Keith L Step Study – Part 2 – Keith L.

And as we know, the eighth step is generated out of the fourth step. You know, as those names appear on the lists and things in the fourth steps. And as in the first step we go to the twelve and twelve and we write down the questions and we write down answers. Out of those answers come names. And those names go on the side of the columns. I often hear people say at the fifth step, I hear them say things like, yes, the person I did the fifth step with me and we went over and we took our fourth step and we burned it. And I thought, what a waste of effort. Because you need that fifth step later. That's where the names of the eighth step come from. Couldn't you see over at the fireplace going through the ashes? I said, there's a Mary Jo here. But again, it's more of our pop culture, I think, that we're going to do all these dramatic things. Instead he just worked in his steps. But you know, that eighth step is just that. And we were talking, I was talking to someone earlier, and it seems that there seem to be two ways to approach the eighth step. The first way is to not want to do it. And then you have to hurry up and do it。 The other way isto want to hurry out and doit. And you havetowait. It seems as though these are the two approaches. I sponsor a man named David wonderful man wonderful man David was going to make amends to the world thank you very much and I had to say whoa wait a minute David maybe you don't owe that person an amends how do you know you owe them an amens because they're alive I said how are you doing with your pride fine fine he said I finally got it mastered there's another fellow that I sponsor named John and I have to threaten to come over and firebomb John's house if he doesn't write that amends letter that we've been talking about. And those seem to be the two ways and I was the latter. I was one of those people who really hung back and was really afraid and I think some of it was because I thought I had to be different before I could make amends because I don't know about you but I was tired of telling those people I loved that I wasn't going to do it anymore And I wanted proof that I was going to be different. And so Sandy called me up one day and he said, Keith, he said I want you to, have you made your list? I said no. I said the reason I haven't is because I'm becoming willing. And he said have you mad your list. I said, no, no Sandy, I'm become willing. He said make the list. I said I'm going to make the least as soon as I become willing he said you'll become willing as soon as you make the list. And oddly, that's why it's written that way. It really does say made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all. So it's simply a matter of making the list and you know, we don't have to decide what to do about it or anything else. We simply make the least. And one of the things about the, that the fourth step taught me was that I had patterns. I truly had patterns in my life. And as a result of these patterns, I ended up hurting people. Remember Bob's theory that I didn't just have 20 relationships. I had one relationship 20 times. Well, these patterns in My Life, these patterns of self-will and those sorts of things, of lying, of cheating, the things that were warped It caused me to hurt people basically the same way throughout my life. And it caused me basically to react to life the same way. I would get involved with something, I would get involved wholeheartedly. I would do it to the best of my ability. I would begin to slip a little bit. I would get angry with the people. I would violate the values associated with whatever I was doing. I would leave and then I would blame them for it. And that was my pattern. And that's what I had to determine in that fourth and fifth step. I had a determinant pattern. But what I needed to do was to sit down and to make this list, and I did. And let's take a break, and we'll talk about what we did with the list. This business where we make a list of persons we had harmed and we become willing to make amends to them seems to focus on this whole notion of forgiveness. It was critically important for me to forgive others for what they had done. And I'd always sort of been a relativist. I'd also been a religious person. I'd have always been one of those people who said, well, let's equivocate about this. Let's look at what they did. Let's take a look at What They Did. And I was good about that. And I was sponsored by some very, very narrow-minded small people who didn't look that way. I had one, for example, who I always would equivocate with and Sandy would tell me something and I'd say, well, that's like saying what came first, the chicken or the egg? And you know what he said to me one day? He said, the ticket. And I said, you don't know that. He said I know but somebody around here has got to make a decision and you can't. So whenever I'd start to debate, he'd say the chicken. And I'd say, okay, the chicken, that's it. But the eighth step was about recognizing that it didn't matter what they did. It had nothing to do with them. It had simply to do với me. And so I made that list of people. And you know, the strange thing happened is as I made that list, I became willing to make amends to them all. And it was something like sitting down and recognizing all the reasons that I wanted to go home. Remember, you know what a lot of people, maybe not from Omaha because this is truly one of the most beautiful cities I have ever seen. I really mean it. But I grew up in a place that to me was very, very ugly. And I never wanted to do that again. I never want to go back to that. And I used to say to myself, if I ever get out of here, I'll never come back. And Denny and I usedと lay awake at night, and we'd talk about things. And Denpy, God bless him, would say things to me. Denpy screwed everything up. He was a great guy, but messed everything up, but he's now a very