Step 12 — Carrying the Message – Matt – New England Big Book Workshop Weekend – 2020

Moving on to step 12. Our first speaker is Matt. Hello, everyone. My name is Matt from World Cup of Alcoholics. I'm still here. This might be the last thing I get to say. So I want to thank you all again from the bottom of my heart for giving me this opportunity to share my experiences with you. Thank you, Donna, for asking me and thinking of me. Thank you for the committee for selecting us. Thank you to all who charged the road of happy destiny with us all weekend. This has been a wonderful experience. I love nothing more than to talk about my audience. I love nothing more than to tell about the wonderful and amazing things that this program has done in my life. We've divided up step 12 into three parts and we're just going to tackle one of those. And the assignment that I've been given is the spiritual experience. And to speak about the spiritual experience for 20 minutes, I can speak about the spiritual experience for 20 days. The first time I took a drink was a month before my 13th birthday at the wedding that I told you guys. And that was a spiritual experience. Four or five months later, I smoked pot for the first time. And that was a spiritual experience. You know, in the same month that I smoked pot forthe first time, I also lost my virginity, also a spiritual experience. Right? All three seconds of it. And so it was this, this, I've been seeking some sort of how does life get this good always from those moments um i've been i've been forced not forced that's the wrong word i had been resigned to the idea that like you suffer through life waiting for the moments when you can manufacture chemically or otherwise joy when you can manufacture the moments where happiness and these kinds of things exist. What happens is that I get so attached to the ability to manufacture that chemical that I want it all the time. I want to be drunk high. I want to be you know chasing girls i want to do all of these things all the time because they get me on me because i don't have to face responsibility that i don'T HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT ANYTHING BUT FEELING GOOD AND WHAT IT MAKES IS RIGHT HERE RIGHT NOW REALLY GOOD RIGHT THAT FOURTH DIMENSION OF EXISTENCE I CAN ROCKET THERE WITH SOME JACK DANIELS RIGHT BECAUSE YOU GET ME AT THE BAR IT'S Tuesday at 3 o'clock, and enough drinks in me. And this guy next to me who I just met is my best friend. We're going to start a business together. The girl on the other end of the bar, I can already picture what our kids are going to look like. The bartender has become my therapist, and I'm perfectly okay to stay here until the next morning when the sun rises, right? Because nothing else matters, not my family, not mine. and so if that's my reality and any attempt to break myself out of that cycle failed I need to find a way to have the spiritual experience with a real spirit with the real spirit and the wording of the 12th step is having had a spiritual experience as a result of these steps we try to carry this message to the alcoholics and practice these principles and all that. And now the requirement being, right? There are so many ifs in this book. The requirement for me to talk about my experience with other alcoholics, the requirement for us to be able for me, to show up as a father, son, brother, fireman, you know, all of the hats that I wear, all ofthe places that God has put me is that I have to have a relationship with him and that relationship starts to look like a change of perspective, right? A change of perception. Because the man that ran around with fear, right, with fear running every decision I made, how am I going to be a man in the world? How am I gonna be a dad? Well, on my journey through 1 to 11, I got to see God show me that he's going to equip me with everything that I need to perform the duties he needs me to perform so I should probably stop working because somebody explained to me that fear is praying for what I don't want and so my resentments all of a sudden these people who ran me around the book says they dominated us all of a sudden I get to see the God in you I get to see that your spiritual disease is the same as my spiritual disease. That you, too, struggle with fear and feelings of inadequacy, the disease of comparison. That we're all just winning it, and you might not have it all figured out like I thought you did. Right? And so when I start to feel these things flow in, I am connected. not only am i connected to a god in a practical way right i loved going to church and i still love the church i've explored all sorts of religions spiritual experiences they tell me to see where religious people are right and these people have had it figured out long before i did but they don't struggle with the disease that i struggle with so their solution to their problems is different from my solution to my problem. And so the church didn't offer me a path to sobriety. They didn't talk to me about reliance. They Didn't Talk To Me About Dependence. They didn' t tell me that I needed to explore fear, resentment, shame, my harm's done and I needed amend those things if I was going to clear the channel and be a vessel for God. And now once I've done those things, I sit in perfect peace and ease, I pray, I meditate, and I show up. Right? Carl Jung, when he had Roland Hazard, he knew that Roland Hazerd needed to have this vital spiritual experience. I speak