first time that I had gotten to six and seven, I went home and took an app and counted it. Like, I thought that was, I was real tired after 137 pages of resentments. And by the way, I didn't write about fear and I didn'T write about sex in that first inventory. whoops um and my sponsor didn't catch it so that's where we were um but that second time you know we went all the way through and um and it was so weird because the things i thought that she was really gonna focus on she kind of went yeah did that you know and and this little piddly stuff she would just she just like a dog on a sock she just got again you know and I'm like it's just gossip what is your thing I mean she just kept on and on hammering about this gossip and I mean yes there were like 17 entries that involved me running my mouth and um and I had not figured out that if it's too juicy for me to hang on to the fact that I say, okay, you can't tell anyone isn't going to keep anybody from telling someone. And, uh, cause that's what kept showing up is somebody told somebody something that I told them and I told them not to tell. And um, my sponsor just keeps on and on and on about this gossip thing. And I'm like, it's gossip. Now, while I was going to my little home group they did put a giant banner up in the kitchen that said gossip kills and um and i would yuck it up and go well it's involuntary manslaughter i mean it's not like you know but now i've got this sponsor who's just like this is not cute and i'm like and she said do you sponsor women and i said of course i sponsor women and she says did they do fifth steps with you and she's got that like well yeah they do first steps with me and she goes so they trust you and i would never share fifth step information she said how would they know that ouch and all of a sudden gossip becomes something i'm real uncomfortable with because i never thought about it that way i never looked at it thatway i never considered that it affected my usefulness and now i want it gone and i want to go on right here right now under all circumstances so i set out to remove my character defects, you know, just like it says in the big book. Um, does not say that in the big book, just in case there's newbies. That is not what it says. We all try to do it. It's not in the book. We just make that up. So I'm going to remove my own character defect because I'm uncomfortable. And here's what I did. I had this crew that I went to dinner with after every Friday night meeting, we gossiped. That's what we did. And so I am not at the whole drive to this restaurant. I'm not gossiping no matter what, no matter What? I'm Not Gossiping. I'M NOT GOING TO GOSSIP. I AM NOT GOIN TO GOSS. GOD, I'M SERIOUS, I AM NO GOING to gossip. My butt has not even hit the chair in the restaurant before somebody goes, Did you hear about blah blah blah and blah blah blah. And we're at a Mexican restaurant, thank God. So I started eating chips and salsa. I mean, it's all I know. I'm not sure how I'm going to do this, but I know I won't talk with my mouth full, so I'm just steady because they have some incomplete information. I know more about this than they do, and I keep eating, and the guys get going, and don't tell me men don't gossip. Some of my best sources are guys, and because they know if they tell me, they don't have to tell anybody else. And it's one of the many services I provide here in Alcoholics Anonymous. And so by the time we are done with this dinner, I have eaten my food. I've eaten your food. I've eaten six baskets of chips. I've eating all the tortillas and some of the tissue paper. I've done some salsa shots. I am, when I leave that Mexican food restaurant, I am like that, um, the rat in Charlotte's web leaving the fair just. And I mean, I almost broke my arm congratulating myself on how I have fully recovered from the gossip problem. And on the way home, I character assassinated every one of those losers at that dinner. How could they stay sober acting the way that they do? And that hooker right there, she's got no room to judge. And he couldn't tell the truth with a gun to his head. I mean, I went line by line, person by person and took their inventory. And it's so funny because I've told this story for years, and it never even occurred to me that the first defect that I'm engaging in was gluttony. Like, that doesn't even show up on my radar. That's just a normal day at the office. But here's what happens when I remove my own character defects. I set one thing down. I picked three more up. it's my i call it my little swiss army knife of bad behaviors and uh and i can go deep in the bag you know because i i don't want to be uncomfortable for some reason alcoholics we're just allergic to discomfort and what's bizarre about the whole freaking thing is that the things i do to make me less uncomfortable make me more uncomfortable. Because then I've got the guilt. Then I've got the guilty. And I'm doing this sober. I'm not going to tell you a bunch of stories about when I drank. This is what I do sober, is I'm walking around knowing that you can't trust me as far as you can throw me. That the person that I show up as isn't the real deal. And I'd