successful man. He's an executive vice president of a large international corporation. And we were kids, and We're laying in bed talking, and Denpy said to me, he said, you know, he says, I hate being poor. I'm thinking well it's not one of my favorite things but I said well me too he said you know he said one day he said I'm going to get so rich that anytime I want to I can have peasant under glass not pheasant but peasant and that's just the kind of guy Denny we used to play war okay and we'd take turns being a general and whenever Denny was general the army wouldn't show up all the guys would stay home But I was his brother, so I had to go. And he'd be general, but he really messed everything up. He'd be General, and we're down there, we're in a fort. The fort was behind some billboards down on the highway. And Denny, we were going out on a mission. I forget who it is we were gonna kill, but we were kinda go out and kill people like you do in war. And Deny said, all right man, he said, and he looked at his wrist and he said let's sympathize our watches. So that was Denny, to give you some idea of what we're dealing with. Well, I want to divert a little bit here because I wanted to tell you a little more about Denny. Denny's one of these weird people. Denny was the first person I drank with. Denny Was Four Years Old and I Was Five Years Old. And we were at home and my mother was out. She was either at the bingo or having a baby or something. And I was sitting around with my father, and I guess he thought it would just sort of be funny. And so he got us each a beer, okay? And I drank my beer, and Denny drank his beer, and I didn't think anything about it. But Denny slid out of the chair, and he was rolling around under the table, and he Was singing Mary Had a Little Lamb and other drinking songs, you know? And my father kind of panicked, and he wrestled Denny to the ground, and he took his clothes off and put his jammies on him, and he put them up and put them in bed. And Denny was carrying on and laughing and singing and everything. And my Father said, Look, don't say anything to your mom about this, and I'll take you to the movies. I thought, Well, that's the best deal I've had all day. But Denny wasn't here, and He's laughing and carrying on. And I'll never forget this as long as I live. old Denny stood up in his little crib and he urinated on the floor. And I remember thinking, you know, there's a kid who's powerless over alcohol and whose life has become unmanageable. And the saddest thing happened about Denny. You know, he just never made it. I mean, he's just never developed beyond that point. We're not proud of it or anything, but he grew up and he did strange things. For example, Denny married one woman. He went to one college. He had one major. He graduated on time. Went to one graduate school. Graduated on time。 He looked around. He was offered like six jobs. He took one. and now he's an executive vice president at a large international corporation so you figure here's a guy who had the world in the palm of his hands when he was four years old and he just let it slip through his fingers I on the other hand had to work at this thing I was 23 years old before I urinated on a bedroom floor for the first time so I grew up with Denny now Denny is all state in baseball he's all state honorable mention in basketball Well, during this time he also had rheumatic fever and he came through that. He carried over a 200 bowling average. He's got 90-some amateur tennis titles. I mean, Denny's a winner. And I have to live with him. And I began at an early age to detract from Denny. And, you know, Denpy would be off being marvelous. And they'd say, boy, isn't Denny doing well? I'd say yes, but... And I'd put something in. Now, it's hard to find much to say about a guy like this. You know, it really is. But if you try hard, you can find stuff. And that's what I did. And what I didn't do was I sort of poisoned the atmosphere in which Denny lived so that when he came home, they still liked him, but just a little bit less. Because I had some sort of a perverted notion that if they thought a little less of Denny, they might think a little more of me. And that's that character defect, see? And that carried through with every relationship I had. I had two wonderful little girls that loved Kelly and Kim more than anything in the world. And I resented the fact that they loved other people. So I would say negative things about other people, thinking if they liked them less, they might like me a little bit more. And you know, Denny's name was on that eight-step list. and then I had to make amends because the ninth step said made direct amends except when to do so would injure them or others and direct amens means direct aments and so I drove to New Jersey to make direct amests to Denny but prior to going for six months for six solid months every chance I got I said something nice and true about Denny. So what I began to do was to clean up the atmosphere because the thing that I recognized in my fourth and fifth step was that I had lost a brother that I dearly loved. I dearLY loved Denny He played shortstop and I played second bass and we were buddies When he had that bout with rheumatic fever he wasn't permitted to carry anything We dreamed together sometimes I'd carry his books, and he'd have to go to get this EKG test. And I'd carrying his books because he wasn't even supposed to carry books. And we'd go to the hospital, and I'd sit and wait, and it was over, and I would say, what did they say? And he said, well, the murmur is still there, but they said it's fine. And then we'd walk back, and we'd catch a bus to go home, and we talked about dreams. And he says, you know, one day I'm going to play basketball again, and I'm gonna play baseball again. We talk about dreams and things. And then all of a sudden it was gone. And I'd come home from the service and I'd look forward to seeing