Graduating 150 Out of 152 and Feeling Good About It – Sandy B.

good morning my name is gay Nimitz and I'm an alcoholic this has been a wonderful convention there's no doubt in my mind that God is live in a well here I doing the sobriety countdown and spry to count up kind of reminds me of a meeting I went to a few weeks ago in San Antonio You know, this guy was at the meeting. I didn't know him real well. I didn'T know him at all, actually. And he came in and he said, I have double-digit sobriety. He said, ìI am so excited. Finally, finally, I made double-digit sobrietY. Iíve been sober ten days.î It just warmed my heart, you know. But each day of sobriety is a miracle, you know. And I had that miracle in my life yesterday. I stayed sober all day yesterday. I didn't have to take a drink, and that's a miracle. I heard a story about this guy that was sitting at a bar drinking. And when he got up, he drank quite a bit, you know, and then he drank a little bit more. But it was time for him to leave, and when he Got Up, he fell down. And he tried to get up again, and he fell Down. So he crawled over to the door, and and he tried to get out of the door, and he fell down again. So he just crawled out of The Bar to his car, and he trying to stand up and get in his car and he fall down again so he lived just a couple of blocks from The Bar so he decided that he go ahead and crawl on home so he crawled all the way home and when he got home he tried stand up and he fail down again so he reached his key up, got it in the door you know push the door open and you know crawled on into the bedroom and he tried to get up and crawl in bed and he fell down again. And so he ended up just spending the night on the floor. His wife was working night shifts, so when she got home the next morning, she looked at him and she said, You've been drinking. And he looked up at her and he said, I have not. And she said yes you have. The bartender called and you left your wheelchair there again. I like telling that story because it just is a reminder to me that alcohol touches everyone's life, that picks up the drink. I tell you a little bit about the family that I grew up in. I grewup in a town called Fredericksburg, Texas, and my parents moved there when I was probably about a year old. My parents had three dates when they decided to get married, and we just got through celebrating their 60th wedding anniversary last August. And they had a child after they'd been married a year or so, and his name was Joe. And they were living in a small town, and they went out to eat to a restaurant I think after one of dad's ball games or something and it was a small little little community and the little boy got up you know joe got up and was dancing to the jukebox with other kids and my parents you know looked down to see what they wanted to order and look back up and he was gone so they uh you know jumped up immediately and and uh you knew what they were doing and went to find him and when they did they found him outside with his head between the wheel of car and a curb. And they put him in his arms, and they drove the 30 miles to the nearest hospital where he was pronounced dead on arrival. And the reason I share that is so that you can kind of understand the kind of home I was brought up in. There was lots and lots of laughter, but there was always this undertow of silence. And after they had Joe, my mom found out that she was pregnant with my sister and her name is joy and then they had me and my name is gay and then they had my brother and his name is happy joy gay and happy that's not a true story but I like to tell it My sister's name is Joy. My name is Gay, and we call my brother Bubba. And that is a true story. And I, from the get-go, you know, felt like I was different, felt like i was unwanted, It felt, you know, all those things that we hear so much about, you know, that feeling, you know, like I really don't fit in. And in addition to them having another girl and I thought they wanted a boy and they just had me and, you know, and then they tried again and finally got that boy they wanted, you know. But I was also born legally blind. My visual acuity is 20 over 200. That kind of sort of means if I stood 20 feet from an object and you stood 200 feet from an object, we'd see it about the same. In addition to that, I'm real sensitive to light. So the brighter it is, the more trouble I have seeing. And I'm also colorblind. And I just didn't feel like I fit in. I can see well enough to walk around. I can make my way around. But there were so many things I just couldn't do that other kids were doing. And I felt different, especially about the time that I started school. I had one teacher that in the third grade that seemed to understand, you know, about visual impairments or being legally blind. And she got me some big print books and the books were kind of like the size of an encyclopedia. And I opened that book and it was pretty good sized print. And I could actually, you Know, if I held it close enough, I could Actually read it. And I kind of felt excited, You know, that, That, You Know, It Felt Good. And then the other kids started making fun of me. And I closed that book, and I only opened