Courage Is a Product of Taking Action – Dick M.

Thank you, Steve. My name is Dick Martin, and I'm an alcoholic. Everybody, but for the grace of God and the actions of AA and sponsorship, I've been sober since September the 15th, 1965, and I am really very grateful about that. Not only am I grateful for the fact that I'm sober, but I'm also pleased that I am a member of Alcoholics Anonymous and grateful that I have the fellowship of Alcoholic Anonymous to live within. And because there's a lot of other places I had to live before I came to Alcoholics Anonymous, and I couldn't live with those, and I could not live with any degree of comfort. I look out on the audience this morning. I see a number of people I sponsor, some people that I haven't sponsored, the number of people that I should sponsor. And a hell of a lot of them I'm damn glad I don't sponsor. But that's the way life is in the big city, I guess. The subject that I'm supposed to address this morning is courage to change. And I'm a coward. I'm just a coward, you know. I was thinking Peggy made some remark this morning we were talking and I said, well, it's only natural that I be chosen for a topic such as that. You know, I was named from Richard, Richard Coeur d'Alene, Richard the Lionhearted, and it's always natural that i stand up and I talk about matters of the heart and that's what we're really talking about. We're talking about courage, it's derivation where it is heart and so we're talking about matters of the heart. We are not talking about some sort of a commodity that we can go out and purchase somewhere. We aren't talking about something we can learn. We ar not talking about some sort of an automatic response. We are talking about something that's internal and visceral and something that's strong and something that's beyond us and something beyond our kin and something beyond our understanding and something beyond everybody's understanding because we don't understand things about the heart and we don' t understand the things about the heart or soul and that sort of thing we just don' T understand that but I know this, I know that before I came to Alcoholics Anonymous I had periodic feelings of intense feelings of desire to be something that I wasn't, desire to be something I knew that I could be. I had tremendous feelings of resentment towards those people around me who appeared to be or who actually were the type of person that I wanted to be. There were people that had integrity, there were people that did what they said they were going to do and there were people who showed up people that I could depend upon and people that other people could depend upon. And I wasn't one of those sorts of people, and I desperately wanted to be. I can remember after promising my then wife, whom I later learned to refer to as plaintiff, that she I remember coming home one day and I was drunk again and drinking again and drunk again and I remember coming home and she said you know you promised me you weren't going to drink you promised you promised me you weren' t going to do this anymore you promised me that you were she said do you have any idea how it makes me feel when you break your promise to me and I just looked at her and I had a just terrible feeling of anger in me. And I had this terrible feeling of, you know, damn you. Not damn me, but damn you, don't you understand? You know, I meant exactly what I said. I meant that I was not going to drink again. I meant dat I was nat gonna do this. I ment dat I wasn't gonna break your heart again. I meant that I was going to be a good husband and a good father I meant I was going to do that I really did and I don't know what happened and I really don't know what happen to me. I don' t know what happen from that moment where I said those things and that I promised those things and damn you for seeing that in me damn you but I couldn't say anything it was just all inside of me damn you don't you understand that I broke my promise to me damn you don't your heart don't see don't she see that I really want to be better than I am I really want to be what I say I am and what I said I'm going to be but somehow I can't, and I don't understand why. I don' t understand how. I don''t understand anything about it. And I just looked at her, andI turned around and walked away. But I was just eaten up on the inside with all of these, just damn! Because I couldn' t be the person I wanted to be. And I couldn''t be theperson that I knew that I could be because I knewthat I had these capabilities in me. I knew that I could be a good father, and I knew I could be a son and a good brother and a good husband. I knew I could do that, but I couldn't do it. And it really honestly just drove me crazy. I know it drove me crazy because of thousands of dollars I spent in psychiatry as living proof that I was crazy. Only crazy people go to psychiatrist and uh or at least that's the conclusion i came to and i still rather believe that to be true certainly in my case i don't know about yours but if you're like i am and you're here chances are that fits pretty well I think a lot of people think of courage and they think of people that are out in the perhaps men that are in a battlefield they charge ahead putting their own lives in jeopardy and they charge head to kill those people ahead of them or to conquer the enemy or whatever it happens to be and I think they think of those people as being courageous and they really aren't courageous they're trained to do that and they're told they're going to be shot if they don't you know, I mean, they don' t have any choice and they figure the known fact is that they're gonna be disgraced or destroyed or shot ifthey desert in the face of the enemy forces them to go on to take that chance that maybe they'll live through this battle and they'll be able to live for a little while longer It's better to face