them. And then we'd end up insulting one another and we'd ended up ridiculing and making fun of one another. And I didn't know what happened until I worked the first eight steps of this program. And I realized that there was a force at work in our life that guaranteed that our relationship would deteriorate. and I was given an opportunity and a tool I could use to turn that around so I talked to my sponsor I'm one of those people who believe that it's critical to talk my amends over with my sponsor before I do it because what becomes important at this phase of my life isn't what I do it's the motive I have for doing it you know, for the longest kind of time in sobriety I could get away with doing the right thing for the wrong reason. I'll give you an example. I used to go pick this woman up to take her to an AA meeting, nice looking woman. And my sponsor observed that I was being a very good member of Alcoholics Anonymous. He said, you know, that's really something. He said, You pick her up every night, don't you? I said, Yes, I do. And he said, you must go, what, 30, 40 miles out of your way to pick her up. I said, yes, I do. And he said, tell me, what would you do if she were ugly? And I thought, what's that got to do with anything? So early on, motive might not be all that important, you know. But later on, it becomes very, very important. And he maybe stopped picking her up, but that's another story. But it didn't matter. I was impotent. I kept telling him, but motive becomes ultra-important. And that's why I share what I'm going to do with my sponsor. We talk about it. We talk abut it sometimes at great length. And sometimes he would say to me, Well, I don't think you're quite ready for this. Wait. Or he might say, You're ready. Go right ahead. But we'd talk it over. So I talked it over with my sponsors. And he said to me... you know, he said, you love Denny an awful lot, don't you? And I said, I really do. I said but more importantly, I miss him. And he said I know you miss him and he said but sometimes these things take time and he says you really have to put this in God's hands and don't be disappointed if it doesn't work out the way it's supposed to work out. And I say I promise you I won't. So I hopped in my car and I headed to New Jersey and I went up and I wanted Denny's house and I'd called him and Denny was so excited I was coming and he said look he said I have to go to a banquet turned out of course to be an awards banquet it would be with Denny and he was receiving an award and he says but I'll be back and he say I'm going to leave the garage door open and in the garage door is a key to the house and he sad let yourself in and make yourself at home so I got up there and got up a little earlier than I thought and I went and the garage door was locked and it seemed that the neighbor noticed Denny left his garage unlocked and locked it for him nice lady. And so I went off to a meeting or to look for a meeting, couldn't find one. So I went to a movie and then I got a bite to eat. And then I came back and he wasn't home yet. And I began to think about it and I said, you know, maybe it's not time. And i left him a note saying the garage was locked and i have to get back but i'll call you. So i drove back to Washington and when i got back and came in the house the phone was ringing and he said i feel terrible and he told me what happened. And I said, well, that's all right. I said it really is. He said, you know, I'll be up in a few weeks. And so I prayed about it a little bit more. And I went up a few weeks later and I went in and we began to talk. And his wife, Jan, who's just a wonderful person, knew that this talk was different than a lot of talks. And she excused herself and she went to bed. And Denny and I sat and we reminisced about what it was like growing up. And I kidded him about ordering peasant under glass and about sympathizing his watch. And then I told him why I'm here. I said, I'm hier because I want to make amends to you. I said I want fix what's been broken between us because it's my doing. And I began to tell him how very much I loved him and I told them what I did to him. I said things about you that were negative and detracted from you. and I did it because you always look so good to me. I envied you and I always wanted to be just like you and I said, so that's why I owe you an amends and what I've done is I've told everybody the truth and that is just what a good guy you are and then he began to laugh and he said, well, he said you know if you owe me an amens then I owe your an amenz and I say, what on earth for? He said, well, he said all my life I've envied You He said all of my life I've been afraid He said, so when I was afraid, he said, I wouldn't change anything. I wouldn' t make any kind of choices. And he said I always watched you. And he says, Keith, you never gave a shit about anything. He said if things weren' t going well in one country, you'd go to another country. He said you've been to more schools and universities than anybody I know. He said You' ve majored in everything. And he sa d, I always admired the way you lived. And he said, so every chance I got, and there were a lot of them, I said negative things about you. And, you know, Denny and I discovered something very important, and that is that what we are is different. But we're the same in a lot OF ways too. And sort of what motivated us was the same thing, was fear. What was different was that I'm an alcoholic and he's not. And I had a way to deal with it which allowed me to do things differently than him. And we become very, very fast friends. You know, Denny does an interesting thing. He's still getting promoted periodically and regularly. And he does the same thing. He calls me up and says, well, they just offered me this promotion. And he said, I don't know what to do about it. And I said, well what does Jan think? And he says, Well, I haven't gone home and talked