at a Thursday night big book meeting. I've had the honor and pleasure of being asked to take an entire group through all 164. And every single time that the word vital comes up, Marianne holds up a cardboard where she writes the word Vital on it and somebody from the meeting unmutes and says necessary for life. Vital spiritual experiments. Now the kid who thought that my life was manageable because I'd shrunken it to this little thing that my puny human brain, my finite human thinking could handle. starts to see that the spiritual experience that becomes vital is the life that God had planned for me? Can I look at the pain and the drama and the life that I was living on self-sufficiency as the necessary pain that I needed so that no matter how far down the scale I went, my experience could benefit somebody? Because I've done some terrible things in my life and I thought I'd never be forgiven. I've done some terrible things in my life that I thought I'd ever be able to forgive myself for. You know, and Donna told me one time as I was writing inventory, she said, how could you ever be resentful at yourself for the things that you did when you didn't know God? And so when I look around the world and people who used to dominate me start to be people that I look on with a little bit of compassion and I develop this weird, strange feeling, this thing, this perception called empathy. I can see that there are parts of their lives that they don't have God and I don't look at them and I'm not angry at them. How can I expect them to be anything more? And they no longer dominate me because I see them for exactly what they are. They're just human beings, children of the same God just trying to have an experience. right so when roland hazard went to carl jung he described the spiritual experience that he could not manufacture as brilliant as carl young was he was human right and this is the way he described it he said hearing there once in a while alcoholics have had what are called vital spiritual experiences to me these occurrences are phenomenal and we talked about the big book dictionary right what's phenomenal something i can see but i can't explain they appear to be the nature of huge emotional displacements and rearrangements. Ideas, emotions, and attitudes which were once the guiding forces of the lives of these men are suddenly cast to one side and a completely new set of conceptions and motives begin to dominate them. These virtues that always seemed so out of grasp for an alcoholic like me all of a sudden become easily accessible because I've tapped into this power. I am not dominated by my own thoughts anymore because I get to show up. I'm not scared to be a father because I've been a father all along to the best of my ability. And now that I've got God, what do I have to fear? I don't struggle with a drink. I say I'm a recovered alcoholic because that hopeless state of mind and body is no longer a part of my existence. It is not even on the radar. It doesn't even come to mind. And I have struggled in sobriety. I have had the world come crashing down on me. And something happens there I start to hear things I've never heard before Like Matt, I trust you Like give it to Matt He's got it Call Matt He'll be able to help you out And I start To see the beauty in little things That I never had time for I start to see the wonder in people who others might not think were so wonderful I start to watch God show up in all of the places that I didn't know God was you know when I was just getting done with my steps it was Christmas time remember I mentioned that I was doing nine step amends around Thanksgiving weekend and now I had been kicked out of my original firehouse because I was the worst drunk there. The guys in my new firehouse, when I got there, I was drinking again and they didn't know. I cut my thumb with a table saw and I had to, and I was out of work for a while because there was literally like it was split down the middle. I was drunk trying to do home improvement. And what happened was when I Got Back From Treatment, I got to show up. something had happened when i was away i heard something i hadn't heard i had an experience with a god that i didn't really understand before and i was listening to you guys i was taking direction it had really sunken in that my human will my my finite thinking wasn't going to get me the distance i needed to go to recover from my policy and i did things i'd never done like showed up and gave a day's work for a day's pay. And so Christmas time, here I am on the other side of the steps. I'm active in AA. I'm doing the deal. And it's, and I walked into the kitchen of the firehouse one day and I'm standing behind the senior man, right? In the fire department, everything is about seniority. Who's been here the longest, who's got the most experience. And he's like, I don't know. So he's standing there to the kitchen for the guys. And He says, you know, he says, tomorrow I need somebody to run around. He's got a big old wad of cash in his hand. He says, I need somebody to run round and pick up all of the stuff for the Christmas party. I need you to go to Frank B's, which is the costume store and get all the costumes. The new guys fresh out of the academy have to dress up like elves and all types of stuff. It's very embarrassing. I need you to go get the food and the trays and the this and the that and I need somebody who can handle it and I'm standing behind him he didn't know I'd come in