love to tell you that I came into Alcoholics Anonymous, I surrendered myself to the program of AlcoholicsAnonymous and I stopped doing that stuff. That would be a great story and we could just go have lunch now. But that's not the truth. Here's the truth, the truth is I've been a liar a lot longer than I've been a drunk. I've been a thief since I found out about pockets. Back in the olden days, they put the gum in the candies. Apparently someone is having a medical emergency and we need Mike Sullivan to go to the front desk, please. No problem. And so Can we just stop and have a quick prayer? No, it's fine. Amen. Okay, thank you. So, these are the defects that I bring to my alcoholism. and I sat in AA, and I really, because I'm unique and special, I thought that you guys started lying and stealing when you drank, and, I'm like, oh no, I've been doing that a lot longer, and and I continued to do it after I got to you. I mean, I just did. It's how I knew how to survive, and I didn't get out of survival mode for a long time, and but so I get to this six and seven, And, you know, first we deal with the gossip thing. And what I discovered is I can't remove it on my own. I just can't. I don't know how to do this. And AA is a really cool place, though, because we're encouraged to copy off each other's papers. The only place that I've ever been to, no, really, you don't have to figure this out. Watch us, you now. Peek on over and see what we do. and that's what's been really cool is that you guys have taught me how to do this stuff if i'm willing to pause and and pay attention you will show me how to do something different and i'll i'll just use the gossip example i went to a group where there were two 10 minute speakers a break and then we had the main speaker and in that little break that's when i used to get a lot of my information and um and so i'm watching somebody we're all huddled up and and some good information starts flowing and um and this lady goes um oh man you think that's bad you should hear what i did when i was a newcomer and she told this really funny story about this goofy thing that she had done and um and we go back for the main speaker and alcoholics are just like a dog on a sock as long as you're wiggling that sock we're in. But what that lady did was she just really quietly just sort of pocketed the sock and about halfway through the meeting, I'm like, where did the sock go? Like, how did she do that? We were talking about somebody who wasn't in the circle and then all of a sudden she just real smooth like supplied us with other information about herself i wonder if i could do that fun fact i can any dumb story i can usually not only match it but often beat it and uh and i'm not just saying that i'm not being humble uh i'll prove it in just a minute um i got some dumb stories uh and so i thought that was really cool and and um but then another situation arises and i i'm sure it's happened to you where you're standing around somebody's angry and they're sharing something that is just not your experience man they're talking about somebody you love and man I don't want to be the jerk that goes you know that's not very spiritual we don't talk about other people I mean I'll do it now I'm a sponsor but but I was pretty new then you know and I it just made I didn't want to be that person, but I also, it didn't feel right to stand there and listen. And I didn't know what to do. Once again, I'm standing in that circle. Somebody's talking about somebody who's not there and this person said, I am so sorry that happened. That has just not been my experience at all. And she told a story, you know, that put that person in another light. She didn't negate what the other person was saying. But I think that's important. She didn't say, you didn't have that experience. What she did was say, but there's more about this person than just that. And I was like, that's pretty freaking elegant. You know, I would like to see if I can do that. And so as I start trying to use some of the tools that you show me, I get a different result. and the different result is I can look myself in the mirror. I'm not walking around with guilt because I'm not guilty. Now shame's another story and we'll get to that but I'm now walking around feeling the way that I felt about me because I am beginning to do something different. Where I live, we have step speakers and so like every Wednesday night for a month someone will come and talk on their experience going through all 12 steps. And I love those meetings because it's like hints from Heloise. You get to hear somebody else's real practical experience, kind of like this weekend. Somebody else's practical experience with this stuff. And years and years ago, I wish I could remember who said it. Well, I might give them credit. But what he said was the essence of step six is stop doing what you know is wrong. and the essence of step seven is start doing what you know is right and i thought that's stupid that can't be right and i've gone to great lengths to try and dispute that theory and let me tell you what i learned the essence is step six stop doing what your nose wrong and the absence of step seven