to Jan yet. He said, Always like to talk to you first. and then he'd say tell me some of the things your friends in AA would say and so we talk about God in our life and about this and about that and everything and then Denny makes his decision and Denny goes home and he talks to Jan about it that's nice to have a brother like that and I have him because of the 8th and 9th step in Alcoholics Anonymous you know when I was drinking I would have told you that my problem was my father never told me he loved me. I would have told you that my father was a severe and austere man who was distant and I would have passed a lie detector test if I told you that simply because I didn't know my father. I had my father's name on that list and I tried to make amends to my father and I drive from Washington D.C. to Ohio where my father lived, intending, fully intending to make amends to my dad. And I'd be there about 15 minutes and this rage would well up in me and I'd be so angry I'd storm out of there, get back in the car and drive back to Washington. And after I did this three times, my father mentioned to my mother, he said, you know, I'm a little worried about that boy. He must be lonely. And my mother said, what do you mean, Scotch? He says, well, he drives a long way to have a cup of coffee and uh and you know and i i'd go to sandy and i'd say it's not working you know the step doesn't work as far as my father is concerned and he said oh it works perfectly sandy said you probably just haven't prayed quite enough he said i have a feeling you're real close but probably not quite enough she said now i want you to pray some more so i pray some where I pray every day. And I keep my ninth step list in my big book and I take it out every day and I look at it and I pray. And then sometimes I'll center on somebody and I'll pray about that person or something. And then one day, it was time and I had a very profound spiritual experience. Not an awakening. An awakening is an accumulation of spiritual experiences. But I had very profound spiritual experience about my father. And what that was, was while at church one time I was praying about my dad. I saw my father differently than I had ever seen him before. And I suddenly realized what the problem was. The problem between my father and me wasn't that he didn't tell me he loved me. The problem was the fact that my father was every bit as frightened of life as I was. And I started thinking about him. You know, he was a man who, he's 83 years old now, But he was a man who was a foreman in a mill, a factory. And first he worked as a machinist and he'd come home from that factory and he raised his children and a few kids who didn't have any place else to go and he never permitted himself anything. We'd go play baseball and from the time I was four or five years old he'd take me and dumb Denny up to the ball field every night that we'd let him. and he made us batting tees so in the winter time we had spring training and things in the basement we'd take grounders off the back wall and he was a wonderful, had been a wonderful baseball player he was offered a professional contract but he was afraid and didn't take it he took something that was sure and I didn't know he was afraid and we'd go up to play ball and we would be coming back and he'd teach us all the stuff that kids need to know like don't cross the railroad tracks under the train, and you know when they have a lot of trains that are parked there and he'd explain to us that you have to walk around the train. Even if you have to go three blocks, he'd say go around the train and he explained why the train jerks when it starts and all the things that a kid has to know growing up where I grew up and we'd play ball and we would say to him Dad can we go have a pop and it was next to a steel mill and they had a diner car where the men went before they went to work And, you know, Dad would say, well, let me think about it. And he'd drift back and Denny and I would be talking. And sometimes I'd look back and he'd be counting the change in his pocket. And if we had 18 cents, we'd go have a pop. And he would have a root beer and I'd have an orange and Denpy would have a grape. And sometimes they'd let us sit up at the counter if the men weren't there like the men did. And then sometimes he'd say, well, he'd say, you know, I'm not very thirsty. I'll have a drink of yours. And that's when he didn't have 18 cents. Maybe he only had 12 cents. And then sometimes he would say, you know we could do that but your mom looked kind of lonely. Why don't we go home and spend some time with her? She might have some Kool-Aid. And that is when he did not have 12 cents And I would have told you my father did not love me. He did not tell me he loved me. And, you know, I came to this realization and I called and we began to talk. And we talked for an hour. And prior to this time, all my father would ever do on the phone is say, Hi, are you okay, son? Is everything okay? Here, do you want to talk to your mother? We talked for another hour. And I said, Well, Dad, I better get going. And he said, Are you going to a meeting? And I says, Yes, I am. And he says, Oh, that's wonderful. He said, you go there to help those people. He won't accept that I go there for him. And he said, I really love you. And I said, I really loved you too, Dad. And then I went to see him to make the direct amends. And I talked to him about some things and nothing that would make him uncomfortable because our goal isn't to hurt others. It's not to harm others. And thenI talked to about things and I discovered things about him. I discovered how very much he had always loved me. And he said to me, he said, do you remember when you were 12 years old and you got your first job? And I said, yeah, Dad, I do. I worked in a bowling alley setting pins. And he says, yeah. He said, remember the first day you went to work? And I say, you know, I don't think