Step 3 — Turning It Over – Donna J. – New England Big Book Workshop Weekend – 2020

So, just for folks who are joining us, just real quickly, my name is Maureen and I'm an alcoholic. Just so folks know, like much of what is happening during AA meetings, everyone's microphone is muted. If you are going to be up and about moving around the house, we just ask you to turn off your video. You can change your display name to protect your anonymity by going to the participants box and just click rename. Private chat is turned off, so any messages that will come directly to me and I'll respond as quickly as I can. If you have any Zoom or technical related questions, I'll do my best. I always say, please be patient and please don't record the session in any way. We will be posting throughout the rest of the weekend. This is being recorded and the full audio will become available sometime on Sunday night after everything is done. So with that, I'm going to pop it over to Kel. Hi, everybody. Welcome back. Please remember that after our step speakers, we will be going into breakout sessions. We have some incredible tradition speakers that will show us a practical application. So, if you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to us. We will be posting throughout the rest of the weekend. There will be a presentation of the traditions that they are speaking on, and there will be opportunity for you to engage with the subject and the speaker. So please join us. Now we will move into step three and our first speaker on step three is Donna. Hi, everybody. Donna, recovered alcoholic, so Matt, you have to follow me now. I want to thank the committee for choosing me. me to speak. And I immediately, when they said that I needed to have a guy to do this with me, I chose Matt. And I met Matt since the pandemic. And, you know, there's no coincidences when God puts people in our path. That's why moving up to step three, I had a willingness to transfer my thinking and my actions over to God because of the people that God put in my path. I'm very blessed that when I came into AA after treatment facility, I was presented with the program of recovery. So I did not sit in the rooms for any length of time, relying on self and trying to manage my life. And I always said that I was around AA spiritual giants, and I didn't know what I did to be there. But I knew that I wanted what they have, and I was willing to do what they did. And in the The spiritual experience, they tell us what we bring to this deal with God. We bring willingness, open-mindedness, and honesty. And I always say that God's grace meets that and God does what God does. There's nothing for me to try to do here. I don't try to manage these principles. I don't try to figure God out. That's not part of my deal with God. My part of my deal with God is to be willing to go to any length. So after step two, I read you my current conception of God. And my first conception of God was big. It wasn't as huge as it is now, but it was enough to make a beginning. And so I'm faced with this decision. And the decision is, I'm going to make a decision. And the decision is just that. I'm pretty sure most of you heard that joke about there's four frogs sitting on a log. One decides to jump in the pond. How many frogs are left on the log? Four. Because this decision that I'm going to make is going to be real key for when I start my fourth step. So what helps me to make this decision is I look back at my life. And I'm going to make a decision. I shouldn't be afraid to give up a life that wasn't working. And a life that I destroyed and had no power on how to change anything. So they're telling me the first requirement is I've got to be convinced that life run on self-will could hardly be a success. And then we read those pages. And like Matt said, I'm going to make a decision. And like Matt says, we turn them into first person. So I can see me. And I get to see how controlling I was. How manipulative I was. Because I was going to get my way either way. I'm convinced that the only way that I could be okay is if you show up in life the way I expect you to. I wouldn't allow people to be who they were. Because it was all contingent on me. So I get to see the selfishness and self-centeredness. But see, I'm so busy showing up in life thinking I'm a victim. See, I assign myself that role. And I'm so glad we have an Al-Anon speaker this weekend. Because seven years in and relying on God, I got into a relationship. And all of a sudden, I was managing that. And I got real sick. And I realized that my God had to become bigger. And so I went through the work with a woman in Staten Island. And willing to go to any length, I got to tell you, I was living in Harlem. And I was jumping on that number two train to that number one train to that ferry. And I had a deep experience in that. And each time I go through this work, I get a deeper experience about seeing my truth and God's truth. And I'm so glad that I'm here. And I'm so glad that I'm here. And I'm so glad that I'm here. And I'm so glad that I'm here. And I'm so glad that I'm here. So after I'm willing to believe that I can't run my life successfully, it's exhausting. And all I do is complain to you. So now I'm hijacking people's time by complaining about what ain't right. Right? See, I realize today that. What wasn't right was me. So are you willing to believe that God can be your principal, your director, and you're going to work on his behalf? Well, principal is the highest authority. A director guides me. And as an agent, I work on God's behalf. And I had shared this when we were going through step two. That God didn't save me and just dump me so I can try to live life the best that I could. See, God loves us so much, he wants to restore us. And you don't restore junk. If I have a piece