to start doing once you know it's right how do i how does god know i'm willing to have those defects removed. I'm willing to set them down. Let me tell you a little secret, like you don't know. When we set them Down, there's going to be this really uncomfortable twitchy spot because I'm going to, I'm Going to be vulnerable. I'M GOING TO BE EXPOSED. My character defects are weapons and I don't think of them that way, but that's really what they are. They give me this illusion that they keep me safe. What they really do is they separate me from you and whenever i'm separated from you i'm separated from god it's a weird deal but uh it's just what i know about me and so um i gotta set down the weapons and in that time in between the setting down the defect and discovering the asset i'm in this hallway just what do we do now you know like i don't quite know what to do with myself And what I do with myself is I seek God. I continue to seek God because I am uncomfortable, because I don't exactly know how to do life on life's terms. The 12 and 12 talks about us not wanting to give up defects, which when I'm new, sober, and desperate seems insane. Why would I not want God to remove it? Well, let me tell you something. And I learned about this at my office. I used to work in an office with people and now it's just me and my dog, we're good. But, um, and one of the ways that I would try and keep them from being too mad at me too often was I would bring candy and I don't bring the crap, I bring the good stuff, man. And I would have these big bowls of chocolate on my desk because I wanted you to stop by and thank me, and I also needed to monitor the situation, because some of y'all get a little handsy with the whole thing. I mean, two or three is fine, but let's don't be filling pockets. This stuff costs money, and what I started noticing is that as people would, at first it was just kind of fun, but then as people Would start heading towards my desk, I'd be thinking, don't take the Snickers. Don't take the Snickers, don't take this Snickers and I, and it was just this weird thing. Like, well, why do you put them out if you're not going to share them? And there are some character defects that I've got that they're my Snickers babe. I mean, it just, for some reason they keep their, they, they work for me on some level. It's a, it's a shortcut of some kind. It's a pacifier. It doesn't alleviate the pain. It just postpones it, and I wish I knew a way around having to get in enough discomfort to surrender, but I don't know it. I'd love to tell you I'm super virtuous, and I just go, well, this is wrong, so I will stop doing it. Not so much. I got to get in pain. So, I'll tell you a couple of my pain stories. So, it was right before I turned 10 years sober. I didn't have a job because, well, I got called into the office and this guy I was working for, his wife sort of worked there. Mostly his wife collected checks and we did her work and she got paid. And apparently I was insubordinate and sassy, which has shown up on more than one inventory. I know you're shocked. I was too um but apparently I had been snide with the boss's wife and um and he brought me into the office and said it seems like you don't like my wife and I said I know um I mean he teed it right up for me and I says well if I'd known that was a requirement for the job I wouldn't have taken it and uh I know and I just I mean it just right off the tongue and he said let me relieve you of that immediately and uh I was not processing that information quickly I was like so what are you saying and he said bye which I mean it took me two days to like really understand what had happened here because he didn't like his wife either like I know this for a fact and so I thought we were on the same page with this whole deal and the next thing you know I'm jobless And during this jobless time, by the way, I was your GSR. And so I'm going to area assembly and I've got these friends in other towns or whatever. And I get a little ticket and I don't speed. I'm not that girl. I it's these stupid stickers you got to get on your car. I take them as suggestions, and the state of Texas thinks it's a law. And so I get this stupid sticker ticket, and I don't have a job. So I do the only logical thing. I throw away the ticket. And I don' t tell my sponsor because my sponsor knows I don''t have a job, and she's mean. And I know exactly what she's going to say. You don't Have a job? go sit out the ticket you got no money you got plenty of time here's how we fixed that whole thing I'm almost 10 years sober y'all I'm becoming a big deal I'm making a name for myself in Alcoholics Anonymous it became a bigger name so what had happened was I mean I was really getting kind of pumped up because I became the kind of girl where people would pay my gas money to hear my talk, and I now dare to dream, and so I was driving to Oklahoma to give a stellar talk, what I would do when I was invited out of town was I would take my least grateful sponsee, I was wishing I'm making that up, but I am not, and put them in the car so they could see that their sponsor was kind of a big deal and um so I'm about to put her in my car