so. And he goes, oh, I remember it. He said I took you to lunch. And I says, that's right, that' s right. you took me to Louie's hot dog stand, didn't you? And he said, yeah. And I said, I had a hot dog and an orange pop. He said, no, you didn't. He said you had a root beer. He said I think you thought men drank root beer and he said I talked to you about what it was like to work and that you owe a man an honest day's work for an honest days wage but he owes you a certain amount of respect because he's buying from you something that's very precious. That's your effort And for that period of time, your strength and your energy and your mind. He said, and then we walked down to the bus. And he said, I said to you, do you want me to come with you? Because the job was in the next town and I had to take a bus to the next town. And he says, you know, Keith, you said to me, no thanks, Dad, I can do it myself. And he say, you got on the bus and I stood there and I watched the bus pull out of sight. And I kept looking, but you never looked back. And he said, you know, from that time on, I never felt as though I had the right to tell you what to do. And you know what the ninth step says? The eighth and ninth step? It says people basically treat me the way I force them to treat me. And that's precisely what had happened. That's the day I cut my father off. And he told me this. He said to me something very interesting. He said, You know, From that day on, you never needed me anymore. He said you just went and did things. He said, oh, I was awful proud of you, but you just didn't need me. And that might explain why he never said well done and how I distorted and mistook everything that he said to me. He said all your brothers and sisters went to college. They let me help them, but but you never let me have you. And I thought that he was working so hard helping the others that that that he couldn't do it. and I didn't give him the dignity of trying. You know, I went off to Paris Island and I busted a kidney up and had a bit of a rough time but came through it and I won Dress Blues Award and a lot of things off the island and Dad came down and I remember very, very clearly he came down to see me and the only suit he had was a wool suit It was a winter suit. We lived in Ohio, and now he's in South Carolina, and it's in August. And the poor man is just wringing wet in his wool suit. And they had a big parade and everything, and I was really honored. There were pictures taken of me and him and the colonel and everything. And we're leaving the drill field, and he said to me, you know, Denny at this time was in college, and my sister Patty was in collage, and Scott had graduated. He was an engineer now. And he said to me, he said, you know, if you worked this hard in college, you'd be a straight-A student. And I just knew that what he was saying to me that what I was doing was no good. And then I sat down to make this direct amends to him and he said remember when you went through Parris Island and you won all those awards and everything? And I said yeah. He said, you know, I had a feeling that you felt what you were doing wasn't as good as what your brothers and sisters were doing. And I remember saying to you, you Know, Keith? You know, this is as good as being a straight-A student in college. But that isn't what I heard. I heard something entirely different. And what a horrible thing it would have been had I not been an alcoholic because I never would have Been forced to get to know the truth about the relationship with this man. I wouldn't have known that what I heard was very, very wrong. I wouldn'T have known it. My perception of things was hardly distorted. Is it any wonder that we get the promises that we Get? I was talking to a fellow yesterday who was mentioning a man at a meeting who had a brace and a broken leg and everything else and they asked him what happened and he said, my very first amends. And that's often my fear. My fear is that somebody is going to do something bad to me or something. But you know, the amends steps are truly the freeing steps. I think we do people, particularly new people, a disservice when we stand up and read the promises on page 83 and 84 in the big book if we don't say this comes after. We're halfway through the ninth step. Because I talk to people who begin to assume that these things are supposed to happen to them because they don't drink and go to meetings. And that isn't why these things happen. These things happen because we do the steps. That's why they happen. Still have some people on my list because I can't find them or whatever. You know, when I was in the Marine Corps, there was a man. His name's Brian. And Brian was a lieutenant. And he was a men I respected very, very much. And he convinced me that I could be a winner. He convinced me if I worked hard and I studied that I would get an appointment to Quantico and I could go to Officer's Candidate School. And I believed him. He was that convincing. And I began to study and began to do the things, and I took my boards and I went before the review board and everything. I was chosen to go to Quantico. And then I ended up in Santa Domingo in Dominican Republic, and I got a little crazy and led a patrol in a blackout. and fortunately nobody was killed, but they could have been. And my alcoholism was catching up with me rapidly. And so instead of taking advantage of that appointment to Quantico, what I did in just the last minute was my discharge date came up and I left. And I never said anything to anybody. I just left. And I Never said a word to this man who helped me. I just disappeared. and I realized that I had often done that in my life that I worked with people towards something and then I'd go and I didn't feel I needed an explanation or needed to give them an explanation that's what self-centered people do and one day, just a couple of years ago I was in my den and I was stretching to