it if I had to because I didn't like you teasing me and making fun of me, and I pretty much felt sorry for myself. I pretty much, you know, isolated, you know. At recess, there was a kind of a strip of shade by the building, and, you know, where the classes were. And I'd kind of gravitate to that shady spot because it made it a little bit easier for me. And there were so many games that the other kids played that I just couldn't do. And my dad, you now, had a lot of anger. And he would tell me things, and my brother and sister, I wasn't singled out here, but he'd tell me like I was dumb and lazy and stupid, and I believed him. You know, I know it was true. And, you know, between my visual impairment and my father's comments, I didn't have a very high impression of myself. And it was probably about my – between my eighth and ninth grade, somewhere through there, I went to a party one summer, a few weeks before school started, and the kids were drinking alcohol. And I drank, I think, seven glasses of vodka that night. And I don't quite remember getting home. When I woke up the next morning, there was stuff matted in my hair and my head hurt. You know, I felt a little nauseated. And the first thought that went through my mind was, I want to do that again. and i did i i drank every chance i had the opportunity to because the alcohol did something for me when i put alcohol in my body it did something for me for the first time i felt comfortable i felt like i fit in i felt smart i felt i felt a part of and i liked the way alcohol made me feel i uh most of my drinking was done on weekends because that's usually when we could get it, and I grew up in this small town of Fredericksburg, Texas. And we would go up and down this main street, and then we'd circle through this little hamburger stand that we called the tower, and we'd go back and forth, up and drag main, and go through the tower and drag main until we found somebody that was old enough to buy alcohol for us. And then once we got the alcohol, the beer, we would start making bigger circles out of the town until So we finished drinking and then we'd come on back into town. And that was kind of how my weekends were spent. There wasn't much else to do in the little town, so I thought. And when I graduated, I graduated 150 out of 152, which didn't surprise me much because, like I said, I knew I was dumb. Um, and then I started thinking, you know, if I graduated 150 out of 152, that means that there's two people that are dumber than me. I felt kind of good about that. I, um, after I graduated, I wasn't, uh, I really wasn't sure what to do with my, my life so I got married and I had a I had you know a year later I had we had our first child in his name was Toby and I loved being pregnant and I love being a mom and I you know playing with the kids all day long I thought that's what a mom supposed to do I didn't get that part about cleaning house and, and stuff. I, we just had a good time, but my kids had to go to bed early so that I could drink. You know, I, um, actually the first few years we were married, I didn't drink a whole lot, you know, because we just really didn't have, have a lot of money. And then my sister moved. Uh, I was living at, at, uh, Friendswood, which is a town right outside of Houston. And my sister moves to Houston cause she was going through a divorce so we started going i started going out with her because you know that's what a good sister would do you wouldn't want her to just go out by herself and not know anyone so we decided to go into this country western place called mickey gillies and um and they had on sunday night they had these things called beer bust and you could uh pay five dollars and you Could drink all you wanted you know this was one of those places you know where they have the mechanical bull go in and uh you know dancing we we went there so often that when we walked in they'd say hi joy hi gay and uh i never knew how much i drank they just kept filling it up and i kept you know pouring it down and then my sister had the nerve to go start dating people and getting a life and i didn't have anyone to go out with anymore you know i couldn't drive you know because they think you ought to be able to see traffic lights and things like that. So, and that was a time in my life that was really hard when I saw all my friends, my brother and my sister getting their driver's license and I couldn't, you know. That was really a tough time for a teenager. Anyway, the rest of my drinking career was done at home alone, you Know, or at least most of it was done at home alone. And I'd put the kids to bed early, and I'd get drunk. I'd pass out, and then I'd go up the next day, play with the kids, put them to bed earlier so that I could drink. My husband and I kind of had this little deal going, you know, that before he left for work, he'd make sure that there was enough beer in the icebox so that if he came home late from work that I'd have my beer, you now. And a couple of times he forgot, and I'd have to walk. I'd take those two kids, and we'd walk a mile and a half to the nearest convenience store because I needed my beer. You know, I had reached that point in my alcoholism where I had