and that's when I look and I see that I have another sticker that's two years out of date and I'm like oh this is a problem and so I come up with a cunning plan I peel off the sticker that's it I don't forge a new one I don'T really think this thing through This is two weeks before I turned 10 years sober. This is not newcomer stuff. So, I just throw away the sticker. Problem solved. Off we go to Oklahoma. We make it about 45 minutes away. Not from Oklahoma. From our home. And I'm playing the big shot. I'm going to take her to this cool coffee shop. I know because I'm being the big shit. Name your cool sponsor and check it out. and we're driving through this little college town and I see the cop and the cop sees me and I look at the sponsee and I say guess what's fitting to happen and she says what? and I said I'm fixing to go to jail and she goes no you're not I said watch this sure enough That second police car pulls up And she's like you're fixing to go to jail I'm like I told you And the cop says You know why I pulled you over And I said I got a feeling I do My favorite part of this whole dumb story Is that she leans across me and she goes Officer we are both sober members Of Alcoholics at Office and this is my sponsor and we are headed to Oklahoma City to give a talk on Alcoholics Anonymous and if you will let us go I will personally make sure that she takes care of this sticker situation so then I go to jail and it's, oh man, it's delightful it's the first time i've been to jail where i had the money to get out in my purse and we've got plenty of time i just kind of forgot a little bit about they're not working on my schedule and um and man i'm it's it's humiliating i get my a cake and it's got a freaking jailbird on it because everybody when i didn't show up in oklahoma city they called everybody they knew And I'm talking about the whole freaking Metroplex, not just my hometown or my home group. People all over my area got phone calls looking for me. And it was truly concerned, but man, it's an anonymous program. And thank God, because I would have tried to keep that secret. I wouldn't try to keep That Secret. My pride is Dutch. that I think I can keep that secret. And let me tell you what happened. Well, before I tell you what happened, I read this cool story about this young warrior whose teacher says she has to learn to do battle with fear. And she doesn't want to do it. Surprise! And the teacher says, you can grow no further until you face this fear. And she says, I don't think I'm going to do this. I don' t think I c an do it and the teacher says you must. And so she puts on all her armor and she goes to meet Fear in the arena. And as soon as she gets in the area, she prostrates herself three times, which means she prays. And then she gets up and she says, may I do battle with you? And Fear says, thank you for asking. I like that you respected me enough to ask. And she said, how can I defeat you? And fear said, my only weapon is that I talk loud and fast and I get right in your face. And fear said, the way to defeat me is that if you do not do what I say I have no power. And so when I call my sponsor to tell her what's happened I did not have a giggling laughing sponsor at the time. She was a pretty serious lady. That woman almost wet her pants when I tell her this thing she thought this was the funniest thing I'd ever heard and and I said I have all these messages on my answering machine what do I do and she said call them all call them all and tell them all what happened do not leave out anything coffee shop sponsee tell it all and another thing every time you're at a podium i want you to tell that story until you get that it's funny took me two years to hear how funny this story is i called all these people and i by the way i was the only woman in a home group full of men they razzed me half to death every time I'd get out of my car, Hey, Donaldson, what kind of bird don't fly? Hey, jailbird, do not fly. Golly. But man, I had to take a look at that. I had the courage to say, I had had to look at my dishonesty. I had taken a look at these spiritual shortcuts that I take. And I had looked at the fact that none of the people I called when I told this story said, I can't believe you did that. Not one. Not one was even shocked. The only person who was surprised was me because I'm the only one who buys into my ego. I'm not the only person who thinks I have this stellar reputation and that I can impress my sponsee with my big status in Oklahoma City. Let me tell you, it's been 20 years since that happened. I can't get within 15 miles of Oklahoma City without somebody going, hey, wait a minute. Aren't you the one? I'm the one that went to jail on the way to the AA. She's not my sponsee, by the way. I mean, it is shocking, but she let me go. something about going to jail negated every spiritual teaching I had laid at her feet. Stop doing what you know is wrong and start doing what you know was right. And for me, I wasn't going to know the right thing to do until I went through that discomfort in the middle where I stood in the gap and I was uncomfortable for a little while and then I started to develop. But what