take a run I then lived on this little golf course it was a great place to run and I'm stretching to make a run And I'd had my eighth step list out that day, as usual. And I was praying and I looked at it. And his name stuck out. And as I was stretching, I was thinking about the times that we spent together. And I wasn't a corporal when he was a lieutenant, so we didn't socialize. But we had special times when we would talk. And one time I remember we were standing on a fantail of a ship. We were in the Caribbean, sailing around Cyprus when the Greeks and Turks were killing one another in 1964. And we were standing out on the fantail talking. And I remember what he said. He said, you know, I went to Notre Dame University. He said I love Notre Dame. And he said one day I'm going to live where I can see the Golden Dome. And I had been trying to reach this man. I knew he was from Joliet, Illinois. and I was near Joliet, and I called, and I could never find him, and on and on. But that moment, I remember that conversation. And I picked up the phone, and I caught information in South Bend. And sure enough, he lived across the street from the university. And his wife's name was Sharon. And I said, Sharon, this is Keith Lewis. You probably don't remember. She said, of course I remember you. And we talked for a few minutes, and I said there's Brian there. And she said, he's out for a run. She said, I'll have him call as soon as he gets back. And so I waited and he got back and he called and we talked. And I was able to tell him I was very sorry that I did what I had done. And he said to me, he said, I have felt so bad all these years. He said, I kept looking for the list of lieutenants who were killed in Vietnam and he said I felt terrible that I talked you into getting a commission. And it turned out that at this time he was a general in the reserves. But the real important thing that happened with that conversation was the fact that he had a son who was having some trouble with alcohol. And that's why I called him 16 years later. You know, the magnificence of this recovery program And the thing that frightens me the most when I hear people talk about sobriety today is that people are under the assumption that it's about me, that it is about self, and it isn't. It's about becoming of maximum use to God and to our fellows. That's what it's all designed to do. And a ninth step, more than any other step, allows us to do that. I kind of see the first few steps as the steps that allow me to begin to develop a relationship and a reliance upon God. And then the fourth through the seventh step are those steps when I begin to accept and know who I am and who I'm not, what I am in what I'm now. and then the eighth and ninth step are those steps where I take what's been given to me and have the opportunity to go out and use it with others and I think it has to be that way I know a man who's a wonderful man who's not in our fellowship but very, very close to our fellowship and his name's John Powell and he's written a number of books he's a Jesuit priest He's a psychologist, and he's at Loyola University in Chicago. And in 1980, I stayed at Loyolan University in New Orleans with him and a wonderful man named John the Indian. And some of you may know John the India, and John died a few years ago. But John the Indiana lived on one side of me, and Father John was on the other side of my life. So I was surrounded by two of the most brilliant spiritual people I've ever known in my life, and I'd love to hear them talk. And they were talking one day about spiritual growth. And I said, what's it all about? You know, I was sober about seven years or then. And I was getting a little fed up with this spiritual growth stuff. It just seemed to be pretty painful to me. And the more I did it, the less of me was there. And I felt like the hole in a donut. And so finally I said what's all this stuff about? I said What's the object of this spiritual Growth? And John the Indian said, so I don't have to go back to Skid Row and drink anymore. And Father John said, he said, one day I'd like to stand on my balcony completely nude and scream to the world, world, this is all there is. He said, that's what it's all about. He said it's about getting rid of all that pretentiousness. And John Indian said in so you don't had to go to Skidd row and drink no more. And then Father John said something interesting to me. He said, you know, it seems to happen in three ways. He said people who are really truly happy in the world, he said three things seem to happen to them. He said the first thing is that they work very, very hard and they discover who they are. And he said that's the way it is with the first four or five steps to discover who you are. he said then the next job is to fully accept who you are and who you're not and he said but then the third thing is to forget who you are and he said that's what happens in 10 11 and 12 isn't it and you know what I had done as a child I admired people like the priest and some of the other people who were really spiritually advanced people. And I noticed something about them, and that is that they didn't seem to think about themselves. And I thought, well, I'm going to grow up and not think about myself. And then I'll be spiritual too. And the more I try to not think about myself, the more I thought about myself and what I didn't understand was that it's a process. And it takes a long time. It takes a lot of time to grow. It takes time when you're not dealing with alcoholism. You can imagine how long it takes when you are. And what I did in the first few steps of Alcoholics Anonymous was discover who I was. And then I was able to accept fully who I Was. And that's what happened in 6 and 7. That's when I'd say to myself, I don't want to do this, but I do it anyway. I want to be this, But I'm not. And I fully accept that. And in the other steps, I could forget who I am. this ninth