to drink. And one day my daughter went into the hospital, and she was there for five days. And during those five days I didn't drink, andI thought I had licked the alcohol problem. and on the way home from the hospital we stopped at a mexican restaurant and i was drunk before i got home and one of those nights i think it was that night actually i got on my knees and i said a prayer that went exactly like this i said god either changed me or let me die i don't want to live like this anymore and the next day i picked up the phone and i called alcoholics anonymous and they told me where the nearest meeting was. There's a meeting a mile and a half away right next to that convenience store where I walked to get my beer. I don't know about y'all, but I think a mile and a halve is a little too far to have to go to an AA meeting. But I did. I walked a mile and a half over to that meeting, and two people stuck out. Actually, three people stuck OUT in my mind. One of them at the end of the meeting when we were holding our hands and saying the Lord's Prayer, he said, Honey, don't put your faith in any one person. Put your faith IN God. You know, we're all human and we can let you down, but the program of Alcoholics Anonymous will never let you down. And there was another lady there and she stole the big book of Alcoholic Anonymous and gave it to me. I am grateful we still have thieves in AlcoholicsAnonymous. And there is another guy there by the name of Frank and he took me home from that meeting. He drove me home And he drove up to my house, and he said, you need to learn how to swallow your pride instead of alcohol. And it took me years to figure out what he was talking about. So I walked into the house, and I opened up the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. I walked over to the refrigerator, and I got a beer, and i opened a beer. and I started drinking beer and reading the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. I didn't get any better. But I figured it out, you know. I figured out that what I had done wrong is I didnít have one of those 12-step calls. You were supposed to have a 12-stop call. I heard somebody talking about that at that meeting. So I, after drinking and reading that book for about six months, I called Alcoholics Anonymous for the second time, and I told them that I needed someone to do a 12-step call. I needed somebody to come to my house and talk to me. So they sent two ladies over to my home. And I took those two ladies back to my bedroom because I didn't want my kids to know that I was drinking. After I had Toby, I had a little girl a couple of years later, and her name is Heidi, and like I said, I just loved being a mom. And the day that I gave birth to both of those kids, I felt like I had touched a piece of heaven. But anyway, I had these two ladies in my bedroom with the door closed so my kids that were older by this time didn't know that I was drinking. And I'll never forget that day. They were so gentle, so loving, so kind. And one of the ladies picked up my hand, and she patted it. And I started crying. I'd never felt such warmth coming from any two people in my life. And I stated crying, and I stated telling them why I drank. I told them that I drank because I was legally blind. And the lady picked up by hand, she pated it, and said, Bullshit! I told them I drank because I was German. I told him I drank because I wasn't German. I was in a bad marriage and their answer was the same each and every time. So after sitting there a little bit, you know, I started wondering, well if this isn't the reasons why I drink, then why do I drink? And those two ladies started explaining to me the disease of alcoholism And they invited me to a meeting that night. And I went to my second meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, and that was on October the 23rd, 1985, and I haven't had a drink since. I believe that that night that I got on my knees and I said, God help me or let me die, that I did my first step. I was finally admitting that I was powerless over alcohol and there wasn't anything that I could do. I needed help. And I think sitting around the meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous and listening to y'all talk and hearing about the miracles in your life, I started realizing that a power greater than myself could restore me to sanity. that second step you know came to believe that a power greater than myself could restore me to sanity it took me a took me quite a while a couple of years before I figured out that really in the second step I was admitting that I was insane you know that I needed help in that area and um I got a sponsor and I started going through those steps and I did you know when I did that third step prayer with my sponsor on our knees, you know, and turned my will and my life over to the care of God. About that same time I heard this story, and it just really touched my heart and made that third stop come alive for me. And it was about a young man and an old man that were standing by this corral. And the young man looked at the old man and said, This is a good day. And the old men said, We'll see. And the horses got out of the corral and ran away. And the young