the unknown than the known. And I think they all go into those situations in sheer terror. And I don't think that they go into it with the idea that they're invincible. The only time I could go into life feeling that I was invincible was when I was drinking, and I had this feeling of instant omnipotence, and nothing was going to happen to me, and I could do what I wanted to do, and I could get away with it. If you didn't like it, that's too damn bad. I don't care what you like or don't like. I can do what i want to. And that's what alcohol, drinking alcohol did to me. It made me feel that way. And if it had continued to make me feel this way, I would still be drinking it today. But somehow or another, that went away. I liked that feeling of omnipotence. I came I came to Alcoholics Anonymous not out of courage, but because I was a coward and I couldn't stand living the life that I was living anymore. I couldn'T stand the thought of being out there anymore. I just couldn'T understand it anymore. I had a spiritual awakening of sorts. I realized that I WAS just really a shell of a man. I wasn't even much of a shell, and that I had to do something about my life. I knew that AA wouldn't work for me. I knew it worked for other people. I knew they went to Alcoholics Anonymous and never drank again. It was kind of like being tossed into a leper colony or something like that. Once you're in, you're out, and I knew what it was. And I knew that it was alcoholics helping alcoholics, and they never drank again. Once they were in, once you're a member of Alcoholics Anonymous, you don't drink, and I knew that. I think that bad knowledge served me well because since I came to Alcoholics Anonymous on that Thursday night in September 1965, I haven't had a drink, And I'm very fortunate that I haven't, because I think I had just exactly the right number of drinks. I think if I'd had one more drink, I would have been dead. And if I had had one less drink that night, the night before, I think that it wouldn't have been enough. And I would've had another drink and started all over again and set up the compulsion. And I could have thought to myself, well, this time it's going to be different, just like I thought every time before that. I didn't come to Alcoholics Anonymous because I was courageous I didn' t have any heart left when I came to Alcoholic Anonymous I didn''t have anything left when I came to Alcoholix Anonymous a friend and I used to say ran out of friends and enemies at the same time and that's a bitch I mean it really is running out of friends is understandable but when your enemies look at you as if you're unimportant anymore they're not afraid of you anymore didn't much sense being around I didn't know what to do I really didn't know what I had done everything that I had known to do before I came to Alcoholics Anonymous I had a psychiatrist that had wanted me to go to the Institute for Living and become a resident there after I came into AlcoholicsAnonymous I'm glad that I didn't do that, and I'm glad that it didn't because I met a good friend, Father Jake, who's a priest. And they had put him in the Institute for Living because of his alcoholism. And he was in there in his first interview with a psychiatrist. And the psychiatrist told him, let's discuss your problem with masturbation. And Jake said he never had a problem with masturbation. He always enjoyed it. But that had absolutely nothing to do with his alcoholism and didn't have anything to do with the reason why he was in there. And he said he was a failure in the Institute for Living, and he said it was just like being a failure in life period. He was just a failure. And so I'm glad I didn't go there. I couldn't afford to go there anyway, but I'm still glad I didn't go. I came to Alcoholics Anonymous because I didn' t have any psychiatrists to go to anymore. I'd gone to, as far as I was concerned, the best man I knew in the business. Most recommended. He was the fifth psychiatrist I'd been to. I've been climbing the rung, and it cost me more and more. Each one of them charged a little more each time I went. And the first psychiatrist I went to tripped over a wrinkle in the carpet on his way in to see me in his office, and he was drunk and fell right in front of me. I thought to myself, you know, I don't think that this guy is going to be able to help me. It's kind of funny, later on, after I'd been sober for a couple of years in Alcoholics Anonymous, I went to a meeting of the Friendship Group in Washington, D.C., and there he was. And he never got sober, however, but I enjoyed seeing him there. It just made me feel a little bit better. I don't know why my being sober for several years gave me a feeling of superiority over him. which I don't normally feel over newcomers at all but I really felt it over this guy because he was such an ass but I went to a physician early on before I ever started going to psychiatrists and the first physician I went he told me exactly what I needed to hear He told me exactly and precisely the truth. He was one of the few people that ever told me the truth before I came to AA. And he said, Dick, if you don't stop drinking, you're going to die drunk. And I knew that before I walked in there. And he told me that. And I said, I know that. But how do I do that? And he says, you just stop. and so I tried to just stop and I just stopped and then I just couldn't stand it so I just drank again and I did that time and time again because there was no surcease from the pain that I had he didn't tell me that if I just didn't take that first drink I'd be okay if I just didn't drink one day at a time I'd be okay you've got to go through a little pain and anguish during that period of time to get over the physical problem but he didn't tell me that he just said if you don't stop drinking you're going to die drunk I would like to tell him today