happens is when I lay down the weapons and I walk through that period of time where I just don't know and I'm sort of studying how you handle life on life's terms, I get a tool. And see with weapons, I separate myself from you and from God with a tool I can repair and create. Which sounds better to you? which sounds more spiritual to you but I gotta lay down the weapon before I'm ever going to get the tool so um I'm stalling because there's one more story I'm supposed to tell and I hate this one god I really hate this one I might have mentioned stealing it's one of my great loves And it's embarrassing to say, like I like getting stuff for free. It's my favorite price. And when I started looking like somebody who wouldn't steal, it got a lot easier. And though statistically speaking, I look exactly like someone who would steal, but I didn't know that. And let me tell you something, I've never stolen something that I didn'T have the money in my purse to take. i mean it's not like i'm stealing formula for the baby i'm stealing nail polish uh i mean it's just stupid it's just dumb because it's not about the stuff it's an indicator of my spiritual condition and it was then and it is now and i'm just going to tell you where i am spiritually i'm still that person who walks out of the grocery store and goes what keeps people from just putting that firewood in their car without paying for it i mean they just lay those plants right out there real close like i mean i can't run but i'm pretty sure i could waddle fast enough to get to my car before somebody could catch me with that fern and i swear on my big book it takes me till about halfway home before i go what keeps somebody from doing it integrity oh i mean like that's still this is where i start to develop just a teeny tiny bit of character like am i gonna do the right thing when nobody's looking and most days i gotta i had a good amount of act right because i've been following you around for a long time man i'm gonna cry about this and it's so embarrassing and i haven't done it in a long time, but I still have shame that I hung on to it for as long as I did. I stole stuff and I'm not going to tell you I stole stuff every day. I was a master criminal with 10,000 nail polishes or whatever. But I just had a lot of shame about the fact that, you know, I'm standing at a podium and I know that I still can't trust myself when nobody's looking sometimes and I hate that. so I was speaking at a conference in Texas I had a sponsee in the car she became my sponseee because she likes steel too it's an absolute true story she came up to me after a meeting where I started sharing about taking stuff and she's like I like steel stuff too I call her twitchy I've never paid for any Burt's Bees lip balm ever you know and um look at me look at my watch like hopefully we're almost out of time and I can't tell this story so I um I know twitchy comes up to me and she wants me to be her sponsor and what I learned is that she didn't want to stop stealing she just wants somebody to know about it because when you got secrets like this carrying them around gets real real heavy she was just looking for somebody to unload with, and so we were at this conference, and we drove there together, and we were on the way home, and when we stopped in Waco, and there's this really cool place. It's my favorite kind of place. It's got all these little stalls full of stuff that nobody needs. That's my favourite kind of stuff, and, and while we're wandering around there, and I have to go to the bathroom, so I go to the bathroom and in the bathroom there is this giant bottle of Poo-Pourri. Do y'all know about Poo-Pourri? It is magical stuff. Whoever designed Poo Pourri needs a Nobel Peace Prize. It is magic. It's magical. For those of you with the blank look on your face, it's the spray that makes your poop not. It's a marriage saver. Anyway, so there's this big bottle of Poo Pourri and it says tester on it. They also put a sticker on it that said do not steal this Poo Purri or you will have loose bowels, or some, there was some poop-related joke on the poopery that I noticed as I was dropping it into my giant bag. And I'm not, and here's how my brain works. My brain goes, that's not stealing, that's a tester. And, I'm going to test this at home. So, Twitchy is wandering around the store unattended, and I have just stolen a big bottle of poopery and uh and we decided that the line is too long for us to purchase anything so we're just gonna leave and neither one of us saw those little metal things that are like that right at the door and uh we walked out and the metal things went beep beep beep and i looked at her and she looked at me and we start walking fast. And, uh, and we're big talkers, both of us, and you're not going to believe it, but for the next 45 miles, silence, just silence in that car. And, um, and I peek under that sticker that said, don't steal this. And I found a sensor and um so I fold like a cheap lawn chair and I say hey uh do you know why that alarm went off at the store and she said yep and I said you do and she says mm-hmm and I reached down into my bag and I grabbed this giant bottle of Poo-Pourri, and