man looked at the old man and said, this is a bad day. The old man said, we'll see. A few days later, the horses came back and they brought with them this beautiful stallion, wild stallion. And the old male looked at him and said this is good day. And the man said we will see. And the little man got on the horse to try to break it and he fell off and broke his leg. And he said, this is a bad day. And the old man said, we'll see. And a few days later, war broke out and they came to get the young man, but he couldn't go. His leg was broken. And he says, this isn't a good day. And the older man said we'll se. And hearing that story about the same time I did my third step prayer made me understand, you know, in fact, my sponsor told me, you now gay, your future's none of your business. And I believed her. and I started turning my will in my life over to the care of God and I stopped trusting and stopped judging my life and stopped labeling it as good or bad you know, of myself, I don't know a good day from a bad day of myself I don' t know a tragedy from a miracle you know I thought it would be awful to be an alcoholic and now I count that one of my blessings because without being an alcoholic I never would have met you and without meeting you I would have never learned about life You know, and I am grateful. And I'm glad I don't know a good day from a bad day or a tragedy from a miracle because what would happen, you know, in the next few years of my sobriety? I needed to believe that. And it was shortly after this, and i went ahead, I mean, I went through the rest of my steps also. And it Was about two years sobriete or something like that. I went Through a divorce. I'd been married 16 years, you know. We had those two kids, and it was the most painful thing I think that I've ever experienced. And I had no job skills. I didn't know how I was going to support myself. I couldn't drive, you know, and it was a pretty scary time of my life. And I was glad that I had finally made the connection with Alcoholics Anonymous. When I first got to AlcoholicsAnonymous, you now, I felt like I was so unique, you know, like a lot of us do, and that I didn't fit in. And some lady told me, you've got to get over that uniqueness or you're going to die. You know, you can't be terminally unique. You know? Find the things that are similar in us. And I started doing that. And I felt part of the reason I felt like I didn't fit in is that my drunk-a-log was so boring. You know. I didn' t have anything exciting to tell. And I'd listen to some of y'all talk. And some of you all had been to jail. And I was so jealous. And one night at a meeting, a guy by the name of Steve, you know, who had done everything, is a very colorful fella. And he said, You know, I feel exactly the same way Gay feels. And for the first time, I felt like I was a member of Alcoholics Anonymous, that there was a chair for me too. anyway i i was going uh through this divorce and i ended up um in a psychiatric hospital with about with two three years of sobriety i lose track of time and they diagnosed me with depression and but i had done these steps i did my third step and i knew that everything underneath it i knew everything was going to be okay i knew i didn't understand what was going on in my life but i I knew everything would be okay. And I was there for 17 days, and they didn't know what to do with me, so they put me on the alcohol ward, you know. And it was like an AA retreat, kind of like this convention. And I had a great time, y'all. If any of you need a break, you now, just go check in, yeah? And when I left that psychiatric hospital, you kno, 17 days later, it was actually in that hospital that I made the decision to leave the marriage. and it gave me that space, you know, and that time, you know, to be able to think and to make that decision because my depression was coming from I couldn't accept the marriage and I couldn' t change it. And I couldn''t accept it and I couldn'''t change it and that's an awful spot to be. But I guess while I was in that hospital, I was finally able to make the decision to leave that marriage. And a lady picked me up from the Commission for the Blind and took me to public housing for blind people. And that was quite an experience. But like I said, I don't know a good day from a bad day or a tragedy from a miracle and that turned out to be a real blessing too because I started learning about my own visual impairment. Most of the people that were there were totally blind and I had been there about two or three hours and i had never experienced such a lonely feeling and i heard some laughter outside it was a little apartment complex that had probably about 16 little apartments and i went to see where the laughter was coming from and there was a whole group of totally blind people some of them were partially sighted like me and they were all drinking and i thought you know i've got to find a meeting so i went and i called and i found out where the nearest meeting was from that uh housing and i call and i the guy that answered the phone i told him i said i need a ride to a meeting is there anyone that could pick me up and the guy on the phone said hey jack can you pick up this