the room and I said hey Tommy you know I can do I'm off tomorrow I can handle that and he turns around he goes thank god somebody I can trust with this nobody ever said that to me nobody ever handed me a wad of cash over a thousand dollars and thought they were seeing a dime of that or anything they expected to get for the thousand dollars right? I just get to be a part of the human race, like Donna said. I'm not bumping up against everything I come near. And I prepare myself and position myself with the grace of God to be able to take this experience and lay out a map for the next man who comes, who walks in the door and says, I don't know what to do. I can talk to them with empathy and compassion and understand that I'm no better than he is because I got here first. In fact, the highest rank, the greatest achievement than I can get at all in Alcoholics Anonymous is the title of serving. And all of these things that I used to struggle with and used to trouble me no longer feel like they're such a big deal you know i dated a girl one time uh in early sobriety bad idea and she she lived with another alcoholic i didn't tell her i was getting sober and she said i said so what's it like living with the guy who's in recovery her roommate was in recovery and she says you know he's pretty cool but like normal everyday things he kind of struggles with and is that my truth am I still struggling with normal everyday things well when I don't have God I am but with God in my life things that used to baffle me don't and I can explain to other people how I came from a place of lying and cheating and stealing of feelings of fear and inadequacy of questioning every decision I ever made of moving around not knowing what life had in store for me and how I was ever going to show up as the man that God wanted me to be. To look somebody in the eye and say, not only will I be able to tell you the path to God and how to not drink, but I'll also show you that there's a way that you can connect with the power that will solve all of your problems. Capital A, capital L, capital F. Capital L. I don't cheat on my girlfriend and I don' t want to I don''t lie to people and if I do I correct that I'm not paralyzed by fear today I don ''t spend much time in anger and resentment and when those things appear I have a practical program that I can turn to that gets me right back on the beam. I have connected to a power that is instantaneous and exponentially more powerful than alcohol, drugs and anything else ever was. My life has been absolutely 100% recreated by the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous and that is an experience that I would never want to lose. It is something that I want to nurture and nurture and nurture and care for for the rest of my life. Thank you, Matt. Our next speaker is Dawn. Again, brother, thank you. Before we get to working with others, it says there's more action. We've got to do more action faith without work is dead you know it's amazing when i first was presented with these spiritual tools that was laid at my feet it was like yes i get better see that's the selfishest the selfishness in me it was still all about me i don't want to feel in despair anymore i want i want, I want. But as I was going through this work, it dawned on me that I wasn't just doing this for me. I was doing this to be of service to God. Matt said it, the highest attainment is to be of service to God. And I knew that, that I have to freely give this away. Last year in January, now I had always had a sponsee, one or two, but i really wasn't on the firing line as i am now and in step 11 it says you know when we stay close to god we're in less worry of danger of excitement fear anger worry self-pity or foolish decisions well i found myself in a lot of self-pit I was worrying about I had a knee injury, oh my knee, my knee my knee I was worried about retirement and I knew I was going down a slippery slope so I knew to go to a meeting and share I know what I said when I opened up and I know what I closed I don't know what I said in between but I know when I sat down I started shaking like whatever I said had an effect on me what turned out going to four consecutive meetings turned into nine people sitting around my dining table in one instance I had it was a two-minute share I don't know what I shared but two women came up to me and asked me if they can work with me and so as I'm back on the firing line, I realize, okay, God, this is what you want of me. And it has been that way ever since. I never said that I wasn't ready to work with others because if God sends me someone to work with, I'm not willing to tell God no. God fills our lives. I had read earlier, it says, receive my blessings with open hands, enjoy my good gifts, but do not cling to them. See, I don't gauge my life based on the things. I also don't need to ask for things. We stay close to God and do his work well. we're taken care of I started this road with a lot of financial insecurity because I didn't respect money I spent money I made money I didn'y pay money back miraculously without putting much effort that has shifted so I don't suffer from financial insecurity. So the things that I thought I needed to be okay in life, God provides those for me, but it's not what I'm attached to. See, because if I'm not careful, I start getting attached to those things and those things become my God again. My responsibility is to be of use. It starts in our third step prayer take