David G. – Surrender – Trusting The Prophet Over Your Own Thinking – 2008

The Recovery Broadcast Network is pleased to present, personal stories of recovery. If you can't make a meeting, then check us out. We have what you are looking for right here. Listen as Narcotics Anonymous members share their experience, strength, and hope with others, so that they too can recover from the disease of addiction. Remember that meeting makers make it. Please be advised, that these meetings are not intended to be a substitute for attending regular, N.A. or other 12-step meetings. Also, the Recovery Broadcast Network is not associated with Narcotics Anonymous in any way. So please sit back and get ready for a powerful story of recovery. What starts to happen through the step process is that what we start to understand is that the ultimate weapon is God. Now we're going to go somewhere with this, But I want to know, I want you to know where we're going. See? What I had to understand when y'all first got me here to the rooms of Narcotics Anonymous, the ultimate weapon was this young lady named Ray from the Capital Area. She came to this place and shared, right? She's the ultimate weapons, no lie. Ray shared, right? And she shared my story. Now, I'm a joker who's thinking that if I'm going to hear my story because you know I've got a whole bunch of intellect, Like, I think I know something, right? I don't need y'all. But when a woman came in and shared my story, there was an opening made. Now, I want to go here because it's about this, and my brother John alluded to it, like what Weston says, right. The word God is used to refer to one or a number of persons or things which is presented or close. then it says ultimate is to come and to end beyond which it is impossible to go the greatest and highest possibility now it says weapon an instrument or device used for fighting fighting see before coming to the rooms of Narcotics Anonymous I fought my way and y'all told me to surrender and try this way. Now, when I came to the rooms of Narcotics Anonymous, we weren't as kind as we are right now. We weren't as kind. We would tell you to shut the up, take the cotton out your ears, put it in your mouth, you don't know jack about recovery and have a seat. And then we'd give you a hug and tell you, welcome pilgrim. Right? That's what we used to do. And you know the addict we are. We always still fighting. We ain't using a drug but we still want to fight it. Because we don't believe, see because what happened, we might have admitted something. We might have a little bit of acceptance about it but the posture of surrender is something that takes a little bit more time. we don't recognize and realize that our health is right in front of us and then we want to tell our health how to help, that's the next step anyway we come here and don't wonder why our lives are still unmanageable but we don' t want to get honest and let the ultimate weapon know what's really going on simplicity, I want to use early recovery I want it to use I came with all kinds of rationale It was this, it was that. I got into an argument. My girl didn't act right. You know what I mean? And I would hold this in my head. So me and the committee would be up there like battling, right? Because you know, that's what you're talking about, right, because of the battle. See, the battle is between my ears. We'd be up here battling, and for a moment something would clarify to come and someone would say like, why don't you tell somebody? Where'd that come from? When it happened in those first, like, 30, 60, 90 days, I heard something. I was watching the people that came before me, the people who were talking about what was going on in their lives, and I started to understand maybe I need to raise my hand and get honest and tell the truth too. Because when I did that, all y'all would do is laugh and tell me to keep coming back. And I got angry because y'All laughed at me. such sin in this. My mind wasn't open that y'all were laughing with me. I was still gripped up without the drum because I believe most of us is gripped up. Most of us are parroting what we hear. I was talking about, I'm this and I'm grateful for recovering now and my name is this and I was saying that. I was telling how I love myself and I didn't have a clue. Y'all love me till I can learn to love myself Y'ALL CARRIED ME MY FIRST YEAR WITH THEM KEY TAG AND THEM HUNS AND TOLD ME KEEP COMING BACK THEN AFTER I GOT A COUPLE OF YEARS I GOT RESENT FROM THEM BECAUSE Y' ALL PUT AN 18 MONTH KEYTAG IN THERE TELL THE TRUTH RIGHT BECAUME THAT WAS A LONG SECOND YEAR BECAUAME I WRITEN UP come on, get in touch come on look, I'm talking about me I'm telling you like it is, like it was I was like that y'all didn't have that key tag when I came through but what I understood the ultimate weapon had enough awareness to watch that so many people were dropping off in between that next year because there was nothing to help them to feel as though they had something to strive for see you haven't put a carrot in front of an alley Now when I came here It was you beautiful women That was the ultimate weapon That guy is my witness I ain't here to lie Because I have some friends who have been there before a while They saw my triangle and stuff I lived in that Until I did some step