lady hey mary can you pick up his lady hey george can you pickup this lady there wasn't one person there that night that was willing to give me a ride to Alcoholics Anonymous but they were willing to tell me how to get there by bus and so I tried I walked a couple of I wasn't real familiar with the area I'd only lived there a few hours and I walked the couple of blocks to the bus station and I got I mean the bus stop I got on the bus going the wrong direction and it took me several hours to get back and the next day I I called my home group, and somebody from that group came over and helped me locate a meet-in, and she drove me over there. I met some of the people, and I never had trouble getting a ride after that point. But y'all told me that there would be a time that y'ALL wouldn't be around, that I had to develop a relationship with God because God was the one that was going to keep me sober, and there would have been that day. And I was glad y'all had taught me how to connect to a power greater than myself. From that public housing for blind people, I ended up moving to San Antonio. And they had a program through the Commission for the Blind that helped blind people become self-employed. And I went through that program and got a facility to run in San Antonio It was at an industrial plant. It was called EG&G Automotive Research. It's now called Perkin Elmer, and they had at this little plant, they had about 300 employees, and I ran the little coffee shop for them. And I had two employees working for me, and I had never done this kind of work before, and And I didn't know what I was doing, to be honest. But I wasn't alone, you know. Y'all taught me that. I'm never alone. And the second day of work, one of the employees didn't show up. And the third day of worked, this lady walks in and she said, I'm here to take your order. And I don't have a clue what I needed. You know, we went through three months of training, but it just didn't seem like enough. And I Didn't Know How Much Food These People Were Going To Eat. But this lady did, because she had taken the orders from the previous manager. And she helped me fill out an order. And she started opening the refrigerators, the freezers, the cabinets, and placed an order based on what the previous manger had ordered. And I don't know how we got on the subject. But that lady was a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. This is how my God takes care of me. and she started picking me up and taking me to meetings and she became my sponsor and at a meeting one night I met a guy that it was raining and he said Gay let me pick you up tomorrow morning and drive you to work and it was so hard to swallow that pride and say yes thank you and he did for the next year he picked me up and drove me to work each morning The first few weeks, you know, I walked to work. Maybe it was a month or so. And I walked early in the morning. It was still dark, carrying $200 of opening cash down a dark road in a town that I wasn't that familiar with, and I was scared. But there again, y'all taught me to trust this power greater than myself, that God, you now, was never alone. And I paid that guy a dollar a day because I wanted to be self-supporting, declining outside contributions, you know. And there was times when I would close that little coffee shop and at the end of the day I'd get down on my knees and I'd thank God for the opportunity to work. I had never supported myself in my life, you now, and I was supporting myself for the first time And I was so grateful, so grateful to have a job. And like I said, my timing isn't real good at explaining all this, but my son was graduating from high school and going into college. And we went out to UTSA, University of Texas at San Antonio, to fill out an application for him. And I thought, you know, I think I'll fill one out too. I know it sounded silly. But you told me God either is or he isn't. You know, if I was supposed to get in, I would. And if I wasn't, I wouldn't. And for some reason they accepted me. And I took a class with my son. That was so much fun. I scored higher than he did. I studied, he didn't. And going to school was such an adventure for me. I liked it. They had a disabled student services and they had people that would take notes on carbon paper where they'd write them and then tear it off at the end of the class and I'd get my copy and they'd get their copy. I had a handheld telescope where if I used this telescope, I could read things off of the board, you know. And I took a statistics class, and in the statistics class I had to talk in calculator. But that class was really tough because I was juggling all these visual aids just trying to keep up with the class. And I took a science class, and we were studying the brain. And the professor wanted us to go buy an ounce of brain and bring it to the class. So I went over to the store on campus, and I said, I need to buy anounceofbrain. And he said, what kind of brain do you want? And I said well, whatkindofbraindoyouhave? He said, well, we've got a doctor's brain for $500. We've got an alcoholic's brain and I said, why in the world would a brain of an alcoholic cost so much? And the guy said, Well, it's never