away my difficulty so I can be of use how do I show people how do i demonstrate God's power in my life the fact that I want to be of help I want to be abuse and step seven we ask again remove what interferes me from you and others why so I can be abuse when we go to make amends a real purpose to fit ourselves to be a maximum service to God and others so that's my part of the deal with God now I work on his behalf he's the director, the principal I'm his agent he'll take care of me but I have to be of service to him and that's why he saved me he pulled me from the gates of death not to just plant me here for me. He did it so I can show up for you. I love when they say in Working With Others, second paragraph life will take on new meaning to watch people recover to see them help others to watch loneliness vanish to see a fellowship grow up about you to have a host of friends this is an experience you must not miss and then they they reconfirm it by saying we know you will not want to miss this so where are you in service to god see we all think that oh I can't sound like so and so you work with someone steps one to three and you go off with God in step four and you spend a lot of time relying on God and your spirit becomes awakened and you start forming that relationship with the sunlight of the spirit that's who you rely on that's what you rely on as you work with others no one does anything perfect it says we perfect our spiritual life don't become perfect and when those doubts crop up we immediately take it to god god please show me how to be the beautiful thing about this is my responsibility is not to keep people sober i don't have that power i didn't have the power to keep myself sober My responsibility is to carry the message and to let you know, yes, I didn't just arrive here. I was sick and suffering. I was sitting up in crack dens. I wasn't paying my rent. I had the marshals put the lock on my apartment. I was quitting jobs before I got fired from jobs. My mother changed the lock on the house that I was living in with her. That's the best I could do. So what has happened to me up until step 12 is a miracle. and how do I pay that debt? See, because I tapped into a gold mine. Everything I learned in Catholic school, like Matt said, I did not hear reliance and dependence upon God. I never heard that. So for those of you that didn't grow up in religious instructions or any form of religion, don't despair because most of us that did still didn't get it. I just thought it was praise and worship, praise andorship, and it felt like a burden. We get to live the life that God wanted us to live there was a story early on in the book and it said, the guy had a dose of religious instruction. So he, we abandoned God. God doesn't abandon us. And what happens? He's dogged by misery, depression. That was my life. And so I never say no when it comes to being of service, I do it on my job I have nothing to do how can I be of service to other departments our house needed to be closed because of the pandemic don't worry I'm there I'll work with the movers to pack up and get the house ready for the new homeowner I never was available never did I want to be of use because I was too busy in self-pity. Life's not treating me fair. If only they would, how come they're not? Why didn't they give me? Those thoughts had power over me and I was paralyzed and I made my life very small and I created this victim mentality. And I realized that that was all a lie. Because none of those things, however you treat me, is nice to be treated well, but that doesn't dictate who I am as a child of God. I remember the first time I was going through this work, people started coming to me and I was like, oh my God, I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing here. and i realized one of my gifts i love to teach i love what i love taking people through this work i just really do i think i do that better than sharing about it and i love the fact that i don't prepare myself because right now by god's grace i've got four workshops going on one night of the week, Tuesday through Friday. And each time I get on the call, I ask them, okay, well, where are we today? Because I don't want to be prepared. And each Time I go through this book with others, I go do it differently. and my hope and pray is that people stick that they have enough willingness enough desire and enough honesty to get to where what Matt explained earlier Matt didn't manufacture what he explained that's the experience that we have So, are you willing to go to any length? Am I getting a warning because I don't always get the warning. Okay. So I'm going to turn it over to Sarah, who's gonna share. That's all I have. Thank you, Donna. Hi, everyone. My name is Sarah and I'm a grateful member of Al-Anon. And wow, what a weekend. What a weekend going through the steps, right getting to hear from Matt and Donna. thank you so much for sharing your message of recovery and hope. And thank you to the committee for putting this on. I will say I needed to hear all of this, every last word. So thank you for filling my spirit and my soul with some wonderful, wonderful words and experience that were shared. So I have been tasked with talking about practicing these principles in all of our affairs. And I got to tell you, sometimes that feels like a really, really tall order. But that's what I came here to do, right? And I didn't really know that. I got this day before I came into Al-Anon and I