if I was able to see him, he's dead but I would like to be able to tell him that if I just don't take that first drink, I'm going to die sober. Because I understand that now. I had a man who made a 12-step call on me. He took me to my first AA meeting. My first AA meet was a service meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous in which a film strip was played, something like Circles of Love and Service and they explain the structure of Alcoholics Anonymous and I've been sober ever since. That amazes some people when they hear that but that's the absolute truth and I was amazed that that room was a room full of people who were members of Alcoholic Anonymous and they all seemed to be doing so well and it still amazES me today but it also lets me know something that Alcoholics Anonymous is an affair of the heart and they talk about it being the language of the heart and they talked about it being a heart thing and I think that's what it is because I had a feeling when I went in that room that it was somehow or another I had this feeling that was going to be okay and I hadn't had that feeling for a long long time and I don't know why I got that feeling from that. I couldn't tell you. I suspect it was the fact that I was with people like I was and I recognized that. I was a man of my word. I was always with others like I was. And I thought at the time, if this is all it takes, I can do this. And I can come back to Alcoholics Anonymous. It doesn't take any more than this. I can do this and I'll feel okay. And so I And subsequently, that evening, I was 12-stepped and had a hot fudge ice cream cake with marshmallow. First time I'd had anything like that in years. I was kind of wondering if I was going to puke it over the guy that bought it for me. I enjoyed it anyway, and I didn't. I weighed about 155 pounds, and by the end of a year in Alcoholics Anonymous, I weighed 208. I had to stop eating them. But that served me well too. I was scared to death when I came to AlcoholicsAnonymous. I was such a complete failure. I'd made so many bad decisions in my life and I had so many regrets and feelings of guilt and remorse and I felt I just really I didn't have any heart I didn'y have any hurt left at all I didn''t know what to do with myself I didn ''t know what I was going to do I had a job and I was living with my widowed mother I was 33 years old I just barely had a job but I had it and I didn't know what the hell I was going to do I just really didn't know what I wanted to do I didn' t know what I could do I just didn' I just didnt know I was so confused and the fellow who became my sponsor I didn''t have a choice I didn ''t go around and interview people and see if I wanted to pick one which one I wanted to pick to be my sponsor. I didn't have any people that were any known example to me. I just had a man who shared his life with me, and he told me that I was his sponsor. And I asked him what a sponsor was, and he says, I'm a sponsor, I're yours. And I guess maybe I was too sick to choose my own sponsor, I don't know. But I was glad to have him as a sponsor because what I did was I literally turned my life and my will over to care of him because I didn't know what to do. And I literally did that. I had to ask him what to doing, not everything, but when it came to a time to make any decision at all on what was going on, what are we going to do tomorrow? I know I'm at the meeting here now, and we're going to leave. What am I going to go do tomorrow?" Where are we doing tomorrow? Are we going into a meeting tomorrow? Where are we going tomorrow? Are we going to have lunch tomorrow? I'll call you in the morning and see what we're going to do. Okay. I didn't know what to do I was I didn' t have I just I didn''t have anything I didn ''t have anything on the inside of me to draw upon I had nothing I was just empty I had it just seemed like I didn't have any intellect. I certainly didn't have any of that commodity called courage. I've learned gradually since I've been an alcoholic synonymous, courage is not something that you have. Courage is something that happens. I began to do a couple of things in IA. I began to take a little faith. I began to take on faith what this guy, my sponsor, said was true. And if I just didn't take that first drink, I'd be able to get through it and I'd be all right. And I put a lot of faith in him. And then I began to put a little bit of faith in the guys that he sponsored because they seemed to kind of hover around me and kept me safe and kind of guarded me from whatever there was to be guarded from. And I found out later there wasn't anything, but it certainly made me feel secure. And I began to have faith in those guys, that they really cared for me. And somehow or another, I didn't know why, but they wanted me to stay sober and they wantedme to keep coming back. And they kept saying so and they kept asking me how I was doing. Alcoholics Anonymous was the only place that I recognized where I was wanted And I recognized they wanted me there, and I didn't know why, and I really didn't care. I'm not even sure that I could have asked the question, why do you want me? I couldn't have asked God, I don't think. But I just took faith on faith what they had said and what my sponsor said. And gradually in time, I began to develop faith in the groups that I was going to and a lot of faith in them because they were always there and the coffee was there when I got there and you know I could help set up the chairs or I could tear them down or clean the ashtrays or whatever was necessary and I could feel okay there I could feeling normal I could like the rest of the people in that room appeared to be, I could fell that way and I began to have faith that I wouldn't feel uncomfortable when I went to a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous or when I met members of Alcoholic