work Then Y'all said You got to trust this power That's what what's coming through the ultimate weapon and what you're hearing can help you in your dilemma. And I said, what dilemma? I'm okay. I ain't using. Huh? Huh? But you know how it is. The greed kick in. One is too many and a thousand never enough. So what y'all had me to understand is that I needed to start doing some things differently. I needed to open my mind up to hear what the ultimate weapon was talking about. When you were talking about what was going on in your life, I had to take a look at it because I hadn't done it yet. Didn't mean it wasn't a possibility. Because early recovery, I judged y'all. Those got more time than me. I got 15 years. So if you got more than me in the beginning, I judged some of y'ALL who came and shared when you was going through what you was doing. I did. I ain't lying. I'm not here. I'm here to tell the truth. I judged because I didn't understand. I judge because of a lack of self-acceptance. I judge because of an unwillingness to want to continue to allow this process that has saved my life to keep working. I'm looking for an excuse. You know how it is since we got back doors to turn into trap doors. And we're notorious for using all reservations. And if somebody said they ain't got one, they a liar. The longer we stay clean, the more issues surface. What do you think that is? So doing some work on my little bit of work, I thought I knew something. And my sponsor said, everything you know almost killed you. So I looked at him and said, you're supposed to be the ultimate weapon. You're hating me, baby. You're breaking me down. And he said, you arrogant SOB. You need to be broken down. See, I'm talking about some things that, see, I came here because I was intelligent, had a few good jobs, had worked for some prestigious institutions. I thought I was the ultimate weapon. So my father said, check this out, trust anybody else's thinking but your own. Ooh, that hurt. And because, right? My sponsor's supposed to be the ultimate weapon. He's supposed To be helping me, right. He's Supposed to be The guy I follow. He's the go-to guy, right He had my little baby feeling And what he was trying to get me In the practice of Was letting go Turning my will and my life over To the care of To trust the prophet Trust this guy look check this out it might work for a little while longer if you allow it so now I'm like come on man alright so then he said well check this Out just believe that I believe until you can start to come to believe I said now he's trying to get slick now he throwing some NA stuff on me You know how when we're talking to ourselves, you know how we think. Oh, he's trying to get slick now. I ain't been here long. He's throwing the N.A. stuff on me. And what I had to understand was is that I still suffered from a moral deficiency, I thought. Yeah, I still suffer from a morale deficiency. I thought that the actions and the things I had done and the way I lived through active addiction made me have a moral deficiencies. And my sponsor helped me look at the literature and said, you don't have a moral deficiency. You have a disease called addiction that manifests itself in all areas of your life. I said, all areas? Come on, man. I had to ask some areas of it. He said, look at your first step. He said look at his first step, he dropped me off like that. And when he did, we went through one, two, and three, right? He says, now welcome to step four. out. He said, this is where your journey's going to start. He said, because now you're going to get introduced to yourself. And I'm so smart at it. I think I know a little something now. I'm like, I'm going to blow this out. And you know what happened? Y'all laughing. Why y'all laugh at me? see still man he's still laughing at me he's laughing at my pain right God will be alright anyway what happened was this I started seeing some patterns and they start being consistent I start seeing how I operate in these relationships and I started to see that no matter what it was, I was the common denominator. I said, oh, no, this one, I ain't telling nobody this. Oh, no. Because the level of humility that's required, because we're talking about self-honesty, and come on, ain't no cash register honesty, no four step. Let's keep it real. We're trying to do our best based on where we're at, and some of us try to call ourselves going above and beyond like there's going to be some new stuff was going to come out that was there all along. Come on. Just do it, get it over with, keep it moving. I learned this later on because I'm a part of the Keep It Moving Club. I don't got no time for the others, but I'm part of Keep It Move Club. So what happened is I did this, then I procrastinated on the next one because I didn't want to let the ultimate weapon know who I really was. I procrastinate and in six seconds, he just tore my behind and raggedy and raw after the first. In recovery. Living in it. Huh? Told me I have to... Y'all told me I know what I'm talking about. You don't do... Don't do it... I'm telling you, don't do it, y'all. Face your fears. Own up. Be a man. Be a woman. Check this out. Pull it up and take it like a man or a woman and my sponsor and God I invited to the situation and I started to understand how the ultimate weapon