of furniture for my kids. Here, I'm throwing that out. But see, if I have something of value, I clean it up. I polish it up. I show it off. So because that promise is that God's going to restore me, there's got to be something to me that I'm not willing to see and have never saw. So something has to change on the inside, and I can't do that. Because my default. My default is like that actor. The first thing out of my mouth, trust me, is going to be a lie. And to this day. My thinking. Can still be sick. I'll have a bad day at work, and my thinking will tell me, you need to quit. Now, really? I have bills to pay. How am I going to quit? So I've learned to let these thoughts just pass. I've learned to let these thoughts just pass. I've learned to let these thoughts just pass. I've learned to let these thoughts just pass. I don't react. For me, I love being led. And not driven because, see, when I'm driven, I try a whole lot of things. And as soon as I hit a roadblock, I'm gonna try something else. I'll try something else. And I'm gonna blame you along the way. You know that keystone? Keystone. When we get to the fifth step, they ask us, are our stones firmly in place? That foundation stone, that willingness, that honesty. Because we're building an archway that we can walk to freedom. And I don't know about you, but I want to be free. How free do you want to be? See, there's some people that I equate it to being at a wedding. And there's a buffet of food. And you just hang out at the hors d'oeuvres. There's a whole table of riches, of food. See, I want it all. And what I see can happen for me are the people that God has placed in my life, the recovered alcoholic. Because once we have this psychic change, a spiritual experience, our responsibility is to carry this message. When we do, when we rely on him and do his work well, dot, dot, dot. See, I don't have to worry about anything. The more I work with people, my life gets full. And it gets so full now that I have to rely on God all day because I never thought I would be in a place in my life where God has placed me. See, I was too busy living the life of least resistance. If I could show up and do as little as I could, that was me. But I realized that God didn't create me for that. So we're at this step, this keystone. And if you guys have worked with sponsors that are doing this deal, you've seen the art. That keystone is in the middle. Holding that archway in place as you work. That archway in place as you do the rest of the steps. See, because I'm not going to do a thorough inventory without God, I'm not going to be humble and express humility in a fifth step. Because my mind will tell me as I'm doing inventory, oh, you're not really angry, they deserved it, remember what they did, remember what they did, remember what they did, or won't even let me sit down and write. So I need to be humble. I need to be humble. I need to be humble. I need to be humble. I need to be humble. I need God to get to this freedom. Because it's something that I've always wanted. I just don't know how to, I didn't know how to get it. And the beautiful thing is there's nothing that I need to try. When I work with people, I'm like, you don't try to do this. The only thing you try to do is show up every day when we have to work for an hour and have the experience you're supposed to have in this. The only thing you try to do is show up every day when we have to work for an hour and have the experience you're supposed to have in this. The only thing you try to do is show up every day when we have to work for an hour and have the experience you're supposed to have in this. This is not going through this work intellectually. We ask God to set aside everything we think we know. So anytime I do a spiritual writing, I ask God to reveal the truth. See, my mind lied to me about alcohol, so I don't want my mind to be in the mix. See, I say this is not a three-way. It's not me, my mind, and God. God knows me. God knows what's blocking me from him. But I got to make a decision. Am I willing to transfer my thinking and my actions so that he can care for me? And I look at a caretaker. I've got three cats. I don't know, they're so quiet. They must know to stay away right now. Because usually they're across the screen and everything. So what is a caretaker? What is a caretaker for you? So when I have a cat, when I need somebody to take care of my cat, I want somebody that's dependable, somebody who's trustworthy, honest, going to show up. Because it's your conception of God. It's not the Catholic Church's God. It's not your grandmother's God. You get to name. Your higher power. And see, God didn't put Loretta, who's on this call, Rashid, Adrian, Lorraine, didn't bring me to my first Fellowship of the Spirit conference in my first year in AA. And I sat on that front row and I cried. Because I knew that God had placed me someplace. Someplace special. And so I always say I was given a gift of willingness. I was willing to believe. I was willing to believe if I ask God, please reveal to me what's blocking me from you. When I put that pen to paper, God was revealing it. And so my willingness to believe turned into faith. Because what was coming down on the paper was not coming from my thinking mind. The first time I did inventory, kindergarten came up. Now I'm 43 years old. What the hell is kindergarten doing up on an inventory? Because I wouldn't have thought of that. So every time I started having these experiences, I started to believe. My faith started getting bigger and bigger. See, now when I work with people, I don't make any bones about God. Because if you want what we have, we don't diminish our relationship with God. And my responsibility is to take you through one, two, and three. So thorough that by the time you leave me on four, you're