been used. I told that story about a couple of years ago at a convention that I was speaking at. And after the convention, this guy walks up to me and he said, Was that a true story? And I said, Keep coming back. anyway I in 2001 May of 2001 I graduated magna cum laude and that's a result of Alcoholics Anonymous I don't think it matters whether you have a degree or you don't have a decree but I think it's real important that we're doing whatever it is that God wants us to do because I believe that God has a plan for each and every one of us. There's so many things that I have learned in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. One of the things that i've learned is that god loves each and everyone of us exactly the same and that was that was you know so important for me to know that he loves us all exactly the same and i learned that i'm not uh better than or less than or equal to anybody else my whole life i was either less than are better than are equal to and you know being equal to takes a lot of energy because you're always doing this comparison thing you know to find out and working through these steps you know and getting those things that blocked me from the sunlight of the spirit it, you know, I learned that everybody is just on their own path. You know, I heard this story about these two hobos or whatever that were drifters or whatever that we're going from town to town, you know, they kind of met up with each other and one was grumpy, you know, just a grumpy man and the other one was just happy-go-lucky and the grumpy one, you You know, I was talking and he said, if only I had money, then I'd be happy. And the happy-go-lucky one said, I really have a lot of money. He said,I'm a multimillionaire. He said I already live that lifestyle. He said he wanted to see what it would be like to live this lifestyle. So for the last five years, I've just been going from town to town. And the people I've met are so wonderful and kind and loving. And, you know, I don't think it matters, you know, what we do in life as long as we're doing what God wants us to do. I think God's got a plan for each and every one of us. You don't know what it's like to walk in my shoes and I don'T know what IT'S LIKE TO WALK IN YOURS, but WE CAN BOTH BE HERE HONORING EACH OTHER'S LIVES, YOU KNOW? AND ANOTHER THING I'VE LEARNED IN THE PROGRAM OF ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS IS THAT THIS PROGRам IS A GIFT. You know, I get to do these steps. I getto go to meetings. I gettodo my four-step. I gettho have a sponsor. This program is a gift. You know when I sit at meetings and I hear these people, you know, you've got to, youve got to you know. And I thought oh man if they only knew that theyre being offered you know if theyonly knew what they're being offered. What a gift you know this life of recovery. I also learned that because of what I've been through exactly the way I've been through it that I can touch somebody's life that nobody else can touch and because of what you've been through exactly the way you've been through it you can touch somebody's life that nobody else can touch God's got a plan and a purpose for each and every one of us when I was in that public housing for blind people, I had better vision than the rest of them there because I'm just right at the top end of the scale where they draw the line for legal blindness. And that feeling of uselessness and self-pity started slipping away from me because I could see how I could help other people with the vision that I had. And there was two ladies that really touched my heart. One of them was a lady named Elsie. She was an older lady, and she'd call me up and say, Hey, Gay, can you take me to the store to get some ice cream? And I said, Sure, Elsie. I'd be happy to. So Elsie would hold on to my arm, and we would walk to the grocery store, and she would buy her ice cream, and I'd take her back to her room. And I had another lady that would do the same thing. Her name was Nancy, and Nancy would call meup. Nancy was totally blind. And Nancy would call me up and say, hey, Gay, will you take me on a beer run? And I said, sure, Nancy, because y'all taught me nobody's going to stop drinking until they're ready to stop drinking. So Nancy would hold onto my arm, and we would walk the three blocks to the store to get her beer. And one day I asked her, I said Nancy, why are you totally blind? What happened? And she said, well, her mother had picked up some forks and got mad and poked them in her eyes. And the next day she had a different story, and the next Day she had A Different Story. You know how us alcoholics are. But when I was walking with Nancy and she was holding on to my arm, she couldn't get away from me, and I got the chance to tell her about the program of Alcoholics Tonight. And I believe so strongly, you know, in all these steps. But, you hear that the 10th, 11th, and 12th step are maintenance steps. You know, and I believe that's true. I'm not here to argue with anyone. But for me, the 10TH, 11TH, and the 12TH step has been my growth steps. You know when I'm willing to take the time to do them, I just continue to grow. And I believe I have only touched the surface of what the program