was at the point where I was just so broken inside, so empty, hurting so, so badly or fondly willing to come into this program and do the deal. I didn'T really know what to expect, right. I just wanted to feel better, just wanting to feel a little bit better, not be so miserable all the time, not being so bogged down and caring so much about what other people thought of me. And what I have gotten as a result of going through these steps and building a relationship with a power greater than myself is I've gotten a solution and a design for living. the book tells me very very clearly that spiritual principles will solve all of my problems and the first time I read that with my sponsor she said pause stop we got to talk about this for a sec right it says all of your problems it doesn't talk just about the alcohol problem right or the alcoholic that's everything and while I couldn't quite grasp that at the time it is always stuck with me. Because this program isn't just about how I treat the alcoholics in my life. It isn't about how i show up in meetings and what i share. It's about me showing up within the rest of the world right within the context of the world around me and having a solution to do that. Because before i came in and did this work i did not have a solution the solution was me the solution was to run myself into the ground non-stop just keep on trying harder keep on looking perfect everything will be okay and that almost killed me not physically but it certainly killed me emotionally intellectually and spiritually I just had nothing to give when I came in here and so when the program talks about practicing these principles in all of my affairs it's everywhere it's not only with the alcoholics in my life it's with my family it's at work it's với my husband it's WITH MY HUSBAND'S FAMILY talk about a challenge for me um it's EVERYWHERE it's WHAT'S MY SPONSOR WITH SPONSEES IT'S WITH THE PEOPLE AT THE GROCERY STORE THAT I DON'T EVEN KNOW RIGHT I GET TO BRING THESE PRINCIPLES INTO EVERYTHING THAT I DO AND And if I'm not, something is amiss because I don't want a life where just it's completely broken up into different pieces, right? Where I have my Al-Anon life and my non-Al-Anons life. For me, it has to bleed together. It is all one in the same and it's all about my relationship with God and what I'm taking into the world around me. And what I've found is that there are a lot of people I'm not going to get to carry this message too overtly. We're not gonna talk about the book. We're Not Gonna Talk About God. But one of the best ways that I can carry this message is in the principles that I practice, right? I've heard in AA people talk about sometimes you're gonna be the only version of the big book that people get to see. And that's true in Al-Anon, too. Sometimes I'm going to be the only person with recovery that others are going to get to see. And I can tell you that's certainly the case with my family. There is no recovery, no overt recovery, no going to meetings, right? Doing this thing. But what I can say is that the longer I've been in recovery and I practice these principles with my family, the more I get to see them start to adopt them in really subtle ways. You know, they're a little bit gentler. They're not as obsessed with perfection, right? They seem to care about what's going on emotionally for the other person. And it's never going to be perfect, but that's not what this is about, right? I see elements of recovery within my family because of what I'm now bringing to the table. And sometimes that is the most challenging thing for me to do with my family of origin. But again, this is what I've been tasked with, right? If I want to keep what I have, which is neutrality to alcohol and neutrality to alcoholics, neutrality, to people, places, and things, I've got to give it away. Whether that's sitting across from a sponsee, doing a workshop, right? Taking a phone call or just showing up with these principles. And so there's no one clear list of what these principles are, but you know, what I've gathered from my experience in the book and what I have learned from other people is that it's things like hope, faith, love, trust, compassion, integrity, service spirituality right to the extent that i'm bringing these things into the world i'm practicing my recovery with people and the world around me and i gotta say that sometimes the hardest place for me to practice this even though i laughed at practicing with my family and my in-laws, sometimes the hardest place for me to practice is with myself. Because I came into this deal being a martyr, right? I came in here willing to set myself on fire so that you could stay warm. And that is an old, old rut. That is an older groove. And it takes a lot to pull me out of that. And what I found fairly recently was about a year ago, I was really sick, really, really sick. And I started to have panic attacks and start crying all the time because I wasn't getting any better. Instead of going to see a doctor, I'm like, no, I am fine. I am going to manage this. This isn't a big deal. This is not a big thing. And then I went to fellowship of the Spirit in Colorado, which is a place that I love. Beautiful. Been going for years. Know the people there. My husband and I have this beautiful condo with beautiful people that we love and sharing it with them for a whole weekend. And what I found that I couldn't get out of bed, right? I had run myself so ragged up until that