with God. See, some of us want to use human power. I don't allow anybody to do that with me. Because, see, it starts messing me up. And I start thinking I can think. And I start thinking I can control. And I think I can start telling people what I think I know they need to do. Mm-mm. And if all we're left with is God, there's no place else to go. I used to love, I used to call the people that I worked with, they wouldn't answer the phone. I'm like, okay. What am I going to do? I'm going to sit and trust. And in the four to the second edition, I know that they're talking about the formation of AA meetings. But what always, I'm always awakened to when they describe at first they were just frightening and disturbing. It was a frightening and disturbing time. That reminds me of everything I do sober. In the beginning, it's not like I was going to work for the first time. But I was going to work for the first time showing up to be a worker amongst workers. And everything I did was frightening. And, yes, I would pray all day. Sometimes I still pray all day. And it all just started with just a willingness to believe and just make the decision. And look back at your untreated alcoholism on page 52. How good are you? How good are you doing at running your life? And look at the people before you. How have their lives been changed? You notice I didn't say how they changed their lives. I didn't change me. What happened in, what happened to me today, because I am not the same person I was when I came into AA. And in the preface they say, or the first forward, they want to hear from people who are getting results. So something should be happening to you. You should not be the same person you was when you walked in the rooms of AA if you picked up these tools. Because willingness, open-mindedness, and honesty, those words don't manufacture change. That's what they're telling me I'm bringing to the deal. Well, that takes a lot of pressure on me because I don't know how to be any way than how I've been all my life. So is God capable? We examined the evidence in step one. I hear a lot of y'all sitting in the rooms of AA. How are you feeling up in there not doing the work? How are you feeling up in there not doing the work? You get to come up with your conception, however small it might be. But trust me, that conception will get bigger and bigger. And your question is, how free do you want to be? That's all I got. And in fact, it'll get easier. Am I up? Oh. Hey, hey. What's up, guys? My name's Matt, I'm a recovered alcoholic. Talk about not wanting to follow something. to follow something i'm like man i was gonna say something like that too i think but what happens is when i when i sit here right and if i've truly surrendered my life and my will to god i have no idea what's going to come out of my mouth you know i have donna and i talk speak frequently about like these speaking experiences and when when i sit up here and i and i bring and i bring the spirit of god and i've prayed before and i've asked god to use me as a vessel a lot of times i can't tell you what i said afterwards because because it's not like donna said it's not coming from my thinking mind um you know donna that was absolutely fantastic so step three right so i'm outside on on like when i get here i am outside in the street and it looks like the perch right like like there's all sorts of madness going on in here right and the book calls it a self-imposed crisis right this is what i've created for myself this is what my reality looks like right and somebody stands there and says that house the last house on the block that still looks put together it's armored up that that's where the solution to what i'm experiencing is and then step two i just walk up to the door i just walk up to the door i come to this idea that something inside this house something inside this place that is not me that is much bigger than me that is much stronger than me that is that is all powerful and and it just might have a solution for me and with my hand on the doorknob i arrive at step three and the question is am i going to open the door you see walking through the door is step four and it's terrifying because i have no idea what's on the other side of that door but am i willing am i willing to explore what might be on the other side of that door and so the decision i have now is am i going to surrender my life and my will over to the care of god as i understand him well if you asked me to lay aside the prejudices of the god of my upbringing and the god of my parents if you lay ask me to lay aside the prejudices of the god of my upbringing and the lay aside the prejudices of my preconceived notions about the god that i read about or the god that i answered altar calls to or the god that i hear on these sermons and on these on these podcasts and all these other things well god as i understand i don't understand god at all and that's still more more fear inducing for me at this point because how can i surrender my life and my will to something that i don't understand and so in that process i'm starting to really see that a lot of what this whole deal in recovery is a lot of what this entire sobriety experience is addition by subtraction right the less self that is involved in this deal the more room there is for god to fulfill what he had planned for me or it's for god to to fulfill right which is what mine was going to be and all these other all these things nothings are going to help that my soul is going to work because all these other things that i can't lol and somehow something warm is going to life all my whole life as a way of submitting to god and to his full power and for this reason thaterson begs you my brother تن리 !!! that we gloss over all of the amazing things that are said and how it works, right? That we were