of Alcoholics Anonymous has to offer. Just scratched it, you know. I believe that there's so much more for me to learn about my higher power who I choose to call God. What I do is when anything is bothering me, I get out a paper and a pen and I do a written tenth step. We continue to take personal inventories. And the fourth step shows me how to take that inventory. So I pick up a paper and a pen, and I write out. You know, I write it out just like I did a fourth step. And then I go on and do the sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth step. And, you know, I do the spot check inventories and, you know, going through my day. But I also do those written inventories when there's anything that's bothering me. And to give you an example of one that I've done in the last, you know, actually it was last year, you know, we went on a trip to New York. We went to Atlantic City first and then to New York. And my mother and my father, my brother and my sister, my nephew, my husband and I, you know, went on this trip. And we had reservations in advance. And when we got to Atlantic City, the hotel we were at only had two rooms left. So my mother and father and my husband and I took the one room, and my brother and his wife and son took the other room. When I got to the room, it was a nice room. It was a suite. It had the bedroom, the little hallway, and the little living area, two TVs, I think three phones. I think there was a phone in the bathroom too. I don't remember. But, you know, it was a nice room until I found out that my brother got the penthouse suite. His bathroom was bigger than our whole room, you now? And those feelings came up inside of me that I wasn't getting my share. And the first thing I wanted to do was write about it, do an inventory on it, because when I do that, you knows, it goes away. It just does, you kno. and I can uh I didn't have to be sarcastic you know I could just just write it and let go of it and in that third column of the of the fourth step or tenth step you know what's being affected I realized that it was tapping into that fear of that you know one getting my share you know I wasn't getting what was mine you know and and you know it was taping into to those feelings and I was able to you know let goof them ask God to remove them that fear you know because God is my source and there's always enough for me. There is always enough for me, sometimes I forget that and then I do this so that I get put back on track anyway two days later we were in New York and we were checking into our hotel or starting to check into our hotel and that was last August when they had the blackout in New Yorke and we spent that night on cots in a big conference room, laying side by side. And I just sat there and giggled, you know, that 48 hours before, I was concerned where the bed was. Forty-eight hours later, I was glad there was a bed, you now. And it didn't matter if it was in a room with 30, 40 other people. You know, I'm glad I was one of the lucky ones because a lot of them were just sitting on the floor downstairs. and um the 11th step you know praying is is you know talking to god you know and and meditation is listening to god and and i do meditation i i sit still and listen to god and some days when i'm doing that i get this wonderful uh peace come over me and some days when I do that my mind's wandering so fast that that you know I just can't seem to hold it still but i don't think it matters i think what matters is that i was willing to sit there and make myself available to my god and uh the 12th step you know and the 12 step each morning i get on my knees and i say god how may i serve you today and the adventures that that's taken me on are amazing i um i got a one day after saying that prayer i gota call from a guy in san antonio that was running another facility and he's totally blind and he said can you take me to my son he's in the emergency room and i talked to roy my husband you know i've remarried and uh we jumped in the car picked him up and we headed for the emergency room which was two and a half hours away on the way to the emergency room i said why is your son in the urgency room and the guy said he overdosed and I broke my anonymity and I told them that I was a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. When I got to that emergency room, I found myself sitting on a bed with a 20-year-old guy holding hands and telling him about the program of Alcoholics Anonymous and I've just had so many experiences like that one day, you know, my husband and I decided we'd just take off for a couple of days and we drove to Louisiana And we went to, you know, anywhere I go, I try to find a meeting to go to. And we attended a meeting and I shared a little bit. And at the end of the meeting, a lady walked up to me and she said, Gaye, I'm supposed to be sharing my story in an hour from now at a treatment center. She said, they can hear me anytime. Would you go share your story? So I get in the car with people I don't know, driving someplace I don' t know. and we ended up at this little treatment center and there was probably about six or seven people there and I shared the story that I'm sharing with you all. And when I