I say, you know about this? And she says, shut up. And she whips the car off the road, runs to the back seat, reaches into her backpack, and y'all, I swear on my big book, this is true. Brand new bottle of Poop-Purri. now I know this is a jacked up story but there is a certain elegance in the fact that we stole the same thing here's the thing she had maybe two years of sobriety I had over 20 okay that's how I felt and and that's the day I surrendered because it affected my usefulness it affected my usefulnes to her I could not offer her any experience strength and hope if I wasn't willing to be done all the way done for as long as it takes, no matter what. And to my knowledge from that day to this, I have not stolen anything. Well, it's not virtue. I'm not even going to claim virtue. It's just pain. I just had to get So uncomfortable in my own skin. But what I'll tell you is that the other thing that I learned was that I got done, she didn't. And anything that we refuse to address escalates. It always does. Always. That's how people who wouldn't cheat, cheat. You know? We just do a little flirty flirt. No big deal. It's just a guy from the group. He's not serious. I'm not serious how'd we wind up naked I don't know and I'm not just talking about newcomers let me assure you I think this is what gets old-timers drunk because we've got that thing we got that things that we don't want to talk to anybody but I've been around here too long my sponsor knows Sort of. That it's kind of a problem, occasionally, you know? But we gloss right over it because my pride and my ego. My pride andmy ego. It's the only one that I'll kill or die for. And I don't want to believe that about myself, but I've seen it over and over and over again. If you're going to really dive deep on six and seven, you got to go to the 12 112. And I'm only going to read a little bit on page 75 in step 7 because this is what's changed for me. When in AA, we looked and then in AA we looked and listened. Everywhere we saw failure and misery transformed by humility into priceless assets. We heard story after story after humility had brought strength out of weakness. In every case pain had been the price of admission into a new life. But this admission price had purchased more than we expected it brought a measure of humility which we soon discovered to be the healer of pain we began to fear pain less and desire humility more than ever man in that 12 and 12 bill just humility humility humility you know it's in every freaking essay he talks about humility it's kind of like i struggle with the spiritual part of the program It's like struggling with the wet part of the water. There's no not spiritual part. But the problem is I don't want to humble myself. I don'T want to HUMBLE MYSELF. My pride and my ego is constantly saying, Don't tell, don't talk about it, don'T admit it. Figure it out. You got yourself into this mess. You get yourself out. And let me tell you what that going to jail with 10 years sober did for me. I figured out that I care more about what happens if I don't tell you who I am and where I am right here, right now than I am about what you will think if I tell you the truth about where I am, right here and right now. Because my life still depends on it. my problem still centers in my mind it still centers in my mine my solution does not my solution resides in my hands my feet and my heart and so I'm going to let God into my heart I'm going to lead with my heart and one of the things at six and seven teaches me is compassion. I don't kick my girls when they're down. I may speak firmly to them out of love. I may let them know that I am concerned and I may point out where I believe that this behavior is leading, but I don'T get to talk down to anybody. We're shoulder to shoulder because I understand. I have never been absolved of my humility and on any given day i do that inventory and i'm still finding stuff i just i want to have the one day there's no selfishness and no self-centeredness at all i mean i just floated around like we're banking on it i mean like one day there's i'm probably going to sleep through the whole thing but um I guess that's selfish too anyway but it teaches me compassion it teaches me to look at everybody as my spiritual brother and sister that we all struggle that we could surrender easily and we all have things that are our snickers that we're still struggling with because it eases the pain quickly or at least postpones the dealing with it. But am I willing? And what I know is that God wants to take me to better things. God wants us to take us to better places. And so, you know, I'm not going to be able to take me into better things, but part of my inventory process was to continue to take a look at my sex behavior and dating and old ideas surrounding all of that. And I began to develop a sane and sound sex ideal. And good Lord, actually, my sponsor helped a lot with that because I didn't think that was a good idea um and for several years she just kept saying I'll be glad when you want better for yourself than this because I was settling for all kinds of things that I wouldn't want for you but I was telling myself that old