alcoholic and could not manage our own lives, drunk or sober. Because I have three options to treat my alcoholism. There's this amazing woman around here in this area and her name is Linda, Linda E. And she says, I have three options to treat my alcoholism. I'm gonna treat it with alcohol, which is incredibly effective treatment for alcoholism. It's instantaneous. I'm gonna treat it with character defects or I'm gonna treat it with God. And so if I have accepted that any life run on self-will can hardly be a success and I've accepted the powerlessness, right? We're not talking about drinking anymore. We stopped talking about drinking. Drinking is not my problem. I am my problem. And I have a very good friend in Arizona and I went to Fox AZ a few years back and she walked up to the podium and she said, I'm an alcoholic and the name of my problem is corn. Because I am wrestling life. I am imposing my will on everything. I am writing a script for you to recite that you don't even know I wrote and I'm consumed by resentment and anger and frustration because you aren't reading the lines I wrote for you. I want my kids to behave a certain way. I want my girlfriend to show up a certain way. I'm not at all examining how I show up in life. And then I'm stuck in the same cycle that I'm stuck in in step one that the doctor talks about. Right? That I wake up with remorse. I drink, I overdo it and I wake up with remorse again. This is what my relationships in life look like. I ruined another relationship because it's not going my way. And as Donna so beautifully put it, I become the victim in all scenarios. It's the role that I assigned myself. And then I complain about it as if I'm not a willing participant in the madness. And Debbie D from Rockaway, she says, you know something, Matt? Victims do not recover. They batter you. They do not suffer. They are not in the same place where they are. They get better. They try to be better. They try to be better. But they never make it. They never get to where they're supposed to be. And that's the reason why I started out in the brand that I started with. Right? Because I paint villains in my story. I alluded to this last night. There was always a villain in my story. As a child, it was my father. Why didn't he, he chose drugs over us. A little bit later, it was my sister, a 14-year old girl, than that. Somebody who had no, it was a girlfriend that I was with for five years who did absolutely nothing wrong. And she was the villain of the story. She was crowding my space. She was pressuring me to grow up and get married. And I'm a kid. I can't, I can't handle all that responsibility. And then it becomes my son's mother who wants me to show up. She wants me to come home from work. She wants me to pay the bills. You didn't pay the bills. And I start to come to this realization as I, as I examine all of this stuff that I am a selfish, self-centered piece of poopoo. And the thing is, is that is a beautiful realization to come to because the book tells me that our problems are of our own making. Well, thank God they are. Because you guys told me that I came to a place where I can work on that if I get with God. Because if what I previously thought was true, that you were the problem and she was the problem and they were the problem and this idea was the problem and the institution is the problem and the job is the problem. Well, guess what? I have no power over those things. So I'm stuck right back where I started, powerless. And I might as well just give up then and there and crawl into a hole and wallow in the hot tub of self-pity, just lapping it over. Because I can't do anything about this. And how exhausting does it get to play God? Exhausting. Exhausting. I spend my life drowning. Everything that I think I know in alcohol, searching in all sorts of places for some conception of God. And what I realized later is searching for something to relieve me of what all of this is that is that is going on inside of me. And I get here and you tell me, you're not bad, Matt. I remember sitting in treatment and this, this is the second go round. And I'm sitting in treatment and I'm sitting in treatment and there was this amazing counselor named Marsha. And I feel like I have to name these people because God sent all of these beautiful agents into my life. They were absolute angels throughout this, this journey of mine. And I remember Marsha, I was, I had studied psychology. I mentioned I studied psychology in college and my first couple of times sitting in group, I would sit next to her. Because the illusion was like, you know, I'm, I'm a few things went wrong and I found myself here, but I'm much closer to this woman because I have a degree in psychology because I've studied this stuff than I am to you guys sitting out there. You know, and I, and, and every time she would come up with some, some sort of clinical term that I was familiar with, I told her, yeah, you know, I'd talk about my experience with that clinical term and how I'd written a paper on it and I'd studied substance abuse and counseling. And as we sat in a small group one time, it was only about five or six. And she looked me square in the face and she said, Matt, you think that you have it all figured out. She said, Matt, you're really, really smart. And the problem is that you're too smart for this program. Because you're intellectualizing everything. You somehow seem to think that your experience in college prepares you to recover from alcoholism. And I said, Matt, you're too smart for this program. You think you can figure everything out. You see, like Donna, I skated by on the bare minimum, usually because I could talk a really good game. Because I could, I could draw like big conclusions from small amounts of information. And so I had been doing this all along, having