finished, this one lady walked up to me and she said, Lady, I don't know how you got here today but I needed to hear exactly what you had to say. And God just leads me and moves me. Sometimes I feel like I get to sit on the first row seat and watch miracles happen in this program. And one night I was sitting at a meeting in Fredericksburg, Texas, and there was a girl there, and she was concerned that she was going to have to go to this prison facility, kind of treatment facility. And I didn't have any experience with that. But the guy sitting next to me, she was on one side, this guy was on the other side of me, and he said he had been to a place like that and that it was truly amazing how it had changed his life, that he was glad that he ended up there because that's where he learned about recovery. I didn't have anything to share with her, but I got to watch one alcoholic talking to another alcoholic, and I saw that miracle happen. And I see those miracles all the time when I'm willing to turn my will and my life over to the care of God. I'm willing to do these steps to get rid of those things that block me from the sunlight of the Spirit, the things that lock me from God. When I'm unwilling to do the tenth step, you know, get rid off those things, and the eleventh step, making contact with God so that in the twelfth step I know what it is that God wants me to do. I think that that needs to be done with prayer. I think some of us are meant to serve in one way and others of us are meant to serve in another way. I think some of us make great sponsors, and I think some of use don't, you know? I think that some of make good representatives and some of don't. But I think, and some do at different times in our sobriety, so I think service work always needs to start with prayer. Two days before I graduated from college, I got a letter in the mail. And the letter said, Gay, the fourth edition the big book of alcoholics anonymous has been accepted and your story has been selected to be in that book and i felt very honored i i shared that with my sponsor i called her and told her you know a few weeks later you know i was in a state of shock for a while but i told her he called her a few months later and told there and she said gay it's just a 12-step call She said, it's a big 12-step call, but it's just another 12-stepped call. And I, my life is so different today. You know, I married a man that's absolutely wonderful to me. Roy, would you raise your hand? he tells me thing things like uh real frequently when we wake up in the morning he'll say good morning beautiful lady and i've never i've ever had a man in my life that treated me so good i um one of the most the family my relationship with my son he's 30 now and and my daughter's uh 26 27 and i've got good relationships with both of them my son one day was telling me about all his friends that drank and i said toby just send them to me and he said mom if i sent my friends to you i wouldn't have any left. And my daughter was driving with me telling about one of her friends that was having some problems, you know, and the friend was going to go to counseling, and my daughter told the friend, just go talk to my mom. You know, that's a gift of this program. And I have a little granddaughter, and she's four years old, and I was on the phone with her the other day, and she calls me Gigi. And she said, Gigi, what are those letters before .org? Yeah, she wanted pbskids.org, but she couldn't remember all those letters, you know, a four-year-old asking for an internet address. I was really touched. And And a few weeks ago, my daughter-in-law asked me if I wanted to come with her and my son and that little granddaughter to find out whether their next child was going to be a girl or a boy. My daughter-In-Law, you know, invited me to come along. You know, the gifts of these programs just seem to never end, you now. I learn about love and tolerance in these programs, you known. I give away what I get because I want to get more, and that's what you told me. If I keep getting away what i get, then I'll get more and more. One of the prayers that I say is, God, don't let me block the abundance that you have in store for me. And to me, that is just like saying, thy will be done. Because I believe my God wants me to be happy, joyous, and free. and when I say God let me accept the abundance that you have in store for me is another way for me to say thy will be done and that was one of the hardest things I had to learn how to do was to let life be good you know, I knew how to be miserable but I didn't have a clue how to let God's life be Good and y'all taught me you taught me how to deal with it and I am so grateful for my sobriety and I'm grateful that you invited me to come here and share it with you. There's a song that we sang when I was in high school. It went, In heaven there is no beer, that's why we drink it here. And when we're gone from here, my friends will be drinking all my beer. Well, I kind of changed the words to that, you know? In heaven, there is not beer, there's no beer. In heaven where there is now beer, that's how we drink here. And since I stopped drinking so much beer, I have found heaven right here. Thank you.