story of something's better than nothing and I don't want to be alone I'm never alone never alone ever alone but I hadn't looked that fear in the eye, and so I start writing this thing in SoundSex. I deal with my sponsor's help, and she said I needed to learn how to date. I know a bunch of y'all don't know nothing about this dating thing because if you had a sponsor like I had a sponsored, it's terrifying. Her idea was that first you got to be friends, like for a while, not cram it in in 18 hours. You know, she's like pages of the calendar should turn while you are friends. It's a lot of investment. And she said if they're a crappy friend, go no further. then you get to date and what she said was that a date has a beginning a middle and an end usually within the same day and she said a date was from here to here and here to here nothing in the hot zone oh man And then you do that for pages of the calendar. And if they're a cruddy date, go no further. And then you get to get naked. If he goes through this magical, you know, American Ninja Warrior course. Then you get And I said, there is not a man in Alcoholics Anonymous who will agree to that. And she said, why don't we invite God in? So the first guy that came up to me and goes, you're cute. I'd like to take you out. I said well, here's the thing. my sponsor says i have to learn how to date and first you have to be my friend and he was like cool i'm like oh this one's brain damaged and so i i explained this american ninja warrior course that we're gonna have to go through and he goes never tried that before let's do it and uh now i'm really uncomfortable about him and um and so for months, we're friends, and during that time, he was a single dad with custody of his kid, and he'd be late a lot, and I don't like being late, but he had good reasons, but he was late, and i don't know how to deal with that, and i have this weird thought, like what would you do if he was a friend, because apparently we're just friends, and i said, well, if he was just a friend i would say i'm gonna go to the meeting and if you're here at this time i'll go with you and if not i'm going there and you can meet me there and then we'll do something after and it's weird i stopped being mad at him so i got to run this experiment i gotと see how he behaved i got то learn about how he um handled anger and i saw how he operated in the world and he saw some things about me and we we decided that we would like to date and we did the here to here and here to here, and that was weird. There was some pawing at some door handles, man. It was like, I've been 16 twice now. I mean, it was kind of real fun. I'm just saying, why don't we fast forward through that part? That's really, there was one night he just had to leap up and leave, and I felt very powerful. And here's where it got kind of cool. On the day when I made the X on the calendar, he didn't know it was that day because he hadn't and counting days. He just liked hanging out with me. I had cheated myself out of an experience for somebody who just wanted to be around me, whatever the terms and conditions to that are. And that's not the man I married, by the way. This is a guy in AA who wanted to have a different experience, so we got a surprise. And I called my sponsor the next morning and I said, hey, guess what happened last night? She said, I know. And she said, so what's different today and the Jeopardy music started playing in my head because I knew there was a good answer for this and I did not have it and uh and I said uh because when in doubt say something funny and I said well I've seen them naked and she said and that's the only thing that's different wait what she said if you weren't committed before today you're not committed today if you aren't monogamous before today you're non-monogamous today if this wasn't heading to down the aisle before today it's not heading to Down the Aisle today well why didn't you tell me that and the truth is that we dated for a while and we did the thing for a while and we got to a place where I knew that we weren't going to head down the aisles and for the very first time in my life I ended it and we ended amicably and we could see each other and be kind and there was no animosity whatsoever because I was really clear on the fact that it was just about where we were and not who we were he didn't need to be different and I didn't needs to be but we knew it because we did something different God wanted to take me to better things but it meant that I was going to need to walk through some discomfort to do it, and I was going to have to hold God's hand to find out what God had in store for me. I have a husband. His name is Big Daddy, and he's the sweetest man I've ever met. And he courted me. But I tell you what, if he'd shown up before that guy, I wouldn't have given him the time of day because I was too busy trying to make bad look good. And when I'm busy trying to make bad look good, I'll miss God's will every single time. God wants better for me than I know how to want for myself. But first I have to set down the weapons, pick up the tools and invite him in. I'm glad to be here and it's a good day to be sober.