Anonymous that in fact I would feel comforted when I was with them and when Iwas with those people and I came to depend upon that and I still depend upon it today I know it's true and then I began to develop some faith in the big book of Alcoholix Anonymous and what it said and what its said about our recovery and how we can recover You know, we're people who have recovered from a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body. That physical need to take a drink and that mental obsession that it'll be okay this time. We've recovered from that by and large in time. We have. I did. I have. So I began to have faith in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. I came to have faith in the fact that I wasn't being misled from any direction by the people in Alcoholics Anonymous, by my sponsor in Alcoholic Anonymous by the group in Alcoholix Anonymous by the program itself of Alcoholics anonymous there was nothing in there that was misleading there was noting in there was going to hurt me no one in there meant any harm to me they really cared for me me even the people perhaps who didn't like me wouldn't do me any harm they could dislike me without being harmful to me and they were because I knew that to be true because there were people that I didn't like in Alcoholics Anonymous but I didn' t wish them any harm and that was unlike me because people that I didn''t like before I just assumed I used to get so angry sometime that I could easily kill somebody and just stand there and say, yeah, I killed him. Turn around and walk away. I didn't do that but I could have done that easily because I became amoral. I became without feelings. Nothing made any difference to me. I don't care. I really just didn't care Then I began to understand that there was something here in Alcoholics Anonymous that didn't seemed to be a lot of other places and that's something that seemed to be here. I didn't know what it was and I couldn't put an ingredient on it and I couldn't call it this, that or the other and I didn' t know what the hell it was. I know what it was today. I knew very well what it was today and it's called a fellowship and I began to put a lot of faith in the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous in one person being with another person, one alcoholic being with another alcoholic. One alcoholic talking to another alcoholic and I began to put a tremendous amount of faith in the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous and I know that there are people who would disagree with this but I think that the fellowship of Alcoholic Anonymous is the most important part of Alcoholix Anonymous and the reason why I think that is because that's where I spend most of my time in the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. I don't spend all of my time or the majority of my time in the program of Alcoholic Anonymous I don' t spend that much time and I never have spent that much working or taking or living the steps of Alcoholix Anonymous or the traditions of Alcoholx Anonymous or the concepts of AlcoholiX Anonymous I spend very little time at that just like all the other members of Alcoholice Anonymous that I've ever met, we spend much more time with each other. And I've learned more about the program of Alcoholics Anonymous over a cup of coffee in a restaurant in the morning or the afternoon or an evening after a meeting is over at 3 o'clock in the morning, talking to a newcomer or talking to somebody that's been sober longer than I have and I've learn more about Alcoholics Anonymous and I'll learn more how to live my life and how to make those precepts, those steps and those traditions and concepts That's a part of my living part of life. I've learned how to do that from those people, and that wasn't within the meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous. I think the meetings are very important, extremely important. Bill Wilson said the meetings of Alcoholic Anonymous serve one purpose. They're where we take newcomers so they'll be 12-staffed. And that's what we do. the meetings are not the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. The program of Alcoholics anonymous is a 12 steps, 12 steps of recovery, 12 traditions of unity, 12 concepts of service that's the program of alcoholics and I was I think we make that a part of us I was scared I was afraid when I came into AA I didn't know how to do things you know I told my sponsor I didn' t tell him I was afraid because I didn''t want him to think that I was a wimp he knew I was but we didn'' t discuss that and he didn't discuss it because he didn' t want to hurt my feelings and I didn' d discuss it because I was too embarrassed at that time but I was really afraid to do some things I was afraid to go and talk to my ex-wife I was scared I was worried to try to be a father to those two kids that I had sired I was afraid of my work I was afraid of people, I was afraid of places and institutions and I was scared of everything and he said it would be okay just try he said it's okay for you to be afraid we don't care whether you're afraid or not just do it and so I would do one thing and I would walk through it and when I got to the other side of it, whatever it was it gave me a little strength and I was able to walk through another thing and it gave me a little strength and that strength I developed by doing those things, by taking those actions was courage courage was a product of taking an action it was not a something else you don't have courage before you do something, you have courage after it's done You don't hear people talking about how courageous they were before the battle They talk to you and brag about it after it's over Because they have a feeling of courage it's not always easy to be a vulnerable member of Alcoholics Anonymous it's not always easy to place yourself on that in that position I know