step really is the key to happiness. It's the key of belonging in the world. I said to an old-timer one time, a guy in Washington, Don K., I said, Don, why don't we do the eighth and ninth step? And he said, Keith, you do it so that one day you can walk around any corner in the World and you won't be afraid of who you're going to run into. Think about that. To walk down the street and never be afraid of who you're going to run into. To owe no one an explanation. And if we're painstaking about this phase of our development, before we're halfway through, we're going know a new freedom and a new happiness. We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it. We'll comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace. No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experiences can benefit others. That feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear. We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows. Self-seeking will slip away. Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change. Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us. We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us. We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves. Are these extravagant promises? We think not. They are being fulfilled among us, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. They will always materialize if we work for them. You know, many of us come here having done tremendous damage to the people that we love the most. And sometimes it's hardest to make those amends. I want to talk just for a few minutes about my ex-wife and the need to make that amends and my children and the amends I made there I went to my sponsor and I had my ex wife's name on a list and I said to him every time I try to talk to her we end up fighting how can I possibly make amends to her if every time we talk, we fight. And he said to me, he said, well, maybe you'll have to make direct amends to her indirectly. He always talked in circles like that. And I said, would you explain to me what that means? And he says, well pray about it. See, he didn't know so he'd always cop out with God. So I began praying about it and the strangest thing happened. And I received a letter from the Internal Revenue Service. And the letter said that both my ex-wife and I had deducted both children. And the agreement, the separation agreement and the divorce agreement said that I would separate Kelly, or I mean I would claim Kelly and she would claim Kimberly. And she claimed both of them. and I thought ah my opportunity so it gives you a number to call and to ask for somebody so I called this number and asked for this woman and the woman said to me she said oh Mr. Lewis thank you for calling if you'll just send me a copy of your divorce agreement we'll bill your ex-wife for this tax and I said no I want to pay it and she said well she said you know she'll pay less I said, no, no. I want to pay it. I said I not only want to pay it, I said I am really grateful to the Internal Revenue Service for an opportunity to do this. She said, Mr. Lewis this is the strangest phone call I've ever received. I said you don't seem to understand. I said I'm recovering from alcoholism and I've been looking for an opportunity to make amends to my ex-wife and I said we can't do that because every time I try to make amends we end up fighting. I said, so I talked to my sponsor, and my sponsor told me I had to make indirect amendments. She said, Mr. Lewis, I'll get that right out to you. And she sent me the bill, and I paid it. And not only did I pay it, I never said a word about it. But a strange thing happened. The next time I talked with my ex-wife, we didn't argue anymore. And from that day to this day, we haven't argued. And it really was me. It really was. I made the argument happen because of me. And once something about me changed, it didn't have to happen anymore. It works miracles. Let me tell you another thing, and this was an extremely difficult... I think of all the things that I had to come to grips with sober, this is without a doubt the single most painful. And I wanted to share it with you because I think it's important because I know how important children are to us. And I love my children. I just loved them desperately. And I was not the father I wanted to be, but I sure couldn't have loved them more. And I lost them. And my ex-wife remarried. She married a nice man, a very nice man. And by this time, I, of course, had my children on the amends list. And they were too young to talk to about these things, but they weren't too young for me to practice the principles with. And my ex-wife, being nice, called me up and said, I wanted you to know that Jeff and I have decided to get married. She said, I wanted to tell you. because sometimes when a divorced spouse remarries, the other spouse is sometimes hurt or something. And she said, I don't want you to be hurt. And I said, well, I thank you very much. And I asked her, what can I do? I said how are the children taking it? And she says, well they have some conflict. And I say, how would it be if Jeff and I sit down with the kids and talk to them and then I tell them it's okay to like both of us. And she say, would you do that? I said, of course. So I beat it over to their house where it was going to be their house. And Jeff and the kids who were this stage, maybe five and six, showed me around the house. And they showed me where their room was goingto be. And Jeff said that, you know, this is their house and you're welcome in their house anytime you want to be here. And we talked. And the kids were very happy because they liked us both and we made it okay for them to like us both. And so I began to, as I was sober now, to be the father I always wanted to be. And we had first communions to go to and we had all these things. And a friend of mine said to me one day, I was showing him pictures of some of the things that the kids