point. I'm at thoughts and I'm in bed the whole time. One of the women who stayed with us told me later that she was going to ask about pregnant because I just wasn't not going anywhere. And I was just so in a fog and you better believe when it came time for me to go be a 10 minute speaker for the Al-Anon speaker, I pulled myself together. I mean, you wouldn't have known how my hair done makeup on perfect little outfit. I showed up for that, but then I went and I slept the rest of the time, right? I could barely show up. I maybe went to a few of the workshops, and it finally hit me that weekend that I needed to do something to take care of myself, and that sounds like such a simple idea, right? Take care of yourself. Go see a doctor, but I had been ignoring it and pushing it down for so long. I was so grateful to finally have the realization of, okay, let's go figure yourself. And so when we got back to Denver, I made a bunch of phone calls. I finally got in with the doctor, but that wasn't it, right? I got this new diagnosis, but I had really bad reactions to the medication I was taking. I got really, really sick. I was having, I was sweating profusely at night. My hair was falling out. I mean, it was awful, right. It got worse before it got better. And it was much like it was for me before I came into Al-Anon. I was like, can I really get well? Like, I've been experiencing this. Like, can, can we really, right? Is God big enough? Is God Big Enough? And I just had the instinct to just keep on trying, right. Keep on working. God will be big enough. I would get well. And it took a long time and I had to do things that were really uncomfortable for me. I had to tell my boss that I was sick and tell him, hey, I'm going to need to go into doctor's appointments. I'm gonna be missing work. And that's a really vulnerable thing for me to do, right? To show that I'm not perfect and ask for help. Really challenging sometimes. And he said, do whatever you need to do. And then I also had to turn down a trip that I really wanted to take for work. We were going to Romania. We were coming to Egypt. two week long trip with my boss that my company was going to pay for and I talked to my doctor about it and I said I can't do this can I she said I'm not going to tell you what to do but I wouldn't recommend it and so I didn't go and that was hard for me to admit again hard to be so vulnerable what I learned through all of this is that I got to take care of myself this is not just about practicing principles with the people around me. I need to practice it with myself too so that I can be in fit condition to carry this message, to be well, right? Sometimes we talk about putting that oxygen that is gone first and I have never done that. Al-Aman has taught me to do that and I can say now I'm well. It was a journey for sure but I am well and I know that one of the biggest gifts of that is going to be that I'm going to get to share that with someone else who's going to go through these things. Because that's how this thing works, right? We have these experiences, we get through tough times in recovery, right, what never says in the book, when we have recovered, everything's gonna be great and wonderful. We don't have to go through this again. Right? What I get to do is share my experience with someone else and how I came out of it and how I get to do that with these principles and the guidance and the support of others. I don't have to go at it alone, and so what happened too is that I learned the importance of self-care going into COVID, right? COVID has been a trip for me, right, as it has been for everyone and it has thrown me in so many different ways because I'm at home now all the time. I'm at home with my husband every day. I don't get to see my coworkers. I can't go to the grocery store in a normal way. Things are different. Whether I liked it or not, I had to really acknowledge the impact of this on me. And I thought, you know, I should be fine in COVID. I don't have children, right? I don'T have to worry about them and school and taking care of them. And how am I going to do that? In addition to working. And I felt that that meant that I should Be okay. What I've learned through that experience. I just shared what I've learned in Al-Anon is that it's okay to not be okay. And I get to bring these principles into whatever I'm going through. I get to take care of myself in COVID, which means sometimes I call it a day early. Sometimes I take a day off just so I can rest and take care of myself. Again, things that I didn't know how to do when I came in here. And I'm so grateful for that and the fact that I don't have to go through COVID alone. I'm doing it with all of you. I never knew how to practice these principles in a global pandemic. We're learning to do that with one another. and so one thing that I've been thinking a lot about lately is this notion of am I having an impactful life or an impressive life what kind of life am I living and I used to only care about living an impressive wife right it was devoid of principle but what it meant was that I created this facade and this image so that I looked okay, and you would think I was okay, right? You would never know what was going on for me internally, right? It all started with outward appearances. How do I look? What clothes am I wearing? Am I appearing to be nice to others? Am I well-spoken, right ? How am I appearing in work meetings, and what am I sharing in meetings? Is it