that here recently in my own life I've had some feelings of I don't want to say I was in a because i don't think that that's really true and i think a depression is a clinical description and certainly i was not a under any clinical advice but i've been down and i haven't been feeling good and i've Been sleeping well and i'm been waking up in the morning and sleep a limited amount of time and i'Ve been tired and i been you know easily irascible and I've been able to feel just a little bit touchy and a little but angry and those sorts of things. Kind of the same sorts of problems that our president is having now, I think. I identify with him anyway. Not bad, but just off. So I call my sponsor not too many weeks ago and I called him up and I was telling him about this. And he said, how old are you, Dick? And I said, I'm 60. He said, when were you 60? And I says, in December. And he says, well, 50 is the watershed year for women. And 60 is a watershed year for men. He says, at that point in time they think it's all over. And he said, Dick, I don't want you to think it's over. But it is. I felt better. I don't know. I've felt better ever since. Called him up the next week and was pretty cheerful as a matter of fact and talked to him. Said, well, I feel better. I don' t feel like slitting my wrists or anything like that. And he says, well all the evidence isn't in yet. Yeah, I really do feel better. Knowing that it's all over is okay because I know it isn't all over. So this thing of courage and the courage to change I think is really based on having faith that those people who went before us and they have done these things and they've gone through these things and they have been the one with the machetes who've cut down the vines in the jungle so that we have a path to go through and maybe we're going to have to cut a vine or two also but as we trudge that road of happy destiny someone read that last night they read it was a road to happy destiny which a lot of people make that mistake. It isn't the road to happy destiny. This is it, kids. I got news for you. It don't get any better than this. It really doesn't. You know, right now I'm safe and I'm secure and I feel fine, perfectly healthy. I don't feel bad. I'm not really very much aware of myself at all as to how I feel or I don' t feel. And I know that I' m safe and I know that nobody's going to hurt me, and I know I'm not going to be harmed. And I know the God loves me. I know my friends love me. I know what I love my friends. I feel really good. You can't feel any better than I feel. You can feeling better. Because I feel comforted because I'm within the arms of the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. I don't have to be afraid because there's an answer here for me that I have to find by taking the actions of Alcoholics Anonymous and the actions of Alcoholic Anonymous are the solution. And I don' t have to have courage to take the actions, I don''t have to courage to talk to my sponsor, I don't to have to to talk to my friends in AA, my peers, people that I run with or would run with if we were closer and some of them are here this this weekend Bob is here on the front row and we just Don Pritz will be speaking this morning he's another one you know we just love each other and if we lived in the same town and AA would be in a lot of goddamn trouble, I'll tell you. Because we'd get that power together. And I see my friend, the fellow that I sponsored, Terry Lindgren, he was the first fellow I sponsored here in Bellevue. And he's got some of the fellows that he sponsors with him. They run together and try to run Alcoholics Anonymous up in Minnesota with a little help from Bob. And they have a good time together. And I see other guys from other towns with the fellows that they sponsor and their friends. I know what they're doing and they're just running with their friends just like a pack of wild dogs. And when we do that we don't know what we're doing it really doesn't make any difference that we know what мы're doing because we aren't going to hurt anything. God, we're not going to hurt anything at all. If one of us accidentally hurts something, everybody else comes in and they just patch that hurt up and it's okay, it's alright. Whoever accidentally hurt whatever it is they hurt, they stand there in awe and see the person heal right in front of them and it' s all over with and it''s alright. we just know it's going to be alright in fact it's gonna be okay it may not be the way you think it's gonna be or the way I think it's gotta be it may not turn out to be the way we would wish it to be but it's gonna be okay it's just gonna be alright and you just have to take on faith that it's going to be all right you're not going to die and it's just going to be okay you're not going gonna have the pain nothing lasts forever good night sleep will have any resentment anybody has ever had and have any fear that anybody has ever had another night's sleep will cut that in half another night sleep we'll cut that in half and so on so forth God, I am so glad that I have such confidence in those people that came before me that I know that I can go to them and I can get help. I don't have to do it by myself. The first step says we admitted we're powerless over alcohol. I don' t have to be a believer I don''t have to deal with it. I don'T have to DO ANYTHING BY MYSELF ANYMORE I don't have to, of and by myself, I don' t have to do anything which is a good thing because of and buy myself I can't do anything. Because I don''t have the strength or the power to do that. But I can get that strength and I can that power and I get that encouragement from you and from the people that I sponsor for those well-meaning people in my life. I don't have to, you know, we encourage each other. We give that to each other It's, I don' t have to be courageous. I don''t have to have