no idea, thinking that I had all these wonderful accomplishments. Because I'm awesome. And because I, because I, I, I willed my way through all of these things, right? This, this amazing career that I have now, graduating college with honors, right? All of these accomplishments that I, that I hung my hat on, you know, and I learned in step two, like I mentioned that God had been putting bumpers on my life the entire time, right? God had been there the entire time, but I don't know this yet. And she said, Matt, at some point, you're going to have to get out of here. And into here. And she promised me, she said, Matt, and if you can do that, you can see what's really wrong with you. Because you aren't bad, you are sick. You suffer from a mental illness that keeps driving you back to something that is sure to kill you. And you can repair your relationships. And you can nurture this thing called God, if you just surrender to it. And with tears in my eyes, I turned around, I looked at her, I said, but Marsha, I've hurt so many people. And now in my quest for figuring out what it meant to be a man and masculinity in life and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, that I talk about all the time in my story. I never cried. Because I was fairly certain that if there was anything that wasn't masculine, it was crying. That has changed in sobriety. I cried ASPCA commercials. I cried Hallmark movies. I cried all the time. But that's neither here nor there. And what happened was, is that like for a moment, right? You get these glimpses of what's going on. You get these glimpses of what humility might look like. And for a moment, I realized that I'd been playing God everywhere. Everywhere. I had this illusion that I could control you. And if you only behaved a certain way, I would be okay. You know, I had this illusion that I would show up into this 150-year-old institution, right? Be stuck in houses with guys, 10 other guys for 24 hours. And I would figure out, you know, in the fire department, we call it square rooting, right? That I would figure out all the angles to get what I need, right? You make the job work for you. I didn't know what brotherhood was. I didn't know what love looked like. I couldn't get a grasp on empathy or compassion. And so I'm trying to will my way through relationships, through life, through work, through parenting. And I'm trying to will my way through sobriety. And that's why every 90 days I drank. And so I get a grip on like, I'm not bad. Right? I tell my guys a lot of times, just the fact that you walked into an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting is evidence that you are not a sociopath. Because sociopaths, they don't, they would never make it to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting because the idea that they're hurting people or hurting themselves or causing harm around the world wouldn't even, it goes right over there. And so I'm just selfish and self-centered. Okay, well, how'd I get here? Doesn't matter. My sponsor said, you know, you go to the meetings, that 79th Street workshop that I talked about, they have all of the slogans, all of the slogans up on the wall, the back wall where the speaker speaks from, where the podium is. One day at a time, you know, live and let live. You know, first things first. Think, think, think. Blah, blah, blah. And my sponsor says, you know what's not up there? Figure it out. Figure it out is not a slogan. Why? How I got here is kind of important. But why I'm here, why I am the way that I am. Right? That doesn't matter. I have the information now. Where do I go with it? Where do I go with it? Right? And my friend Danny from Rockaway, he says, you know, the short, the short, really, really short, short, short, super abbreviated version of step three is I'm in. Right? I have a step one truth. I've come to believe that this power that's greater than me might be able to restore me to sanity. I'm starting to form a conception of what that is. So now I make a decision to let this power guide my thinking and my life and my actions. And I do that in my sponsor's magical kitchen. I hit my knees and I say the third step. God, I offer myself to thee to build with me, to do with me as thou wilt. Relieve me of the bondage of self so that I might better do thy will. Take away my difficulties so that victory over them will bear witness to those I would help with thy power, thy love, and thy way of life. May I do thy will always. Right? Relieve me of the bondage of self. This is sticky and uncomfortable. And there's so much me on me. That I can't see you. And I sure as heck can't see God. And I'm asking him to take these things away from me. Not so I can feel sleep better or be happier or make a little more money or get the girl that I wanted. I'm asking God to take these things away from me so I can be of service to him and his children. So that I can walk around happy and put together. And when somebody asked me, Matt, How'd you put down the drink? I can say, God. I can say, God. And the only way that I'm going to develop a conception of God, a real conception of God that can grow and change and evolve as I grow and change and evolve. Is to put the pen to paper. And that's all this is preparing me for. Right? The God that I must come to understand in step three. Is this power that wants me to start writing. It wants me to get to work. It wants me to start digging for the things that separate me from him and myself and the things that separate me from you. Right? That decision has to be followed by action. But I have to arrive there willing, honest and open. Mind it. And then I can open that door and walk through. Thank you, guys. Thank you, Matt and Donna. It's just amazing. I'm blown away by you guys. Thank you so much for your service today. Thank you.