impressing people? And that's not the kind of life that I want to live today. So I might impress other people, but what does that really mean, right? All that does is it still keeps people far away because you think I'm okay, right, you think i'm this great person who looks good talks good all all of those things that was all i cared about but now with the help of this program what i want to do is i want a little bit impactful life and what that means is that sometimes it is not pretty right i get to share things that feel really really ugly and i do that so i can hopefully impact the lives of others so that i can share my experience so that other people know that they can get through something somewhere or they know that people are there to help them right it doesn't matter what I look like does not matter what matters is am I showing up and essentially practicing things like being kind and loving and compassionate practicing these things that the book talks about like patience tolerance kindliness and love right am i really doing that with the people that i meet that i'm never going to see again as well as the peoplethat i'm super close to that's what matters to me today and that's what keeps me going when it comes to bringing these principles into my life because if i separate them if i separate my alan on life and my life outside of alan on it gets exhausting right I want to do is practice with everyone and that's what this program helps me do and so what I have to do when I'm doing that is I have to put my dependence on God right if I'm living an impressive life my dependence is all on people what you all have taught me is that people will fail me right they are human but what doesn't fail me is God right The book talks about wife or wife, no wife, job or no job. We simply don't get well, we do not recover as long as we put dependence on other people instead of dependence on God. And that has been the biggest change for me in going through these steps, right? Not to put my dependence on what I look like or, you know, my assignment at work or presentation that I'm building, but my dependence upon God, right. Am I doing God's work? That's what I get to do today. I never thought I would be tasked with doing something like that. And, you know, the book also tells me that, you know, burn the idea into the consciousness of every man's keeping it well, regardless of what's going on. And that is the most beautiful promise for me, right? That's the only requirement that I trust God in a clean house. that seems very overwhelming sometimes but I can get well I can recover as can everyone else and I think that is most beautiful promise right again I thought this was too big for me before I came in I thought I was so uniquely bad and special and broken and what I learned in this program is that I'm not. And so if I can help anyone, anyone, even just one person by sharing my experience, that's all that matters. All that matters and I get to learn from other people too, right? It's not lost on me that the reason that I am here and that I am recovering is that other people have to freely give in to me, right? They have shared their experience. They have share their time. They've shared their knowledge and what they've learned in this program. And so it's up to me to give it away too. Again, I want to keep this. I want to keep the centrality. And I'm going to fumble and I'm a fall along the way. I am not perfect at practicing these principles and that is okay thank god for progress not perfection sometimes I just fail utterly it's like I'm falling on my face but what matters is that I get up and that I learn from it right that's okay that's how I learn is by making mistakes it's okay to have a chink in the arm and so I'm just so grateful again for this design for living that really works, that brings me closer to God, which is my solution. And that means I got to keep coming back. I got To keep going through the steps, right? Once it's not enough, it is not one and done. I gotta keep learning and keep growing. And one of the best ways for me to do that is to do that with all of you. So thank you so much for sharing your experience this weekend, helping me again, like I said, feel so full. This is how I learn what I need to bring that out into the rest of the world to practice these principles in all of my affairs. So thank you. thank you so much instead of a group conscience we are conducting a short survey so we can gather your feedback regarding your experience of the weekend workshop and one last time we're going to throw in the chat the link for that survey if you'd please just take a moment while we thank our speakers. A special thank you to our keynote speakers this weekend, Myers, Kerry and Kathy and lots and lots of gratitude to our step speakers, Donna, Matt and Sarah. You all have delivered an effective and powerful message and we're incredibly grateful. Thank you for touching us spiritually and we know how exhausting this has been for you and we are incredibly grateful let's close our spiritual experience with the serenity prayer god grant me the serendipity to accept the things i cannot change the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference thank you everybody thanks Kelly that was beautiful thank you everyone thank you Matt Donna Sarah lots of love thank you you all were wonderful thank you thank you guys so much for the opportunity I appreciate it and I'm grateful for it thank you so much everyone