the courage to change. You give me the courage to change i don't have to worry about being courageous i can be a coward and i can do courageous things because you give me that courage we encourage each other and that's what it's all about that's What the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous is about is one encouraging another and we don't have to be afraid anymore and we won't have to do anything ourselves anymore. We just don't have to do that anymore. We don't have to do it by ourselves. We don' t have to do anything by ourselves. We don' t have to have the feeling that oh God I'm going to fail at this again because we have all of the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous to call upon that's going to give us the power and strength. Our steps are very clear in What they say, they're not distorted. They don't mean anything else other than what they say. There's a lot of people. I've been sober a long time. As a matter of fact, my wife has been sober longer than I have, which she sets such a great example for me that, God, I didn't think she'd stop that crying yesterday. I was, Jesus. I thought to myself, Peggy, don't you have any dignity at all? But she has great dignity because it takes great dignity to be able to bear yourself and to open yourself to other people and to be vulnerable to other People. It doesn't take courage. It's just an act of great dignity. I had breakfast with the guys that I sponsor most of them yesterday morning as is our custom on Cornhusker Saturday morning and we were running around the room and everybody chatted for a moment or two and talk about the things that have gone on in their life. There wasn't one person in that room whose life is not better today than it was this time last year. There's not one person in thatroom whose life is not better. All of us have gone through what we have gone through. Some of the guys have gone through some terrible disappointments and some terrible things have happened to them over the year, but they're in a better place now than they were this time last year. And it was hard to see that if you're sitting at it, but it was very easy for me to see. They're all, they're great. I've never met a finer group of men in all my life than the guys that I sponsor. Never. I've seen them fail and fail and fail and get up and try again. Not a one of them yet I could classify as being a loser. And they were like me, we're all losers. But they get up and try it again. They try again because of the encouragement the gift of courage that's given to them by the other members of Alcoholics Anonymous their brothers in AA and their sponsor and by God 11th Step by Alcoholics Anonymous says it fulfills something that I had a great question about when I was new in AA because I didn't ever feel that I would develop any sort of relationship with God at all. And I heard people talking about having some conscious contact with God as they understood him, and I thought, God, that's never going to happen to me. It's never gonna happen. It's just never gonna happened. It just can't. I don't know why, but it just can. I don' t understand it. And I guess I'm gonna fail Alcoholics Anonymous. As I took the trip through the steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, somehow or another, by the time I got to the 11th step, it was easy to see. It says, sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him. Asking only for knowledge of His will and power to carry that out. It said something in there that was real tricky. It said, we're going to improve the conscious contact. That means by that time about taking the steps a day at a time and making them part of our lives that we're going to have a conscious contact with god as we understand him and by the time we get to the 11th step and making that a part of your living energy that what's going to happen is we're already going to half that we're gonna have something as a result of taking the step of alcoholics and others what we're gunna have is a development of slow and gradual almost imperceptible development of the fact that there is a God and we have a personal God of our very own. I didn't think that could happen to me. I thought I was going to be left out in the rain. And I was left out in the rain The rain falls on the just and unjust alike and the grace of God falls on and the just and unjust alike. And I've been out in that rain, and I've simply graced by God. Simply graced, nothing exceptional, just simply grased by God, and I'm aware of the grace of God. And I have been able to stay sober because I am aware of grace of god, not because of anything else, not because anything that I am, not because any power or strength that I have, but because of a power and a strength that he has given me. He's given me the heart. He has encouraged me to keep going when I didn't want to keep going. He has discouraged me to stay in Alcoholics Anonymous when I wouldn't want us to stay at AlcoholicsAnonymous. He's encouraged me to get up and go to that meeting that I didn' t want to go to. He' s kept me giving me the heart to go and do that thing that I was asked to in Alcoholics Anonymous even when I didn't want to. I don't have any courage. I don' t have the courage to change. I don''t think any of you have the courage to change, but I think that we have the courage to change, and I think that's what Alcoholics Anonymous is all about. That's why it's a fellowship, because we can encourage each other. I would be terribly remiss if I didn't make mention of the fact that another friend of mine is here, a longtime member of Alcoholics Anonymous whom I greatly respected and admired, and it's Don who came down this weekend with some of the guys and gals that he sponsors. We love each other. I just never thought that I could love so much. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you.