was really worth because I was rationalizing some of that stuff and you know how when you're doing a four or five step with a sponsor you start jotting down little stuff You start making little notes. So you know, you're sitting there thinking and then my sponsor just drops some little stuff on me like you're unique. Let me drop some of mine on you. And I said uh oh. Uh oh. That's how that works. And then I understood the surrender I needed to have in this program, really needed to have. Because I got so beat up by my defense and y'all kept telling me, you right where you're supposed to be. I got tired of hearing that from the ultimate weapon. You right where... Now I'm thinking, you know how we get, we want to get in here now, we wanna rise! You know what I mean? We want to get up, get a bossy up in here now. You know how I mean. Because my motivation in the beginning was because I wanted to be able to shout. But there's a certain kind of commitment and responsibility that goes with sharing. And when I started understanding what I was sharing before then was basically some rhetoric into it. And that it was trying to let the mask go. And then I said, okay, all right, we can do this. So now I'm going to go back to what it said in the literature. I realized I needed to change my playmates' playgrounds and play things in recovery. Because you can't draft a new idea on a closed mind. Now if I'm still rolling with the jokers who like to play the ladies and do this and do that and wear the nice gear and everything else is a bling-bling and got the car rolling, then guess what I'm gonna do? You know what I mean? We play hard, we let, you know. Come on, y'all. And when I started to understand that I had to change because the ultimate weapon is change and recovery. I needed to be around people who were trying to live a certain way of life. And I started To understand that I couldn't change me. Hey! I can't change you. I can't, I cannot change I couldn't change me in my life That's a humbling experience Huh? That is humbling You know when you see something you like and you want And y'all just use your imaginations And you see it but you know You're not supposed to do anything to it Or with it But it just can't stop you You see you coming but you can't stop. You're talking to yourself. You're analyzing. You're counseling yourself. You said, I know I can't do it again. You done got some clean time and you see five. Now you're struggling again because you want to pick it up. But you know one is too many and a thousand never enough. So after getting beat up by that a few times seven steps says that at some point in this process we reach a mature consciousness in the sixth step and as the awareness of the conscious is being mature what starts to happen is that we understand what the ultimate authority is really happening God is trying to say look baby it's you and me I'm using these people it's just you and Me Because what happens is that you'll be in stuff and car situations, and you'll add people to your eight-step list while you're clean. Oh, none of y'all did that, huh? Killing the ultimate weapon in recovery. Huh? Not taking the stuff home? Not practicing your programming at home? Come on, come on. I'm the only one, okay. And God's saying, look man, If nothing changes, nothing changes. You need to get in touch with your defects at any given point will still run your life. And at any giving time, you suddenly have to act on them, on a whim, just because you can't. It ain't got nothing to do with nothing. So I'm displaying some of these things. So anybody got a perfect program, you're in the wrong place. You know, because sometimes we think we've got arrival points in recovery. There ain't no arrival points. One stop, next destination. This stop, next destination, this stop, next destination and what I'm going to share with you, man, it's real. Man, look at this stuff. Stuff don't change, just the levels. And the higher you go, the tougher it gets. So now I'm at a point of, like, trying to work on this forgiveness thing. And the ultimate weapon is saying, come on, boy, I got you. Just show up. Just do it. Just do what? Don't worry about it. I got it. But you know how we are. We want to stay right behind their faces at the same time. Because at this point, you're so vulnerable, you feel like, God, what if they don't accept it? What if they won't take it? What if they, now you've gripped an obsession and compulsion. That's why you need a 10-step. Now I got a couple, I'm going to try to bring this to, I'll try to respect things, man. Thank you, though. And finding out that I can't hear God because I still got too much stuff on the channel. Can y'all identify with that? the chatter, the noise, sometimes you know, you're trying to get to the ultimate authority, there's an ultimate weapon and you can't see it. For some unknown reason, it seems to be that there's no answer sometimes. I could just shout at Angel and she said there ain't no answer. And we know how we talk, and it seems like you're standing in the hallway waiting. Right? And it seems like the wait gets longer and longer. It seems like, you know, all of a sudden you feel like you ain't worth it no more. And you're feeling yourself questioning and doubting where your act spiritually is. Have I been