and my ex-wife and my husband-in-law and I were doing. And this friend of mine said, Keith, he said, you know, he said, the kids really have an opportunity here to have a pretty normal life, don't they? I said, yeah, isn't that wonderful? And he said but, you know, there are a lot of parents in these pictures. And I said what are you suggesting? And he said well, I just don't know. He said it might make sense for you to let them lead a normal life. And I said, I love my children. He said, well, I know that. He said, what I'm suggesting to you is that you love your children. And so I thought about it and I didn't like to admit it but it made sense and I went to him and I said you know when we go places together how is it for you? And Kelly says, well you know dad everybody else just has one of each and we have one of one and two of another. And I said, well, how would it be if I didn't go? And Kelly said, I wouldn't like that either daddy because I'm afraid you'd be hurt. And I said well I'll tell you what we can get around this. I said because we're pretty smart people. I say why don't you take pictures and then after you do something like this we'll go out to dinner and you can tell me all about it then it will be like I was there. And they said, would you do that? And I said, of course. So if they had an event, I would send them a corsage or something like that. And then after it was over, we'd get the pictures and we'd go out to dinner and we would talk it all over. And that seemed to work well. And things happened and I ended up moving to another state. I guess before I moved, my ex-wife called me up and said, would you consent to the kids using my new name? And I said, well, I suppose so. I didn't want to, but I said I suppose so. And then a little bit later she called up and said, Jeff wants to adopt the children. And I was devastated. And I says, I have to talk to somebody about that. And I went over, I drove over to my sponsor's house And one of the times he didn't make me run, we just rode around and talked. And he said, can you do that? And I said, you know, I can't. I just can't, I said. Something tells me that I want to, but I just Can't. And he Said, well, ask her how you're going to explain to the kids that you agree to it. And so I called her up and I said How am I going to Explain to kids that I agreed to them being adopted? And she said, I don't know that. I'll think about it. And so she thought about it for a few years. I didn't hear anything, so I didn'T say anything. And so it came up again when the kids were about 12 or 13 years of age or something. And I said, you know, the kids are old enough to have a say in this, and we discussed it. And one daughter said it would be fine with her, and the other daughter said she didn't want to do it, so the answer was no. And then a couple years later they both came to me and asked if they could do it. So I signed the papers that allowed somebody to adopt them. And it was one of the most difficult things I ever did. But I remembered something that happened numerous times in Alcoholics Anonymous. And what I remembered was that if I truly did love something, I could let it go. And that's what I did. And I said that, you know, I have a responsibility to support the children. And so we worked that out. I gave Jeff a lump sum of money and he invested it for them. And so I fulfilled my moral obligation and I signed the papers. And nothing changed except maybe the kids and I were a little bit closer. and I didn't understand what that was all about it just seemed unfair to me as so many things in life do and it's only recently that I've discovered that making amends that way made so very, very, very much sense because things have happened in a kid's lives that are very difficult for them and they've come back to me as adults, they're young women now they're 23 and 24 years of age and they were telling me about things and talking about things and it occurred to me that they were talking in ways that they couldn't have talked to their father they were telling me things that a kid wouldn't tell her father they were calling me dad but they were treating me in a different way And then my daughter Kelly said, I always knew that there was one unselfish person in the world that I could always come to. And that's why I made amends by giving up what was to me the most precious thing. You know, I had lunch with Kelly a couple days ago and she's moved to North Carolina now. And we're very, very close. And she's getting married in October. And she was very angry with her stepfather and her mother because it seems that her mother found another one. And there's a lot going on in that house now, the kind of pain that goes on with active alcoholism. And she Was able to come to me and tell me how angry she was with him and how much she hates him and the horrible things he's done and going on and on, and I was able to... She said, you're not angry with him, why? And I said, well, he's just like me. She said he's nothing like you. He's self-centered and selfish and you're other-oriented in giving. I said he'S exactly like me and I said I've been blessed with sobriety and Alcoholics Anonymous for 20 years and he isn't there yet. So he's exactly like mE. And I reminded her that, you know, when you were taking advantage of the good life that he provided you, you didn't have these feelings. I said, You took the money and ran. I said now maybe he needs you more than ever. And you know she was able to go back to him and apologize and say I would like you to take me up the aisle when I get married. And so I've been able to be of service to them. And that's what the ninth step is really all about. It's really all about getting to the point where we can be of maximum service to God and to our fellows. These promises come true. I don't understand how it works. I just know that it does. Maybe we could take a break and come back and do 10, 11, and 12.