doing the right things? Have I made commitments? Am I helping somebody else? Because at a point in this process, it's no longer about certain things. We become the ultimate weapon. It's no long about expecting somebody else to give you something. It's about you giving something back. It's a body-living program. Live in it. Live it. Just live it. Don't worry about the outcome. And then you find out sometimes the chatter is because God tried to get your attention. And he ain't going to change the channel because you want to change it. Because you know how we want to do. We say, how do we want to put the DVD in, CD? We want to watch all this stuff in. Trying to negate what God got for us. He's trying to get our attention and tell us something. And we, you know, we focus on everything else. The woman, the car, the clothes, the money, this, that, everything else becomes important. And we lose focus. And God said, no, I want you to focus. Focus on me. I want to use you. Focus on Me though. and check this out, no matter where you're at you better be prepared to talk about it even if it's in a burning desire don't care about what they think about you don't worry about it, I got you baby don't worried about it I gotcha I got ya no matter what see, I buried my mother I just buried my father and me I buried his sister before them alright, I ain't used because I had the ultimate weapon with it. Because if there was some justification for using, those truly would have been a couple. You understand what I'm saying? And when I come to understand that that's not God's will for me. It says something in the end about God's will becoming our own true will for ourselves. The stuff we've been running from all our lives. We are instruments. We are the weapon. We're the ultimate weapon that God wants to use to help somebody else. Help pull somebody out of that mercy. Not the grace, mercy. When you didn't get what you should have got. You know who I'm talking about. There's a few of us in here that should have gotten some other stuff in recovery we didn't give it. And come here and talk about it and be the hope. Be the hope If I want to thank somebody for coming here and sharing your solution. Talk about what's going on with you. Get honest. Go back and tell the truth. You ain't got to worry about getting out of it. At some point, God elevates us to certain places. And as he does that, he wants to use us in other areas. And we know what the truth is. Most of us are scared because we ain't never been there before. And we can't do like we're doing here and get away with it. All right? Now, I'm just talking about some stuff because, look, check this out, right? I'm going to share this and then we'll close. My wife a lot of days is the ultimate weapon for me. Trust me. I believe God uses her. And like if it wasn't for believing that, that God has put a person in my life to help me through what I go through because a lot OF days y'all ain't there. And I got to have my friend, my buddy, my love, my heart, man. Donna G is a piece of work, but she mine. You hear what I'm saying? and she don't play no, she don'y play. And right? So all of a sudden, she laying back and she saying, well honey, you gotta do it at one's breakfast. Now, and y'all know what, y'al know, I ain't got to tell you what I thought. Y'all knows what I though. But I caught myself. I had a moment of clarity. I said, honey, so how do you propose we do this? Because, see, I didn't answer Frank's question earlier. What rules are we playing by? I forgot. So she said, well, I think she'll be okay. We just go out and get her something and everything else. I said cool. But it's something about an addict partying with $20 that seem to feel good. Still! Still! Got two hours back! And my daughter says, you got $20? What's the big deal? I'm saying all that to say that in this process as we mature and we allow the ultimate weapon to lose, what happens is we start to affect change not only in our lives, but we start to affect change all the way around and in the lives of others our program says others that means our family our community i said look man check this out right man i'm a husband first a father i'ma spiritual leader in my belief all right i'm the guy who stands where i'm standing now i ain't ashamed to say that but it has nothing to do with knock on his mom don't get it twisted as you know i ainít bring none of that up in here because that ain't where it belongs I ain't come talking about no other book, no other stuff, none of that other, because it don't belong in me. We can talk about that after the meeting. I'm a coach, I'm referee, I do things, I find some men, and I'm still here. I do a whole bunch of stuff, but if I didn't have the ultimate weapon in my life, God on the God of my understanding, I couldn't do any of this. It'd be impossible without y'all and God. Look, man, if nobody told you they love you there. I do. I can thank you all for being here. Thanks for letting me serve. An addict named Greg. Would you help me? Let's give another round of applause for John and David G. Would you please help me close this meeting with a serenity prayer? God, grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change and courage to change the things we can and the wisdom to know the difference. God's will not ours.